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Sigma Designs Accused of Copyright Infringement
Cygnus v1 writes "The XVID team has ceased development of the XVID video codec for the time being because they say that Sigma Designs' REALmagic MPEG-4 Video Codec software includes their code and has claimed it as Sigma Designs' own work. The current XVID homepage includes some binary-level comparisons." Update: 08/23 03:14 GMT by T : Apparently the folks at Sigma have seen that no good is likely to come from this; an anonymous reader submits a link to this release on Yahoo! which says "complete source code will be available for download starting August 23, free of charge, through Sigma's website."
XVID TEAM REQUESTS SIGMA DESIGNS' TO HALT COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT
/ www.xvid.org/v1_1_comparison.pdf
ERLANGEN, GERMANY -- August 22nd, 2002 -- The XVID development team, author of the popular XVID MPEG-4 video codec, claims that Sigma Designs' REALmagic MPEG-4 Video Codec is an illegal copy of the XVID software and publicly requests the company to stop violating their software license and copyrights.
XVID is a leading open source MPEG-4 video research project: software distributed by XVID is covered by a Free Software license, the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL). The XVID team announced that Sigma Designs' REALmagic MPEG-4 Video Codec includes wide portions of XVIDcodec software. By not offering a corresponding source code distribution and by claiming sole authorship on the product, Sigma Designs' Inc. is violating the GNU General Public License and the copyrights of the XVID authors.
XVID learned about the license violation in early July, soon after the initial release of the REALmagic software (version 1.0). Sigma Designs' were immediately contacted, and replied confirming the violation and promising to replace all violating code.
Version 1.1 of the REALmagic software was released on the 9th of August. After examining the new version, XVID developers concluded that the violating code was not replaced, but disguised by programming and compiling tricks. Sigma Designs' were again contacted and asked to remove the REALmagic download link from their website. Thus far, they have not shown any sign of cooperation.
In a statement to the XVID development team, project founder Michael Militzer showed his disappointment regarding Sigma Designs' behaviour: "We have been quite reasonable and have given Sigma Designs' ample opportunity to resolve this issue. Apparently none of our demands have been taken seriously. Nearly two months after the initial release of the REALmagic MPEG-4 Video Codec, Sigma Designs' is still knowingly infringing the GNU General Public License."
Militzer believes this infringement might be of high general interest: "This is an unfortunate event, not only for us but for the whole Free Software movement. Therefore we hope to receive wide support from the Free Software community in our efforts to convince Sigma Designs' to respect the terms of the GPL."
Evidence supporting the claim has been published on the XVID website.
http://www.xvid.org/v1_0_comparison.pdf
http:/
About XVID (http://www.xvid.org/)
XVID is a leading open source MPEG-4 video research project, founded by the German student Michael Militzer in August 2001 to continue the efforts of DivXNetworks' former OpenDivX project. Today, the XVID project consists of users and developers from all over the world. XVID publishes all its software under the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL).
About Sigma Designs Inc. (http://www.sigmadesigns.com/)
Sigma Designs' headquarters are located in Milpitas, California. The company specializes in MPEG based video hardware for encoding and decoding. Recently Sigma Designs' introduced the Xcard, the first consumer hardware MPEG-4 decoder in the form of a personal computer add-on card.
About GNU GPL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html)
The GNU General Public License is the most frequently used software license for Free Software development and is supported by the Free Software Foundation (FSF). Software distributed under the GNU GPL grants everyone modification and redistribution rights, on the condition that derived or redistributed software carries the same license.
Contacts
For contacting the XVID team please use the e-mail addresses contact@xvid.org or contact@xvid.de
Please address your request to one of the following persons:
Daniel Smith (USA)
Michael Militzer (Germany and international)
Christoph Lampert (Germany and international)
Edouard Gomez (France)
...all I can say is that I'm not one bit surprised. Many companies are morally flawed somehow, but not all of them revel in it quite so obviously.
SIGMA DESIGNS TO HOLD SECOND QUARTER CONFERENCE CALL
MILPITAS, CA, (August 12, 2002) - Sigma Designs (NASDAQ: SIGM), a leader in digital decoder solutions, announced today that the Company will be discussing second quarter results during a conference call on Tuesday, August 27, 2002, at 4:45 p.m. Eastern time. The dial-in number is (612) 332-0226. A question and answer period will take place at the end of the discussion. The earnings release will cross the wire at the close of market on the same day.
The call will be webcast live from www.vcall.com. An audio replay of the call will be available shortly thereafter the same day and will remain on-line for 30 days. For further information, please see the link to this site on our website at www.sigmadesigns.com or email investor relations at IR@sdesigns.com.
We at the FSF are saddened by this GPL violation. Because we do not hold copyright on Xvid, we can't act directly. We support the Xvid developers' effort to get full GPL compliance from Sigma. If you're interested in how we enforce the GPL when we hold copyright, please see our attorney Eben Moglen's essay, Enforcing the GPL.
Become a FSF associate member before the low #s are used
The best legal advice I ever recieved was from my father. It was, simply "I don't need a lawyer. I'm right." It's a philosophy that's been working for him for decades as a small business owner. It's worked equally well for me, also as a small business owner, for six years.
If someone plagarizes your work, sue them. The only information the judge is going to need is a copy of their source, and yours. Are they the same? Judgement for plaintiff.
Finding a couple of pro-bono expert witnesses in this case should be a snap, if that's even necessary. Hell, ask Stallman, he's always looking for a pulpit.
Over the years, I've had three or four clients who didn't want to pay for work I had performed. A couple of them even said "We're ready to be the 800 pound gorilla on this matter." (That's a direct quote from one, BTW).
Ok, you be an 800 pound gorilla. I have all my notes, all the specifications, all the correspondence related to the project ready to go. I have notes on every phone call, every meeting, every conversation. It costs me $40 to file, and all I have is time. If you want to tie up your $150 an hour lawyers for six months fighting an angry badger about a $20K project, go right ahead.
Funny, the check always shows up after that.
Don't let people push you around because you're a small operation, or because they think having more money guarantees them victory through intimidation.
K.
I've been coding in asm since 1967 on two dozen different architectures. The asm routines that were disassembled are instruction sequence, register assignment and structure offset identical for dozens upon dozens of lines that are not simply C interface code. The probablility of two programmers choosing exactly the same data structures, exactly the same manual register assignments, and exactly the same instruction sequences is about the same as being struck by the planet venus in our lifetimes.
"why have they ceased development?"
If you were painting someone's house, and you
found out for certain that they had no intention
of ever paying you, would you keep painting the
house? Or would you take your ladder, your paint,
and your brush, and go elsewhere?
What if you were painting the house, and you found
out that not only were you not going to get paid,
but that the person was going to then take your ladder,
your paint, your brush, your truck, and call the police
to have you arrested for trespassing?
Would you stay and finish the job?
How would you feel about this story if the Sigma folks
had finished their product, and then turned around
and accused XVID of stealing THEIR work? Who's to
say they STILL won't try that?
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.