

MPEG LA: 12 companies own patents essential to Google's VP8 codec - glhaynes
http://arstechnica.com/web/news/2011/07/mpeg-la-12-companies-own-patents-essential-to-googles-vp8-codec.ars

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patrickaljord
They've been saying the same thing about Vorbis for the last 10 years and
never found any patents despite millions of games shipping vorbis every year.
Now they were supposed to form the patent pool by March and they still have
nothing by July. Not holding my breath.

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kenjackson
After Google published the WebM spec, who didn't see this coming? My only
surprise is that it's only 12 companies. I'd expect more to pile on over time.

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ajross
I don't know if anonymously joining a press release constitutes "piling on".
If anything, this is pretty weak sauce. There's an existential threat to MPEG-
LA and the best they can come up with after a year-long search is 12 anonymous
companies and a secret list of patents?

Yawn. At least the handset vendors have the gumption to actually file lawsuits
against each other. This is the very definition of FUD.

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kenjackson
_This is the very definition of FUD._

It absolutely is. Lets be clear, no one cares about the patents per se. What
MPEG-LA wants is for people to not support WebM. Is the best way for the 12
companies to come forward and show their patents? No. I'm sure we'd like for
them to do that, but strategically that's a horrible play. It allows Google to
say, "We can change this part of the spec. We can invalidate this one. We have
a cross-licensing deal with them." Etc... OTOH Google might be up a creek.
Which is it? I don't know. Neither do Google's partners. Are you willing to
bet you don't get sued in order to support a nascent technology?

A lot of techies see FUD as evil. It's business. It reminds me of when my 8
year old cousin learned about bluffing in poker. He said, "you can't do that.
it's cheating. you knew you didn't have a good hand, but i folded. i could
have beat you." His dad said, "next time stay in the game. but i might not be
bluffing next time. it's all part of the game."

It's all part of the game.

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orangecat
Poker is zero-sum, and everybody knows that going in. Business is supposed to
be positive-sum, and when it isn't we should consider changing the rules.

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kenjackson
_Business is supposed to be positive-sum, and when it isn't we should consider
changing the rules._

Positive-sum isn't sufficient. With that said, I don't know if that's
generally true. There is almost always winners and losers. And in SW it tends
to be a bigger gap than other industries where things like geography will let
a regional player still do quite well.

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SeanLuke
Positive sum doesn't imply everyone is a winner. It merely implies that at
least _one_ person is a winner, that is, that the sum of all outcomes is
positive.

Not sure if even that's true: after all, if no one is buying, is business
positive sum?

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william42
Is it any surprise that the group running VP8's main competitor is trying to
convince the world it's vulnerable to patents?

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astrodust
The point is every bit of software is vulnerable and it's not helping anyone.

If your "invention" could be recreated by another programmer independently,
often inadvertently, it's not really much of an invention now is it?

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tzs
So by that argument, the invention of calculus was not a big deal, since
Newton and Leibniz arrived at it independently.

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regularfry
Calculus was discovered, not invented.

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tzs
What's the difference?

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regularfry
If there's only one way to do it, and anyone faced with the same problem would
have to do it the same way, it's a discovery. Otherwise, it's an invention.

Inventions are patentable. Discoveries aren't. Or _shouldn't_ be, according to
the intent of the system.

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dman
The question is how many patents essential to those 12 companies does Google
hold. Quentin Tarantino should do a patent sue-them-up movie.

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Uchikoma
The problem with multi-billion defensive patent portfolios is: You cannot
counter-sue patent trolls.

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noonespecial
Once it really gets going, two or three per month will be coming out of the
woodwork. Totally nothing to see here.

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GHFigs
Would your belief as to the plausibility of a valid claim be different if VP8
were still the closed, proprietary, non-royalty-free product of On2?

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JoshTriplett
Would MPEG-LA bother to spread FUD over a random obscure proprietary codec
rather than the single biggest threat to their protection racket?

If it still belonged to On2, MPEG-LA (or rather, its member companies) would
just sue if they actually had anything. Here, the threat of a lawsuit does the
job they actually want, but they'll never actually file a lawsuit until they
find a defendant they know will settle rather than fighting.

Hopefully Google does the same thing Apple did for Lodsys: indemnify to neuter
the FUD.

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kierank
_rather than the single biggest threat to their protection racket?_

That's not true at all. VP8 is a web codec for free web streaming and that's
free with H.264. MPEG-LA makes their money from volume sales like Blu-Ray
Discs or Set-top-Boxes which aren't going to move to VP8 any time soon.

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nextparadigms
So what are the patents? Or do they just want press headlines?

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JoshTriplett
In this scenario, posting the actual patents would allow everyone (including
Google) to publically debunk them: find prior art, show that they don't apply,
show that Google has patents essential to the claimed patents, demonstrate
cross-licensing arrangements, or in the worst case work around the patent via
technical means. None of those tactics work against nebulous bluster, hence
the concept of FUD.

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drivebyacct2
As I've been talking to people about IP/software patents, I've had several say
"This has been going on for forever.". Is this the opinion of fellow-HNers? Is
it just more in the spotlight because the patents are being consolidated
amongst "big players" in the media and mobile spaces or am I just more in-tune
to it recently?

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JoshTriplett
This kind of thing has happened since people first started applying patents to
software. GIF/LZW, MP3, RSA...

