

MPEG LA Announces Call for Patents Essential to VP8 Video Codec - ZeroGravitas
http://www.mpegla.com/main/pid/vp8/default.aspx

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xal
Good. This will hopefully force the matter and get all the patent claims out
in the open. I doubt that actual holders of patents will play their cards
close to their chests here because the upside of the cut of the bundle license
for their patents through MPEG LA will be so large.

While I wish you couldn't patent software or algorithms we cannot ignore the
fact that you can by simply willful ignorance and wishing that the patents go
away if we just not think about them.

At the end of this process the thread from submarine patens will be vastly
reduced and hardware manufacturers and companies like MS and Apple have a
realistic road to supporting VP8.

~~~
wmf
I predict that Apple will say "why should we pay to use VP8 when we've already
paid for a superior codec?"

Once VP8 costs money, it has no benefit over H.264.

~~~
xal
presumably it may be less because the bundle will contain less patents but
that wouldn't be an unreasonable position to take, you are right.

~~~
wmf
IMO it doesn't matter whether VP8 costs one cent or one dollar; if you've
already paid for H.264 then even one cent for VP8 is a waste of money. And
those who aren't willing to pay (Mozilla and Opera) are not even willing to
pay one cent.

Historically every new codec has been cheaper (despite containing more
technology), so I expect VP8 to be cheaper than H.264, but H.265 may be
cheaper still.

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rmc
This is great. It will limit FUD. MPEGLA have called, and people need to show
their cards. If we hear nothing, then that shows that the MPEGLA doesn't know
of any patents that affect WebM/VP8, and they can stop all this "don't use VP8
cause of patents!" FUD.

If however there are patents on WebM/VP8, we can get them out in the open and
look at them and then see.

~~~
KaeseEs
The MPEG LA will most likely look at a ton of patent claims on WebM in the
next 5 weeks, accept any with even a tenuous grasp on reality as legitimate,
count how many they have, and announce a number of infringements essential to
WebM. They will then file a number of lawsuits in a shotgun fashion, perhaps a
few hundred, half of which will be against Google, and the other half against
various companies using WebM; these will serve to gain royalties in
settlements (minor gain) and discourage adoption of WebM (major gain). The
suits against Google and whichever minor players don't settle will be appealed
by the losing party and drag on for years.

This isn't the end of the FUD, or even the beginning of the end, but it is
perhaps the end of the beginning.

~~~
haberman
> They will then file a number of lawsuits in a shotgun fashion, perhaps a few
> hundred, half of which will be against Google, and the other half against
> various companies using WebM

And then we'll finally get to see what Google has up their sleeve, because
they're not dumb and surely saw this coming.

Maybe there will be a counter-suit, because h.264 violates some of Google's
patents.

~~~
Symmetry
Could the MPEG-LA be sued if Google has patents that cover h.264? I'm not sure
it could and if so we'd see a divergence between the interests of the MPEG-LA
(who need to maintain control) and the groups contributing patents to them
(who are afraid of a patent war).

~~~
rmc
I believe the MPEG-LA has a patent pool, where all companies that have patents
on it pool them together. They don't sue anyone who's in the pool and they
aren't sued by anyone in that pool.

If this is the case, then google could sue MPEG-LA users, but they might get
sued themselves.

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kalak451
So is this being driven by people working on the VP8 codec or the WebM
project? Or is MPEG LA just trying to show that VP8 really is just a patent
encumbered at h.264(and protect/add to their revenue stream?)

~~~
trotsky
Since google's adoption relies heavily on their claim that WebM isn't patent
encumbered, it's a pretty safe bet that this is being done by the h.264 patent
holders for competitive reasons.

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asadotzler
I have a few questions.

1\. Does this mean that MPEG-LA has concluded it has no existing patents in
the H.264 pool that are essential to what VP8 does? If they did, wouldn't
those be the seeds of this new pool? Or maybe even obviate the need for a new
pool?

2\. Does Google have anything in its royalty free patent grant that says "If
you sue us or otherwise challenge our VP8 IP, you can't get a free license
from us"? If so, wouldn't that kill any possibility of a successful MPEG-LA
pool? Who would license some percentage from MPEG-LA knowing they couldn't get
a license for the rest from Google.

3\. Couldn't Google just buy who ever steps up and says "I have essential
patents"?

~~~
wmf
_Does this mean that MPEG-LA has concluded it has no existing patents in the
H.264 pool that are essential to what VP8 does?_

Rather than reading tens of thousands of claims to find ones that apply to
VP8, MPEG LA has outsourced that work to the patent holders themselves. If you
want your patent to be included in the VP8 pool, _you_ have to speak up.

 _If they did, wouldn't those be the seeds of this new pool?_

Yes, I would expect that the VP8 pool will basically be a subset of the H.264
pool.

 _Who would license some percentage from MPEG-LA knowing they couldn't get a
license for the rest from Google._

Google could get in antitrust trouble for refusal to license VP8 patents after
claiming that VP8 is "open".

 _Couldn't Google just buy who ever steps up and says "I have essential
patents"?_

You mean like Sony, Philips, Fraunhofer, Mitsubishi, Columbia University,
etc.? <http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/Licensors.aspx>

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nuclear_eclipse
And now the true FUD campaign begins...

