First Royalty-Free IP Pool Enables DOCSIS Rollout
Louisville, Colorado, July 23, 1998—Cable Television Laboratories Inc.(CableLabs®)announced
today the formation of a royalty-free pool for intellectual property rights essential
for implementation of the Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification (DOCSIS)
standard.
3Com, Bay Networks, Broadcom, and General Instrument (GI), vendors that helped draft
key portions of the DOCSIS specification, are the first companies to join. With
these companies as members, the pool contains the basis for enabling new networking
standards for the cable industry.
DOCSIS defines interface requirements for cable modems involved in high-speed data
distribution over a cable television network. The pool includes only intellectual
property that is essential to the DOCSIS interface standard and does not include
the technology or the intellectual property each company might choose to implement
the standard.
By entering the pool, a company contributes to the pool a non-exclusive license
for any of its intellectual property essential to the DOCSIS standard and receives
a license from the pool for all of the intellectual property contributed by other
signatories. Any company desiring to make equipment compliant with the DOCSIS standard
may join the pool, and thus have access to the intellectual property in the pool,
in return for contributing the intellectual property it has (if any) relating to
the DOCSIS standard.
While other companies have created royalty-free pools for intellectual property
in a standard protocol they have developed, such as Intel with the USB interface,
CableLabs believes that this is the first instance of a broad-based royalty-free
pool.
"This is a tremendous step for the cable industry and the DOCSIS process," said
Dr. Richard R. Green, CableLabs President and CEO. "CableLabs is confident that
the pool will speed up deployment of interoperable DOCSIS modems. While it's taken
us many months to get this in place, the timing is critical now that the industry
is ready to begin wide-scale deployment."
"This is a great industry achievement, to see a new broad-based industry standard
become a reality less than three years from when the first modem was deployed in
a cable television system" said Brian L. Roberts, president of Comcast Corporation
and a member of the CableLabs Board of Directors.
"As an early contributor to the DOCSIS standard and process, we believe that this
level of cooperation among vendors bodes well for systems interoperability and consumer
choice on the retail shelf," said Levent Gun, vice president and general manager
of 3Com's Cable Access group. "This announcement underscores our commitment to interoperability
and standards among progressive technology firms."
"Bay Networks has been a strong supporter of DOCSIS and a major contributor to the
royalty-free pool because we recognize the need to speed the mass adoption of cable
modem technology," says Karl May, vice president and general manager of Bay Networks
Broadband Technology Division. "We believe the contribution of our experience over
the past ten years will directly impact the success of this industry."
"Broadcom has been a vigorous and active supporter of this industry-standard, open
specification since its inception," said Dr. Henry T. Nicholas, III, president and
CEO of Broadcom. "This standard will enable the cable television industry to be
the first provider of ubiquitous, low-cost broadband access to the consumer."
""GI has contributed substantial intellectual property to the DOCSIS process, "
said Thomas J. Lynch, General Manager, GI's Satellite Data Network Systems group.
"We are pleased that the result will be an interoperable standard without burdensome
royalties. We believe that this will help the market for DOCSIS cable modems grow
rapidly."
About CableLabs: Cable Television Laboratories (www.cablelabs.com) was founded in
1988 by members of the cable television industry. A non-profit research and development
consortium, CableLabs delivers innovations that enable cable operators to be the
providers of choice in their markets. Cable operators from around the world are
members. CableLabs maintains additional web sites at www.cablenet.org, www.ebif.tv
and www.tru2way.com.
CableLabs® is a registered trademark of Cable Television Laboratories, Inc. Other
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