Microsoft WMV In Patent Trouble?

thpr writes "According to rethink, Microsoft may be violating patents in their Windows Media software. Apparently, the VC1 standard (from The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers), which has been pushed by Microsoft, depends on patents owned by other companies - more than likely, those that have patents used in the previous MPEG standards. According to the sources in the story, both Sony and Philips may take the case to court, rather than continuing negotiation. As they point out in a later update, Sony might be pleased to have a say in the competing HD-DVD format. Is this a 'major speed bump to Microsoft's dominance of digital media markets'?" Well, the answer, IMHO, is probably not - this is a negotiation issue. But this is a wonderful example of how intertwined legal & software issues can become.

Comments

Very tempting

[bigtallmofo]

It's very tempting to declare the old addage, "Live by the sword, die by the sword", but I'm not sure if that's the right attitude. Following that to its logical conclusion, it seems the only people that will be able to make money in the future are attorneys. Try to do anything else and you'll be sued.

Not really

[Captain Splendid]

But this is a wonderful example of how intertwined legal & software issues can become.

Woderful is not the word I would use here. Nightmare. Catastrophe. SNAFU.

But not wonderful.

Use open standards

[henrygb]

You would think Microsoft would have learned not to use patented technology by now. It has a viral effect - build on existing patents and you are still caught in the trap.

Re:Use open standards

[AndroidCat]

Odds are, Microsoft has enough patents in their arsenal to do a deal and get cross-licences. This isn't dying by the sword, this is more like a paper-cut even if they have to pay cash.

Of course, the little guy who isn't a member of the nuclear MAD patent club is screwed, but what else is new?

Re:Use open standards

[gowen]

This isn't dying by the sword, this is more like a paper-cut even if they have to pay cash.

While that may well be true in this case, it's not always going to be true.

With the rise of dedicated Intellectual Property companies, dedicated to acquiring and licensing patents, cross-licensing will become less and less important. A hypothetical dedicated IP company has no need to cross-licence other's patents, because they don't actually create anything. So *everyone*, even MS ends up paying the IP firm.

And MS may well be stiffed hardest, because if I've got a solid case for pursuing royalties from someone, I'm going after the guy with the most cash lying around.

Watch this space...

[kunwon1]

...For an announcement in the next few weeks announcing Microsoft settling out of court for a massive, yet undisclosed sum of money, and getting exactly what they want. As usual.

From TFA

[Cat_Byte]

For instance, its wording on motion estimation in patent number 5,692,063 could be used to describe the techniques in H.264 just as easily. This refers to the technique whereby a processor can predict which pixels will be covered in the next few frames by an object that is moving.

Hmm...this technique is usually used by anyone in motion video or you will get screen flicker if you redraw the entire screen every frame.

Also, if these other companies are using WMV, wouldn't it be in their best interest to have their codec distributed with the huge marketshare of Windows users? I'm not sure if they were planning on selling a codec and what the market is to actually buy one. If I download something and it doesn't work with my standard codecs, I delete it.

Just imagine!

[Jugalator]

Imagine there's no patents,
It's easy if you try,
No lawyers around us,
Above us only sky,
Imagine all the people
developing in joy...

Imagine there's no lawsuits,
It isn't hard to do,
Nothing to fight or pay for,
No worries too,
Imagine all the people
hacking code in peace...

Imagine no copyrights,
I wonder if you can,
Nothing to support greed or hunger,
A brotherhood of geeks,
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world...

You may say I'm a dreamer,
but I'm not the only one,
I hope some day you'll join us,
And the world will live as one.

Intertwined? That's putting it mildly

[Badgerman]

Legal and software issues intertwined? That's putting it mildly. It's more a cat's cradle or some bizarre Gordinian knot.

The legal issues, the patent insanity, are just making it harder and harder to make progress. At what point is it just not worth DOING something becasue of all the legal hassles involved.

Today it's media formats. What more could go wrong and what could grind to a halt?

Re:Closed source

[Mattcelt]

This isn't so much an example of the evils of closed source software - which, IMHO, we lived with very comfortably for many years. This smacks more of the law of unintended consequences, and highlights the amazing complexity and the chaotic progression of software patents.

There will come a time, if the tide is not stemmed, when it will not be possible to write software, closed-source or otherwise, without infringing on someone's patent. We're only a few years into most of the patents' 17 (20?) year lifespan; the skies do look forbidding indeed.

Re:Speed bump? But a big one

[mattspammail]

And who do you think will foot the bill over the next 2 to 3 years?

If you don't know how to answer this correctly, riddle me this: How did Microsoft make most of its money? If there's a price to pay, we're going to pay it. Directly or indirectly, we'll (those who use Microsoft products, which is the majority of computer users, like it or not) have to pay it.

This reminds me of professional sports. Teams don't pay players. We do. Same goes for advertising, etc. We always pay.

Re:S/w or h/w patent

[YU Nicks NE Way]

In Europe, where software patents aren't yet valid, how does this apply?

Do you mean in all of Europe, or in those parts where the courts haven't decided yet? One of those things that FFII hasn't told you is that software patents are already valid in most of the largest countries in Europe, since Germany, Britain and France already have equivalents of State Street. The problem with software patents (from a corporate point of view) isn't whether they do or do not exist, but that they're inconsistent in a putatively free market. Pricing decisions can't be made fairly in a free market unless the regulations are evenly applied. Most of the corporations behind the proposed Europatent code don't particularly like software patents; instead, they want a method for estimating risk so that they can price that risk into their products.

Lots of errors in articles

[benwaggoner]

Whomever wrote the original article is pretty fuzzy on a lot of details.

Just to clear things up a bit:

VC-9 was based on Windows Media Video 9, which is the commercial release version of the WMV codec, plus the Advanced Profile extensions. It was later renamed VC-1. No difference between the two.

H.264 and VC-1 do have significant technical differences (I go worried when he described his research on this point as "Another source told us recently that they had had the codec explained to them, and confirmed that it did "pretty much" the same as H.264." Well, pretty much in the same way that MPEG-1 and RealVideo do pretty much the same thing. They're both codecs, but have significant differences with real-world differences. For example, VC-1 uses larger blocks than H.264, which helps with some content and hurts with others. H.264 supports multiple reference frames, which can improve compression, but slows encode and decode.

Lastly, these issues aren't that unusual - I doubt it would even be possible to build a competitive codec without stepping on a whole lot of patents. Microsoft has IP in H.264, after all. It's still not possible to build a patent free MPEG-2 decoder.