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."

Comments

I'm not surprised

[IamTheRealMike]

If this is true, it doesn't surprise me at all. It was only ever going to be a matter of time before a corp violated the GPL. I mean, there's a huge amount of free code out there - if you're looking at what would be for your project 6 months work right in front of you, ready to use, the temptation just to "accidentally" include it must be tremendous.

It's easy to think, who would ever know? Comparing binary compiles is a good way of testing, but it's not 100% proof. It's damn close, but would a judge know that?

Most interesting of all, will the FSF actually do what it always said it'd do, and protect this GPLd software? And will the GPL stand up in court? IANAL, but I don't see any reason why it shouldn't. This sort of thing needs to be dealt with swiftly however, lest other companies get the idea that it's OK.

Re:GPL Powerless

[gorilla]

if someone infringes upon it, they can just ignore your complaints and take an 'so sue me' attitude.

They can do this for any license, including one where you only release binaries (I've seen at least one instance where the only difference between two programs is that one had the startup messages patched to display a different message).

Re:Sue them

[Dark Paladin]

Us.

There should be a donation system to finance a lawsuit for the GPL - perhaps with the EFF or the Free Software Foundation being the collector.

We are the GPL. We are the ones who use it, live it breath it - and if we are truly a community that believes that the sharing of ideas is more powerful then the hording of them, then we must be the ones to pay for its support.

Re:As someone who once worked for Sigma Designs...

[StevenMaurer]

It wouldn't work. This is a case of civil copyright infringement, not the penalty phase of a felony conviction.

What the XVid folks really need is some sugar-daddy corporation (FSF, IBM, anyone?) to fund their legal costs going after SD.

But before they do even that, I'd suggest the XVid people just tell Sigma Designs that if they don't conform to the GNU Public License, they'll start contacting their distributors to tell them about the situation - and that they're selling products in violation of someone's copyright.

Believe me when I say that Sigma Designs will fold like a house of cards if they do that. At one time they had such a bad reputation with distributors, they had a terrible time just getting their products out on the shelves. Assuming little has changed (and this episode convinces me it hasn't) it wouldn't take much to have them get dropped completely. And that would hurt them where it hurts the most - in the pocketbook.

Conference calls are for analysts. B-)

[Ungrounded Lightning]

No sense wasting your time; I can all but guarantee you the conversation will go something like this:

Q: "Does Sigma Designs have any comment on the recent accusation from the XVID team that their MPEG-4 codec infringes on XVID's copyright?"

A: "We're not aware of any court filings pertaining to the matter, so no, we have no comment."

Perhaps you will get that answer, but you may make other shareholders aware of it and start thinking about if they should still own stock.

That will get the company's attention better then anything.

It's better than that.

Conference calls are for analysts, i.e. reporters for the financial media and stock brokers. ANYONE can call in. (But you'll be asked for your affiliation. I recommend one of our big guns be the questioner - like somebody from FSF.)

Ask that question and the whole financial media community will hear it as:

XVID says you stole your core technology from them. They're about to sue. Since it's a GPL case they may have a well-endowed foundation and several large companies that are dependent on GPL for their business models to front the fees and several law professors to do pro-bono work for them as they litigate the enforcability of the GPL, with you funding the anti-GPL side. They'll also have the entire software community spreading the word that your technology is stolen, to your customers and distributors.

What effect will this have on your stock price?

There IS no good answer. So:

The brokers will call their customers and tell 'em to dump ahead of the rush.

The funds will just dump right away and try to beat the brokers to the market.

The analysts will write scathing articles about the stock for the financial papers and shows.

And their stock tanks. Even if the company survives the executives' stock options turn into wallpaper.

And that's BEFORE you get around to actually filing a suit. B-)

I'd go out and short 'em right now (or buy puts) - except that the software codec is not their core product. So they can clean up their act by releasing the source to the software codec under GPL before the conference call.

And the news (including links to XVID's smoking gun and the fact that slashdot has this item already) is already on the Yahoo SIGM stock discussion board. So it will already be factored into the price by the time I could trade. B-(