

Theora More of a Patent Threat than H264? Wait, What? - nnutter
http://www.osnews.com/story/23058/Theora_More_of_a_Patent_Threat_than_H264_Wait_What_

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tptacek
This article is an attempt to win support for Theora over H.264 not by
refuting the basic facts of the case, but by making us feel angry about those
facts.

Gruber in fact does _not_ appear to be wrong: there are indeed two classes of
patents that Theora is exposed to (general but poorly known patents covering
modern codecs, _and_ the patents MPEG LA owns). There clearly are codec
patents that MPEG LA doesn't own. There clearly are codec patents that they do
own. MPEG LA clearly isn't going to sue, in the immediacy, over their own
patents.

Meanwhile, it is indeed entirely in MPEG LA's own hands whether or not they
will sue over use of Theora. They sure are a bunch of evil jerks. But that
changes the facts of the case not one whit. Being upset about MPEG LA's IP
position doesn't change what that position is.

~~~
mmastrac
The article refutes the assertion that Theora is infringing on patents held in
the MPEG LA patent pool. The MPEG LA has been shaking a stick over Theora's
head, but has yet to point out which specific patent(s) Theora is indeed
infringing.

In fact, noone has come forward with a specific patent that has been shown to
infringe after scrutiny and noone has yet sued Firefox for shipping this so-
called infringing codec.

The tone of the article is basically a "put up or shut up" directed at the
MPEG LA members. When someone is trying to spread FUD about your product,
there's not much else you can do except ask that they stop talking and start
showing evidence. Since they've been unwilling to do so for some time, it's
natural to conclude that this is nothing more than sabre-rattling to try and
drum up some extra MPEG LA licensees.

~~~
tptacek
Do people familiar with the state of the art in codecs seriously think that
MPEG LA doesn't have patents they could reasonably claim are infringed by
Theora? That isn't the impression I had.

~~~
mmastrac
Noone, either familiar with the state of the art in codec or not, has come up
with a reasonable set of patents that Theora's ancestor codec from 2001, VP3,
could have possibly been infringing. Individuals are free to believe whatever
they like, but there hasn't been any evidence of infringement beyond the MPEG
LA's CEO making vague assertions.

The MPEG LA has a financial interest in keeping the patent situation around
Theora murky, which they've clearly done well.

Just so it's clear (and some of the quotes by the MPEG LA's CEO make more
sense from this page <http://www.streamingmedia.com/article.asp?id=11746>):

* Theora _is_ a patented codec (ie: there are active patents today on the concepts used within VP3)

* One of the MPEG LA's patent holders, On2/Google _does_ hold those patents

* On2 has, however, licensed those patents globally, indefinitely and royalty-free, making the above two points true but entirely a non-issue

~~~
kierank
Google/On2 are not members of the MPEG-LA patent pool. Google has an H.264
licence which is separate.

 _The MPEG LA has a financial interest in keeping the patent situation around
Theora murky_

Web streaming is free until 2015. Theora will not be found in Set-top-boxes
and mobile phones which is where the real money is made in licensing.

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guelo
There seems to be some confusion around the term "submarine patent".

One use of the term, which came around during the 1995 GATT/WTO debate and
which is described in the Wikipedia article, refers to patent holders
manipulating the PTO in order to keep them from issuing a patent until later
when they are ready to sue. This practice was struck down by the courts and
made impracticable by the 1995 law.

The other use of the term is to refer to unknown patent infringement. This
comes about because software patents are such a joke that nobody knows who
exactly owns the patent to what. Even the inventor might not know that
something infringes on their patent until lawyers start rummaging through
their patent war chest looking for something to sue with.

This second use of the term seems to be what Apple and MPEG LA are referring
to.

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noonespecial
_"No one in the market should be under the misimpression that other codecs
such as Theora are patent-free," Horn claims, "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._

Translation: There's enough vague patents floating around out there that read
"Its like TV but on the inter-computer-web-thingee" that no coding technology
can ever be considered demonstrably free from infringement.

So just pick a codec and know that if you make money, the trolls are going to
be at your door, no matter what the pretext. If its not your video codec,
it'll be your "one click shopping cart" or something else equally inane.

~~~
papachito
Big games are shipping with both theora and vorbis. Nobody sued them. Also
Youtube used VP6 and VP7 for a while which were just slight modifications of
VP3, just like Theora. And nobody sued Youtube. So why would they wait for
theora to become used if they could have just sued google? Doesn't make sense.

~~~
kierank
Whilst there are many big games which use Vorbis (Halo comes to mind) as far
as I know there are none that use Theora. Most use Bink because of its
simplicity.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
<http://wiki.xiph.org/Games_that_use_Theora>

That's not a complete list since it is missing e.g. Starcraft 2

~~~
kierank
None of those I would consider "big games"

~~~
ZeroGravitas
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman> ?

~~~
kierank
It would be if "big games" was as clear a category as "Scotsman".

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maxharris
You can't write an open letter and expect patent owners to tell you if you're
infringing or not. The accepted thing is to conduct patent searches (money and
lawyers), and make sure that your product does not run afoul of something
that's already in there.

I'm not saying that this system is ideal, (It is not! Let's make something
better to replace the patent system - something based on private contract
alone) but Theora is not necessarily legally OK (under the existing patent
regime) just because some guy wrote a few open letters and posted them to a
website.

What would I do? I would go with whatever is the better technology. (And from
what I've read, Theora is a terrible format.)

~~~
ZeroGravitas
Xiph and Mozilla have both done patent searches. The lawyers that they spent
the money on told them that publicizing the results would reduce their options
if they were ever sued so the only evidence they haven't found problems is
that they haven't altered Theora to work around problems and that they ship it
in their product, respectively.

I would assume Google (and Opera and a bunch of other companies with slightly
less impressive amounts of cash and lawyers) have done the same, though I
don't think they've mentioned it if they have.

