Swift and predictable reactions to WebM

Posted May 25, 2010 20:58 UTC (Tue) by drag (guest, #31333)
Parent article: Swift and predictable reactions to WebM

Pretty good.

I would like to see some clarification from Google on the patent situation as just a way to help reassure people on Vp8's usefullness.

Personally I am actually pretty confident on it. Not 100%, but it seems to me that for people developing a new codec that does not require compatibility AND have the resources to hire the lawyers to read patents.... then it should be relatively easy to avoid infringing on MPEG-LA patents.

Why do I feel this way?

Because all the MPEG-LA Patents are KNOWN.

They are published, listed, enforced, and so on and so forth. Soooo... What Google had to do would be to go through the patents lists published by MPEG-LA and double check that Vp8 avoided at least one claim on each patent. Then: Bingo! MPEG-LA threat nullified.

Known patents are major threat to open source when it comes to creating very compatible software. Stuff like texture compression techniques for OpenGL acceleration hardware, compatibility with MS Office formats, compatibility with H.264 and things like that. That sort of thing hurts OSS badly, but it's not the type of threat that should affect Vp8 as long as all known relavent patents are owned by Google and such.

It's the UNKOWN patents that are the biggest threat. Things owned by patent trolls that may be applied against VP8 in unpredictable ways, submarine patents, and all that crap.

It's not like MPEG-LA patents are a secret or it's impossible to find out what they cover... All patents literature and related relevent documentation is all public domain and MPEG-LA lists all of them. It's the weird unknown shit floating around owned by smaller groups and not published anywere in pools and such that is a threat against VP8..... And like it's pointed out in the article it's a threat against H.264, too!

MPEG-LA does not indemify you against patent trolls anymore or any less then Google or anybody else does. It's all a threat to anybody and avoiding Vp8 is not going to help you out any in any predictable fashion.

So I figure that unless MPEG-LA or somebody else goes out and specifically calls Google out AND lists the patents that Vp8 violates I figure Webm is about as safe as anything else to use.

Swift and predictable reactions to WebM

Posted May 25, 2010 21:20 UTC (Tue) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (3 responses)

you are right when you say the MPEG-LA patents are known, but that really doesn't matter because nothing says that all the patents that cover those codecs are part of the MPEG-LA group.

there can be unknown patents for covering any codec.

Swift and predictable reactions to WebM

Posted May 25, 2010 22:50 UTC (Tue) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link]

Yes. That is exactly my point.
I do not believe mpegla is a likely threat and their patent pool is no use against unknown patents.

Swift and predictable reactions to WebM

Posted May 26, 2010 8:10 UTC (Wed) by liljencrantz (guest, #28458) [Link] (1 responses)

Of course, but by definition, you are not safe from those patents when paying MPEG-LA for a right to use H264 either. So you're not any more safe when using H264 than you are when using WebM.

Swift and predictable reactions to WebM

Posted Jun 8, 2010 15:58 UTC (Tue) by hozelda (guest, #19341) [Link]

Did you mean to say,
> than So you're not any more safe when *paying and* using H264 than you are when using WebM.

Software patents are insulting to decency and to progress. Except for the troll situation, they are protectionist, serving to protect the large producers from the small producers.

Open source gets sucker punched because our innovation is not given automatic patent protection as is the case for copyright protection (imagine if there were no GPL conditions possible for us but proprietary companies could still use aggressive copyrights against us). Thus patent holders and licensees can use our innovation all they want, but we can't use their patents without licenses. This doesn't exactly present a fair market condition, and the bias is in favor of the more secretive and greedy (who already exploit trade secret). Our patent system is a system to protect the wealthy and less productive (who can spend their days patenting theirs and others general concepts) from the majority of us working on full and high quality solutions. All small outfits suffer (including the closed source based ones) because we have our shared open source cushion removed.

Software patents violate the US Constitution because they don't promote the progress. They also violate our First Amendment right to freely express ourselves and communicate as we find necessary and proper.

Software patents surely are not needed in order to make decent income.

Patents allowed in other information fields would have done great harm, as the biggest breakthroughs and highest quality products/theories/etc, have all depended greatly on sharing and leveraging others' work and ideas. It's impossible to bypass society. "Revolutionary" breakthroughs don't overcome or exist independently of social context. Granting long broad monopolies is very arrogant, foolish, and stifling (more so because the low obviousness bar means, statistically, many above average practitioners developing ideas and products further will have their work pulled out from under them by less skilled individuals).

http://www.unionsquareventures.com/2010/02/software-paten...

