MPEG LA Announces Call for Patents Essential to VP8 Video Codec

Posted Feb 12, 2011 7:20 UTC (Sat) by njs (subscriber, #40338)
In reply to: MPEG LA Announces Call for Patents Essential to VP8 Video Codec by gmaxwell
Parent article: MPEG LA Announces Call for Patents Essential to VP8 Video Codec

Is there an antitrust train? I thought it was more of an antitrust golf cart...

Well, that's glib, but: intent is hard to prove, and this is a strategic battle over who gets to collect rent on the entire TV and movie *industries* going forward. (See also: Microsoft's throwing cash at the Xbox to get a foothold on television.) When you have stakes like that, big companies often decide that it's rational to take risks and see what happens. (See also: Google's obviously dumb decision to start making illegal copies of every book in the world... which, a few years later, is within epsilon of giving them a legal monopoly in the US over orphan written works, effectively a total change to how copyright law works that only applies to a single company.)

MPEG LA Announces Call for Patents Essential to VP8 Video Codec

Posted Feb 12, 2011 7:51 UTC (Sat) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (2 responses)

> Is there an antitrust train? I thought it was more of an antitrust golf cart...

When you see terms like 'antitrust laws' visualize other terms like '1984' and 'Department of Defense' floating around next to them. That way it will help give you a more accurate understanding what those laws are really for.

On top of that realize that patents they are government-sanctioned monopolies. The expressed purpose of them is to hand over control of technology to privileged companies. MPEG-LA and friends are just using the laws in the ways they are intended and there is no legal danger to them caused by their efforts to limit choice among consumers and the activities of competing companies.

MPEG LA Announces Call for Patents Essential to VP8 Video Codec

Posted Feb 13, 2011 1:20 UTC (Sun) by gmaxwell (guest, #30048) [Link] (1 responses)

As I understand it patent pools have been to been considered to at extreme risk of running into legal problems. In particular, the concern is that the aggregation of patents may unlawfully lock out other parties from participating in an industry (/without paying the previously standing players). Patent _are_ a government granted monopoly. The infrastructure that creates these things also provides a lot of opportunity to hang regulatory hooks on the results.

It's fine to patent a particular method for coding video it can be okay to assemble a collection of strictly necessary complementary patents require to code video in a particular way it's not lawful to assemble a cartel which anyone who wants to code video must deal with.

The CEO of MPEG-LA has made statements which run squarely into the danger zone here. "Virtually all codecs are based on patented technology, and many of the essential patents may be the same as those that are essential to AVC/H.264." ... //thats a nice codec you've got there, it would be a shame if anyone asserted patents against it//

Prior to engaging in this business MPEG-LA requested a review of their business plan by the DOJ, their letter outlined quite a few operating conditions which they appear to have since ignored, and the DOJ outlined a number of constraints which MPEG-LA has subsequently violated. In 1997 the DOJ was "not presently inclined to initiate antitrust enforcement action", but it certainly seems possible that the situation could change. (http://www.justice.gov/atr/public/busreview/215742.htm)

So, I think it's not clear cut at all that there is no legal danger in this approach. Even if they believe the risk to be small, taking it still requires an expenditure of resources to assess the risk and benefits, supporting my speculation that they are actually concerned about this, which was really the point that I was making.

MPEG LA Announces Call for Patents Essential to VP8 Video Codec

Posted Feb 13, 2011 2:23 UTC (Sun) by njs (subscriber, #40338) [Link]

> Prior to engaging in this business MPEG-LA requested a review of their business plan by the DOJ, their letter outlined quite a few operating conditions which they appear to have since ignored, and the DOJ outlined a number of constraints which MPEG-LA has subsequently violated

I didn't know about that history, and it's fascinating, thank you. However, I'm not sure what operating constraints you're referring to -- all I saw in that letter was a bunch of "well, this kind of thing could be a problem, but you are awesome and wrote your license not to do that, so, yay". Probably I'm just not familiar enough with their history. (Obviously the statements you refer to are questionable, but I don't see what they have to do with the contents of that letter.)

> Even if they believe the risk to be small, taking it still requires an expenditure of resources to assess the risk and benefits, supporting my speculation that they are actually concerned about this, which was really the point that I was making.

Totally agreed.

If only someone would tell the people who keep popping up to explain how anyone who takes WebM seriously is an idiot...