MPEG LA starts digging patent pool under Google's WebM - Page 4

I'm not sure where you get your information from, but the far east (Korea, china and japan) have the largest amount of IP/patent interest in H.264 by a long shot (more than half of the h.264 patent pool).

When somebody steals your product and rebrands it as their own, that's not really "competition."

A patent troll is a name for a patent holder that has no intent to use their patent, and just tries to extort money out of those who it thinks are.

MPEG LA represents Sony, Philips, Apple, Microsoft and a long list of other companies that actually make products. So to refer to it as a "patent troll" just because you like Google is misinformed, ignorant, contradictory, and hysterically prejudiced against reality.

The fact is that certain "open source" advocates promote code theft and deny the existence of intellectual property, yet turn around and insist that their code is protected by the GPL and can't be appropriated against their intentions by others. Grossly hypocritical.

Might as well be rich landlord communists. Your position fundamentally makes no sense.

Right, because google is too "not evil" to patent anything. Your blind advocacy has made you a laughingstock.

Ugh, you sir are an ID10T. Just because the front-end of your browser is not open-source does not make it open-source underpinnings irrelevant. Let me give you an example (safari): WebKit, sqlite, xar, and gcc. Safari is also linked against a number of Apple's open-source libraries. You can find them on http://www.opensource.apple.com .

Almost all proprietary software relies on one or more piece of open-source software. Stop being ignorant.

BTW, I am an open-source software developer both in my day job and free time.

This hat happen when you think you are the man. If Google wanted to have no problems in having a so-called free codec for video then they should have created their own sh** from scratch and gave it out for free. But they didn't.
And I feel sorry for all them clowns pimping Android. They say its free but Android is in millions of mobile devices and I swear to god the patent trolls will come biting down on their heads in he coming years. they are just lying in wait for a financial wind fall.]Tell me, has Google ever said the stuff in Android is 100% free? No they haven't. Mark my words. It is gong to get nasty!!!!

Good. I like that this is going early. This way, we'll find out how much legal bashing WebM can really take. If it holds up than we'll have an open standard that everybody can use. If not, I'll guess we'll have to take MPEG LA's proprietary stuff.

Everyone, including Google, knows it will be the latter.

i love how so many think mpeg-la is the high ground and google the low considering the ceo of mpeg-la is also suing Apple. Yes, keep applauding these scumbags.

http://thepriorart.typepad.com/the_p...s-v-apple.html

I fail to see the relevancy to the topic at hand.

Don't worry Adobe will support both and pay the licensing. Problem solved.

[QUOTE=bullhead;1806344]I know this is well beyond the comprehension of the drones on this board, but imagine if mathematic formulas were patentable./QUOTE]

In some cases, they are. Consider the LZW compression algorithm, the basis of the GIF compression. It was patented, which meant that CompuServe, which developed the GIF, had to pay the patent owners (then Unisys). A similar situation occurred with the RSA encryption algorithm.

One cannot patent DISCOVERIES, but apparently may patent formulas and algorithms which are developed for particular applications.

not my problem if you cannot.

You'd get no argument from me about that. However, like almost anything else, there has be a careful balance struck. I think it's fine that a legitimate inventor of something ought to be able to patent it if they so choose. (However, I'm not hugely supportive of software patents.) I don't have much use for patent trolls, or firms that buy up patents by the dozen from their rightful owners, only to weaponize them as a means of making money through licensing "deals".

It seems that MPEG LA is doing more of the latter than the former, checking to see if their member organizations have any patents that look to be usable against WebM and Google. The timing seems very convenient, as On2 codecs have existed for years and (so far as I know after some cursory research) have not attracted much, if any, legal attention. Only when Google buys On2 and puts their codec out with terms that allow anyone to use it freely does the MPEG LA become interested in possible legal action. Of course, it is impossible to know for sure if they had been considering action for some time before this, but it seems unlikely.

WebM is not the only example of a "free" video codec. The BBC has developed one of their own, known as Schrödinger or Dirac. There is also Theora compression.

Well, actually, it is.

What they're doing has nothing to do with making money though licensing deals in this instance. It has everything to do with preventing Google from sowing chaos in the video industry.

not really. crumbs thrown out to feed the birds in the park. don't really care which ones actually eat them. it just something to do at the park.

And crumbs at the park are irrelevant to an AI discussion. So your posts are still irrelevant and it is your problem, even if you don't wish it to be.

To the contrary, the fact that a piece of proprietary software contains another piece of software which is open source, is ABSOLUTELY relevant.

When you distill it all down, the fact of the matter is, in choosing to purchase and use a piece of proprietary software, in most cases you are actually choosing to purchase ad use a collection of many pieces of interrelated software, some of which may be proprietary, and some of which is open source.

But the simple fact that a piece of open source software is being wrapped up inside a piece of proprietary software doesn't negate the demonstrable FACT that the open source software is still present within the proprietary software. So it is a FACT that every time somebody uses a proprietary piece of software that contains open source libraries, they are also using open source software in a different package.

