MPEG LA starts digging patent pool under Google's WebM

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  • Reply 141 of 174
    Kill yourself)
  • Reply 142 of 174
    hirohiro Posts: 2,663member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by lfmorrison View Post


    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.



    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.
  • Reply 143 of 174
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Archos View Post


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



    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.



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Archos View Post


    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.



    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.
  • Reply 144 of 174
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by maccherry View Post


    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.



    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.
  • Reply 145 of 174
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Hiro View Post


    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.



    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."
  • Reply 146 of 174
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Asherian View Post


    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.



    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.
  • Reply 147 of 174
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by tjw View Post


    Google's search algorithms are secret to protect innovation. They are not patented.



    Imagine the apple search business mode:



    Build kick ass algorithms



    Patent



    Sue anyone else that ever creates a search engine for infringement and lay back on innovation.



    Are you serious?



    Quote:

    Google's search algorithms are secret to protect innovation. They are not patented.



    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?
  • Reply 148 of 174
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by tjw View Post


    Bunch of hypocrites? Last time I looked google did not threaten a law suit, they merely said they were displeased. In fact I can't remember the last time google sued anyone. They don't believe in software patents either.



    Software patents kill innovation. Patenting your software is lazy. It means you no longer have to innovate, you just sue everyone else that does try and innovate in the same space.



    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.
  • Reply 149 of 174
    hirohiro Posts: 2,663member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Asherian View Post


    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."



    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.
  • Reply 150 of 174
    hirohiro Posts: 2,663member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Asherian View Post


    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.



    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?
  • Reply 151 of 174
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Asherian View Post


    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.



    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'.



    Quote:

    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.



    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.



    Quote:

    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.



    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.
  • Reply 152 of 174
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Hiro View Post


    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.



    methinks they do protest too much.
  • Reply 153 of 174
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Asherian View Post


    ... 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.



    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?
  • Reply 154 of 174
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by screamingfist View Post


    methinks they do protest too much.



    ... and, you don't even know Shakespeare.
  • Reply 155 of 174
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by anonymouse View Post


    ... 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.
  • Reply 156 of 174
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by screamingfist View Post


    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."
  • Reply 157 of 174
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by anonymouse View Post


    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...
  • Reply 158 of 174
    hirohiro Posts: 2,663member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by screamingfist View Post


    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.







    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?
  • Reply 159 of 174
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Hiro View Post






    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?
  • Reply 160 of 174
    hirohiro Posts: 2,663member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by screamingfist View Post


    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?



    Actually I said it, and it's true. Just because somebody else didn't say it first doesn't meant the truth isn't the truth.



    I mentioned Twain too. Did you? No. Does that matter? No. I merely opined that Twain and Shakespeare both earned the honor of us mere peons respecting their work, and that it is likely that quoting, not paraphrasing, them does a better job anyway. I added Twain specifically to strengthen my case as you already seem to do disrespect towards the Bard, and maybe you would think more of an example from the other side of the pond.



    I'm surprised you find being faced with such basic common sense so offensive. Oh, wait a minute, I take that back. Unfortunately I'm nowhere near as good with a dig as Twain was so you'll just have to live with this.



    This thread is dead as in dead horse. It's fun with fistie time now. How you doing with that fist thing? is it more comfortable now? Can the screaming subside? Inquiring minds want to know.
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