Sorenson Countersues Apple

pinqkandi writes "MacCentral is reporting that Sorenson Media is countersuing Apple over a lawsuit Apple initiated in April claiming they have exclusive rights to Sorenson's codec. Sorenson, claiming Apple's lawsuit against them has severly hurt business, is seeking judgement against Apple in compensation. Apple originally brought on their lawsuit when Sorenson teamed up with Macromedia for Flash MX. Looks like good old Steve is back to his old self :-)"

Comments

Oh boo hoo hoo!

[wowbagger]

For years, Apple and Sorenson have played "Ask you mother" about making a Sorenson decoder available under Linux:

Developer: Sorenson, would you please let us release a binary only, closed version of your decoder for Xanim?

Sorenson: Well, we can't help you - Apple has an exclusive contract with us, so they will have to allow it. Go ask them.

Developer: Apple, would you please let us release a binary only, closed version of your decoder for Xanim?

Apple: Well, it's not ours to release, it belongs to Sorenson. Go ask them.

Now, the two of them are squabbling amonst themselves because Sorenson had the gall to let Macromedia have the decoder.

Boo Hoo Hoo, cry me a river....

Re:Oh boo hoo hoo!

[scrod]

Er, yeah they do.

Today I received a polite phone call from a fellow at Microsoft who works in the Windows Media group. He informed me that Microsoft has intellectual property rights on the ASF format and told me that, although I had reverse engineered it, the implementation was still illegal since it infringed on Microsoft patents. I have asked for the specific patent numbers, since I find patenting a file format a bit strange. At his request, and much to my own sadness, I have removed support for ASF in VirtualDub 1.3d, since I cannot risk a legal confrontation. This unfortunately means that I can no longer redistribute versions of VirtualDub older than V1.3d.

Propriety formats are Apple's enemy. Or should be.

[Skyshadow]

You'd think Apple would be a little more anxious to promote open file formats.

Consinder: The only thing that makes platform relevant in modern times (other than number of games available) is the ability of users to interoperate in a networked environment -- to open word processing documents, spreadsheets, presentations, etc. Other than that, people use their computers for largely platform-independant applications (surfing for porn and emailing prison inmates -- or is that just me?).

Given the rise of near-universal networking, you'd think that Apple would see this as their big second change. In fact, given their recent PR, it seems that at least part of the organization "gets" this. And yet, Apple continues to develop and promote decidedly unopen formats like Quicktime, which are definately not friendly to alternative platforms.

Maybe someone needs to drive to Cupertino, take Steve to Denny's and explain the concept of karma over a couple cups of coffee and some cheese sticks. Mmm... Cheese sticks.

unresearched

[Snuffub]

"Looks like good old Steve is back to his old self :-)"

exactly what thats supposed to mean is beyond me. There are good reasons to sue people you know. one of them being if your company signs an exclusive deal with another company for a product then that company turns around and sells the product to a competitor.

oh wait! thats what happened in this case.

Re:unresearched

[gwernol]

"Good old Steve" is in reference to the litigation-happy days when Jobs was CEO of Apple in the 80's, suing Microsoft, Adobe, and everyone else who displeased him.

Unfortunately that's factually incorrect. Apple sued Microsoft in 1988, four years after Steve was kicked out of Apple. In fact he was sued by Apple the year after he left in 1985: see this. So the Apple-Microsoft suit had nothing to do with Mr. Jobs. Whatever his faults he doesn't seem to be particularly litigous.

Just the facts, man

[marxmarv]

I wasn't surprised to read that an old version of Sorenson had been cracked. How long can it be until the latest versions are too?

You didn't read the thread well enough. Someone did in fact crack SVQ3 but refused to release it with their own name on it, and several folks advised them to release it anonymously, ala the RC4-compatible arcfour module. (Oh, that was a fun Usenet thread)

And what will that mean for the lawsuits?

The most curious thing about that whole thread was a marketing manager for Sorenson posting a note that they don't mind the use of their file formats if it's done in an approved fashion or some such rot, and recommended holding off for the next 30-60 days pending certain announcements. I think it was moderated up to 2, so I had to have been really bored to find it.

If I was going to create a closed codec, I'd make damn sure there were players for pretty much every platform out there. I'd make high quality players for Windows, Linux and maybe the Mac, and then a library for everybody else so people can write their own players if they need to.

Yeah, but you're a /. weenie and probably wouldn't create a binary-only codec anyway. Besides SVQ1 wasn't much more than H.323 with a slightly tricky codebook and some obligatory scrambling in an attempt to keep people out.

Otherwise, the moment good content gets encoded using it, by by secrects.

It took something like two years (+/- 50%) for SVQ1 to be cracked, and slightly less time for SVQ3. The QDomain music codec remains imprisoned, and without that no one's going to watch QT trailers on Linux.

-jhp

Re:Propriety formats are Apple's enemy. Or should

[frankie]

How is the MPEG4 Quicktime based

Sheesh, someone here has been living in a cave for the past couple years, apparently with only a copy of Real Player 8 for company.

• " The QuickTime file format has been used as the basis of the MPEG-4 standard, developed by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO)."
• " [10.9] The MP4 file format is designed to contain the media information of an MPEG-4 presentation in a flexible, extensible format which facilitates interchange, management, editing, and presentation of the media. [...] The design is based on the QuickTime® format from Apple Computer Inc."

But don't take my word for it -- look it up for yourself.

They promote the LOCKED soreson as the encoding format

And here again you are living in the past. Take a look at the Apple Quicktime site right now. You will see a whole lot of promotion of their MPEG-4 cross-compatible codec. Ever since the MPEG-4 project began, Apple has been salivating at the prospects of ditching Sorenson.

Apple used to push in favor of Sorenson, because: (1) it was the best codec, and (2) it was exclusive to QuickTime. Neither of those factors are true any more.