Hence, everybody using the most popular rendering engine in the mobile space -- WebKit -- in any of its various packages, is making use of open source software. They may also be making use of proprietary software at the same time, in the form of the various extra amenities that must be added to turn an HTML engine into a fully functional browser. This isn't a bad thing, and I am not trying to argue otherwise. Many open source projects deliberately license their code in such a way to encourage proprietary tools to be developed based upon them.

All I'm saying, is that your original statement -- that proprietary software outnumbers open source software -- is based on a false premise. You cited Windows, Mac OS X, and Safari as examples of proprietary software to the exclusion of open source software, when in fact, all of those examples can also equally illustrate situations in which people are using Open Source software.

Mac OS X: if you are booting the kernel, then you're using open source software -- enclosed within a proprietary wrapper, but the inescapable fact remains that there is open source software being used.

Microsoft Windows: The TCP/IP stack is derived from the BSD sockets implementation. Open source software, again, enclosed within a proprietary wrapper.

Safari: The simple fact that it is being run on either Mac OS X or Microsoft Windows means that there is a layer of open source software involved in getting Safari up and running in the first place. But if you want another example, then you can't get any more obvious than WebKit.

I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with proprietary software. Nor am I saying that there's anything wrong with taking appropriately licensed open source software, and encapsulating it inside a proprietary wrapper. (Personally, I think that's perfectly OK. But still I love the irony of all proprietary developers who were too lazy to write their own library, so they took a shortcut by adopting a "crybaby-I-want-something-for-nothing" mentality and using the open source alternative...)

I just took issue with your attempt to state, as a FACT, that open source software is hardly ever used, and then citing a bunch of programs that contain open source software as your so-called "evidence".

I would REALLY love the irony, if an examination of Google's patents related to VP8, reveals that IT holds some essential patents for H.264, which had not been recognized previously. Certainly, that isn't outside the realm of possibility.

I mean, if an undisclosed 3rd party might hold patents that are essential to VP8 but which haven't been recognized as such so far, then it stands to reason that the reverse might also be true about unrecognized patents still flying under the radar for H.264.

If that happened, and Google decided they didn't want to play ball with the MPEG LA, then Google could theoretically paralyze pretty much EVERYTHING having to do with the state-of-the-art of consumer digital media. Wouldn't that be a pretty picture. They might be able to use that as a negotiating tool to force everybody else's hand with respect to issuing royalty-free licenses for using their patents with the VP8 codec.

Remember, it wouldn't necessarily have to be an all-or-noting patent license. The 3rd parties could make their VP8 patent grant conditional on use exclusively with the VP8 codec, and they could still get their normal license fees if the patent was used in relation to any other codecs.

A pleasant fantasy, perhaps, but it doesn't really work to Google's advantage, just breeds a lot of ill-will toward them and preserves the status quo for as long as the dispute lasts.

Kill yourself)

Google is so late to the patent ball they don't have a hope of pulling a move like that. if H.264 was vulnerable ON2 would have been after them years ago. But they weren't.

I don't mean to be rude, but it's patently clear that you've no idea what's going on here.

(Pun intended.)

Nobody stole anything. That's the whole reason the MPEG-LA has resorted to this act of desperation -- they WANT to find out that one of their extremely broad patents coincidentally exists in WebM. And given the sad state of patents, it's probable one of the vague patents could arguably apply.

It's not stealing if you implement something quite obvious then find out years later someone patented it. The vast majority of times a software patent is "infringed", this is exactly what happens. That's why the system is flawed. There are patents like one-click shopping out there.


It makes perfect sense if you were aligned with reality. You're clearly not.

MPEG-LA's doesn't manufacture anything. They don't make anything. All they do is hold patents and demand people pay them. They actively troll looking for potential violators. It is their entire business model. 100% of their revenues come from patent licensing.

They are, by definition, patent trolls. The fact that many major corporations are in it probably sounds very impressive to simpletons such as yourself, but the fact remains it is a textbook patent troll organization.

What exactly do you think VP8/WebM is?

On2 started from scratch to develop it. It is not based on the same standard as MPEG-2/4/h264. Google bought On2 because it makes a lot more sense than re-doing it again.

But if anyone here thinking this is a good move by MPEG-LA actually understood video codec designs, you'd know that almost all of the codecs will do things a certain way because it's the obvious way to do it. It's like someone patenting building a house by laying a cement foundation, then suing anyone who builds any structure with a cement foundation. Then to accuse the others of "stealing" that idea is outrageous -- these aren't difficult concepts, MANY people come up with them on their own and the first time they hear it's patented is when the patent owner comes knocking asking for a payoff.

Why is the converse not true?

On2 didn't have an organization behind it looking for patents. On2 has been around for a long time and MPEG-LA had no problem with it. "If ON2's video codecs were vulnerable, MPEG-LA would have been after them years ago. But they weren't."

You seem to be missing the point entirely. Patent trolls are companies that buy up patents just to use them as weapons against other companies. MPEG-LA never bought any patents relating to H264 patent pool. The member companies own the patents. MPEG-LA is an organization that the member companies have paid to manage the H264 license and the related patents. In this role, MPEG LA is doing its job by looking for violations. It's looking out for its clients' best interests.