Swift and predictable reactions to WebM

Posted May 25, 2010 21:47 UTC (Tue) by rahvin (guest, #16953) [Link] (3 responses)

ON2 Made a big deal about their codec's being "patent free" in that they had done the patent research and made sure their codec's didn't infringe any known patent they didn't own. This was long before the Google purchase. Their whole business model was "we can sell you this codec for far cheaper than the MPEG-LA license and we guarantee it doesn't infringe the MPEG-LA patent pool".

Personally I think MPEG-LA will keep blowing smoke and paying for Astroturf studies, but in the end they will never sue because they don't want to risk the patents in the pool being invalidated or providing court evidence that VP8 doesn't infringe MPEG-LA patents. If they sue and Google wins, bam the whole world shifts to VP8 and the MPEG-LA patent pool becomes worthless.

No, they won't sue, it's far to big a risk. It's far easier to spread FUD.

Swift and predictable reactions to WebM

Posted May 25, 2010 23:02 UTC (Tue) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link]

Yes. And because we know this then...

The burden of proof is on mpeg-la's shoulders. If the best they can come with is fud, then that effectely means they are admitting that vp8 doesn't violate any of their patents, or Google has a patent they violate. Either way they would be toothless.

On2 vs. the MPEG LA

Posted May 29, 2010 9:35 UTC (Sat) by DonDiego (guest, #24141) [Link] (1 responses)

> On2 Made a big deal about their codec's being "patent free" in that they
> had done the patent research and made sure their codec's didn't infringe
> any known patent they didn't own.

This is a hearsay rumor that gets repeated all the time, but I see no basis for it in reality. Please present us with a quote that shows On2 claiming VP8 does not infringe any MPEG LA patents.

If you look at the list of licensees in good standing for the AVC/H.264 patent pool of the MPEG LA

http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/Licensees.aspx

you will find On2 (and Google) there. There was absolutely no need for On2 to avoid any patents from that pool, they paid for using them. On the contrary, if any of the described techniques would help them reach their goal of improving their own codecs quicker, it made good business sense to use them...

On2 vs. the MPEG LA

Posted May 29, 2010 10:13 UTC (Sat) by roc (subscriber, #30627) [Link]

Licensing the AVC pool only gives you the right to use those patents in an implementation of H.264. It does not give you the right to use those patents in an implementation of VP8. So On2 being an AVC licensee is completely irrelevant here.

Swift and predictable reactions to WebM

Posted May 26, 2010 5:32 UTC (Wed) by brouhaha (subscriber, #1698) [Link] (3 responses)

It isn't sufficient to avoid one claim of each patent. You have to avoid ALL the claims of each patent.

There is also a very good reason for some parties NOT to study the MPEG-LA patents. If you have seen someone else's patents, and are later found to be infringing them, it establishes "knowing infringement", for which the penalty can be much higher.

Swift and predictable reactions to WebM

Posted May 26, 2010 9:16 UTC (Wed) by bboissin (subscriber, #29506) [Link] (2 responses)

> It isn't sufficient to avoid one claim of each patent. You have to avoid ALL the claims of each patent.

Not if you dismiss the independant claim.

> There is also a very good reason for some parties NOT to study the MPEG-LA patents. If you have seen someone else's patents, and are later found to be infringing them, it establishes "knowing infringement", for which the penalty can be much higher.

As pointed out by Tridge, this isn't really true for most open source software, as the "simple" penalty already effectively kills the project.
http://news.swpat.org/2010/03/transcript-tridgell-patents...

Swift and predictable reactions to WebM

Posted May 31, 2010 17:30 UTC (Mon) by mlankhorst (subscriber, #52260) [Link] (1 responses)

For open source perhaps, but triple damage on google just means the patent trolls can buy an even bigger villa at some tropical island..

Swift and predictable reactions to WebM

Posted May 31, 2010 17:41 UTC (Mon) by bboissin (subscriber, #29506) [Link]

But it's very likely that Google engineers (and others from big companies) do read patents, and use their legal dpt to check for potential infrigement. The problem is different than the usual small OSS project.