Comment by hackingonempty
1 day ago
If you bought a legit licensed product the doctrine of first sale means their patent rights are exhausted.[0] They can't come after you for patent infringement. Those licenses are for manufacturers making new licensed products, not users of licensed products they purchased.
Can you show a single court case or even a press release where someone using a legit licensed product bought on the open market was sued for codec patent infringement?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exhaustion_doctrine_under_U.S....
First sale doctrine doesn't exist in my country for anything involving software, as business and business-adjacent software requires compulsory copyright registration and compulsory per-copy government-registered identifier here.
I believe this is why a number of products require you to manually activate a free personal license (by clicking a button and agreeing to TOS) in the settings instead of shipping with it. You are then separately licensing the tech from the software vendor and are personally liable for infringements.
Back in the day Kodak had to buy back all their instant cameras after losing to Polaroid. Though I'm not sure if law has changed since then (it has, but I'm not sure if in relevant ways), or just that they did that because no being able to make film made them useless and so buyback was a goodwill gesture.
Could that not have been because they could not sell film for them anymore, rendering them useless? So it was to make customers whole?
Edit: Missed the last part where you said the same
The license doesn't come attached to the device itself, but you as a entity (e.g. movie studio, broadcaster, or solo professional). Transferring the device doesn't transfer the license.
You license the right to use the patent pool for commercial purposes, not the device itself.
My read of parent's link says differently.