(IMPORTANT) Patent company (possibly troll) going against h5p use of patent

I work as a consultant in a company which uses h5p with moodle. I heard that some patent portfolio company (could be patent troll) is asking for licensing fees to use one of patents in their portfolio. My client company is using h5p interactive video AS IT IS without any modification so basically patent company is saying h5p methods are violating their patents. As per them, Patent US 8,750,843 is directed to a call-to-action lockout while using media content on mobile devices. Your application (h5p code) uses all elements of independent claim 1 by providing enhanced video for courses played via their mobile device. Activities are triggered at specified times within the video.

https://patents.google.com/patent/US8750843

Then they showed attached screenshot as violation example. 

 

In summary, on any mobile device, we can not use interactive video features otherwise we will be violating their patents as per their claims.

 If they succeed in proving this and come after h5p users or h5p project itself, either we need to pay them license fees or shut down project. They are NPE(non

performing entity) meaning not another software or elearning company but pretty much use patents to make money. 

 Any idea if these claims are valid? What should be the next steps?

 

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legal issue using h5p
BV52's picture

Hi joeroot,

I'm not a lawyer, and the patent is not very easy to read. It solves a problem that no longer exists. In the past videos were played in one window and it was not possible to put any content on top of it, but that was a very long time ago. HTML5 support has been implemented on most phones and an endless list of applications are making use of it to display content at certain times in a video. YouTube being one of them. Interpreting the way they seem to try now probably hit millions of apps and web sites. If there is any common sense in this system that patent will not be possible to use anymore. Hope some lawyers will chime in here.

-BV

Anyone else? 

otacke's picture

Hi!

I am also not a lawyer, but to me it feels to be a "trivial" patent that wouldn't even be able to be filed in the European Union - could be wrong though, of course. But let's assume it's legit, wouldn't that company have to go against Joubel/the H5P core team and not you or others?

Best,

Oliver