Are you serious?


It's pretty likely that you are simply being an Internet troll for the sake of being an Internet troll. But in case you arent, do really think Google keeps its algorithms secret to "protect innovation."

Did I mention that Google accused Microsoft of copying search results in Bing?

Maybe after YOU get a software patent, maybe YOU don't have to innovate because you can just sue people who produce that same piece of software. But what about people who try make something BETTER than what you've patented. The existence of a software patent has forced others to circumvent your patent, which likely leads to something better. As a result, your patent is now a worthless piece of paper.

So no, I don't think patents make people lazy. Maybe it gives someone an advantage, but that's only for a short time. The advantage exists until someone comes up with something better, thereby circumventing the patent.

The problem with your logic, is there never was a pocketbook at ON2 big enough to go after. They were inconsequential as a patent infringement target. MPEG-LA is small pockets too, but it's members are big pockets that attract all kinds of patent suits -- of which most fail or settle for a pittance. If ON2 had a good case they could have gone after a deep pocket member and made a bundle.

Why didn't they? My guess is that they knew they wouldn't win enough for how much the counter-suits would make them lose. As long as ON2 stayed small and niche, they were left alone. Now Google made the remains of ON2 a big fat target worth the effort. The dynamics completely changed.

That's why the converse isn't true. Just like: All squares are rectangles, but the converse, all rectangles are squares is untrue too.

But it wasn't obvious when the first set of codecs were made. Studying the decompiling, source and results of the encoding process makes what was once difficult to envision, simple.

Kinda like it took Mankind a few hundred thousand years to learn Calculus. Now we teach it in a couple quarters. All because it wasn't obvious until someone figured out how to describe it. And the Liebnitz/Newton fracas still isn't done over that yet. How do you expect patent fights to go away?

This is a false statement. Anyone who studied VP8 and knows H264 (I only know the latter but I trust the analysis by people who know what they are talking about) will tell you that it is so close to H264 you could call it a direct rip-off. On2 removed some things from it to prevent stepping on MPEG-LA patents, and added a few new things that don't even remotely make up for the stuff they removed, but the whole 'standard' (if you can call it a standard, it's mostly an implementation with a few bits of documentation thrown in for good measure) breathes 'H264 minus the good stuff'. It's a blatant rip-off, not 'new technology started from scratch'.


You are right about the first part of that sentence (all video codec are based off the same principles) but you are wrong on the last part ('because it's the obvious way to do it'). There's nothing obvious about a video codec until you've studied one, and someone has to think of it first. H264 is more or less the culmination of 2 or 3 decades of work by the MPEG folks, with every iteration of MPEG standards improving on the previous one in non-obvious ways. For example the entropy coding in H264 AVC is an extremely sophisticated implementation of adaptive arithmetic coding techniques that no other codec used before. The VP8 one? A copy-cat of that encoding scheme minus the adaptive part that makes it perform so well. None of this stuff is 'obvious', it took me many, many hours of study just to understand why and how some of the stuff in the H264 standard actually worked. If VP8 was really a new and original idea, On2 would not have had to be bought by Google in the first place, and it would have seen widespread use long before Google tried to ram it through. Fact of the matter is that On2 never managed to develop any form of codec technology interesting enough to sell, Google just bought it because they needed a stick to throw in their competitors whees.


I really think you are underestimating the scope and depth of the H264 specs. Go look them up, its about 260 pages of very dense information, and many books have already been written to guide implementors so they could make sense of it. Not because the specs are badly written (they are actually extremely detailed and minute), but simply because it is very complex theory. Nothing like (e.g.) MPEG-II, which is also based on all the same basic concepts that H264 uses, but simply is much, much less advanced. Comparing H264 to building a house on a cement foundation is really a caricature. You should compare it to building a nuclear reactor. H264 would be like the most advanced top-of-the-line reactor, while VP8 would be more like an imitation Chernobyl.

methinks they do protest too much.

You're really grasping at straws here. What you are essentially claiming is that anyone who seeks to protect their patents is a patent troll. The alternative to seeking civil damages for infringement would be to make it a criminal offense. Perhaps you'd prefer a system that worked like that?

... and, you don't even know Shakespeare.

yes i do. but i also know how to paraphrase for the occasion.
don't tell me you are ignorant of that concept? or are you saying i should call you a 'lady'?
jerk.

No, I'm saying that, if you did know Shakespeare, you ought to have paraphrased it as, "they do protest too much, methinks."

so it was and is the first one...

Just because something is possible, doesn't make it a good idea. Especially when the possible thing ended up as a hack-ed up result.

Shakespeare and Twain quotes deserve better.

break break


This is pretty far off the rails. Is there any real discussion left or is the horse sufficiently flat?

nobody said anything about 'a good idea', you are just desperately trying to find a reason to mouth off and then ask if we should continue?
you are trying to be clever i guess but you just come across as an idiot.

and who mentioned Twain? You hear about him in high school?