~~~
Pooter
Just because you want WebM to not infringe and to succeed, that doesn't make
any possible facts or remarks that potentially conflict with that wish FUD.

~~~
nuclear_eclipse
My point is that just because MPEGLA contains a pool of patents that they have
deemed applies to WebM, doesn't mean those patents will hold up in a court of
law, but it will certainly make for an excellent scare tactic against those
who wish to utilize WebM in their projects. Before now, it was just vague
remarks about how WebM may not be patent free, but after this:

"We have X number of patents in our pool that we say WebM infringes on; pay us
and we won't sue you." It'll practically negate the entire purpose of using
WebM instead of H.264.

Edit: Until a court of law has ruled that WebM infringes on patents held by
MPEGLA, what they're doing is quite literally the definition of Fear,
Uncertainty, and Doubt. They want you to Fear a lawsuit, because you're
Uncertain about the legitimacy of their claims, and Doubt that you could
either afford the costs or even defeat their claims. You can't possibly tell
me that FUD is inappropriate for this situation.

~~~
kenjackson
WebM exists at all because Google has tried to create FUD with H264. Fear
royalties going up by some crazy amount, because you're uncertain what this
well-established organization (MPEGLA) will do, and doubt that you can afford
the costs of crazy royalty fees in 2016.

This despite the fact that MPEGLA has been licensing for ubiquitous
technologies like MPEG-2 for over a decade.

So I guess FUD meet FUD.

~~~
nuclear_eclipse
Or perhaps people just don't want to have to pay a central licensing entity to
use a video codec? I'm sure Google stands to save a lot of licensing fees if
they don't have to pay into MPEGLA's patent pool. It has nothing to do with
FUD and everything to do with wanting an unencumbered format.

Edit: This is the same reason that most video games these days use Ogg Vorbis
for their music and sounds, because they save a lot of costs by using an
unencumbered audio format.

~~~
wmf
Paying $133M to avoid paying $5M/year is indeed creative business on Google's
part.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
It's now at least $6.5 Million a year, for another 20 year so the maths isn't
that bad. Particularly if it prompts H.265 and any other future codec to be
royalty free. I guess the idea is to spur on web video and make money from
that though.

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nika
I've never understood the objection to MPEGLA.

I'm neutral on patents* but this is probably the best environment for patents
in the entire world. MPEGLA is a licensing agency, so there are no personal or
political issues. They make money by increasing the number of licensees. Those
who submit patents to them ofload a lot of work that they otherwise would have
to engage in for marketing the patents.

Finally the patent pools allow for standards to be created and propagated
under fair terms. Fierce competitors like Microsoft and Apple can participate
together and have an incentive to contribute patents to the pool.

And as was otherwise mentioned the existence of the pool mitigates risk that
there might be a patent you don't know about.

Everybody who participates in the pool wins, and the pool is a much more
efficient mechanism of licensing patents than doing it one by one in an
environment of uncertainty, or doing it at the end of a long litigation that
you have lost and are thus pushed over the barrel.

Further, I don't understand why the risk of patents for VP8 is called FUD. I'm
certain a good chunk of the patents in the current MPEGLA pool cover VP8
because of the nature of patents (they have to be broadly written) the nature
of our patent system (things have to be patented, because even if you invented
it, someone else can patent it if you don't) and the nature of video encoding
(you're essentially forced by the nature of video and the desire to compress
to recognize features of images that exist in multiple frames and then encode
based on them, this is an essential component of MPEG-4 video & h.264, and
unless a fundamental patent for this has expired, and all derivative
improvements have also expired, which I doubt, h.264 patents are going to
cover VP8 encoding, unless VP8 somehow does not use any feature extraction.)

Thus, MPEGLA will have a pool that people can go to license the VP8 patents.
If google wants to contribute their patents (assuming they have some) to the
pool then they will get licensing compensation. If they don't then that
doesn't change the fact that MPEGLA is legitimately protecting the rights of
the patent holders for patents that VP8 infringes on.

That VP8 infringes on patents is pretty much a sure thing-- unless I'm
fundamentally misunderstanding how VP8 works, and even still, there are
patents on many other aspects of video and video containers.

Don't be mad at the patent holders for protecting their work- they published
it for everyone to benefit from in exchange.

\--

* If you've got a better idea for how intellectual property should be protected or not, then, please start a political movement. Don't go after people following he laws as they are. Given the existence of the system, companies must patent and defend their patents. And given that this is the state of the legal framework in the country, suing people for patent violation is perfectly legitimate. The patent is a trade- you reveal your solution in exchange for legal protection. If you cannot sue, then you are not getting the compensation you are promised in this system for revealing your invention. If you wish to go to a system whereby there is no patent system, then recognize that people wouldn't be revealing their inventions, and thus things like android couldn't exist, because they wouldn't have a source of technology to copy.

~~~
dchest
_things have to be patented, because even if you invented it, someone else can
patent it if you don't_

This is an incorrect statement.

~~~
Robin_Message
Suppose for a moment that you invent something, but don't tell anyone. Then
someone else can obviously patent it.

Suppose you publish something on your blog. The patent examiner doesn't read
blogs, so someone else can obviously patent it.

Suppose you publish it in a well-respected journal of computer science. The
patent examiner doesn't read journals either, so someone can obviously patent
it.

Now obviously, none of these patents are valid, but that is not how the patent
system works.

~~~
dchest
Or suppose someone else is trying to patent the exact same invention that's
already patented by you. The patent examiner makes a mistake and issues a
patent.

~~~
Natsu
Oh, you mean that patent on the stick as a dog toy? Yeah, that one sucked. I
can't believe it took four years, a reexamination by the USPTO Director and
referencing no less than two prior patents as prior art to invalidate all of
its claims:

<http://www.scribd.com/doc/49521/Worlds-Craziest-Patent>

