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Newest Patent Threat to MPEG-4
Sachin Garg writes "After the notorious JPEG patent which has made many big and small names pay
huge amounts to Forgent (total more than $105 million), PCMag reports that
AT&T claims to
have a patent covering core MPEG-4 technology and has warned Apple and
others of Patent Infringement. Pentax and Nero have already paid them."
Nobody ever taught me about how lucrative this patent business was in school. Here I am, just a small-time dev working at an electronics shop to support my family. I need to patent something!
I think Nero paid because they don't want to be shut down. AT&T could easily hold up a small company in court for years, bleeding their profits dry. I guess someone just did the math and figured it would be cheaper to pay off the patent mafia.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Christ. Look at the earthshaking technologies that were invented/discovered and/or popularized in the interval from roughly 1860 to 1960: Radio, the telephone, the television, the laser, nuclear fission, the automobile, the airplane, the rocket, the microwave oven, the computer...
... Blackberries? ... Cell phones? (read: radio + telephone)... umm ... well, our computers are smaller now, and faster?...
Now look at what we've achieved since then. Uhhh..... let's see. Um. PDAs?
I cannot help but think that the shift away from R&D, the overreliance on patents like this story, and the constant threat of being sued/bought out by megacorps have combined to slow the pace of human technological development.
The new business model seems to be "obtain patent on a niggling detail of a process or device; sue over patent; profit!". Back in the day, the business model was "Research fascinating new things; patent them; bring them to market; profit." I'm all for a return to the old model...
With spending like this, exactly what are "conservatives" conserving?
Sue early: people say 'Ah, well we'll just use some other video codec, then.'
Sue late: people say 'Shit, we've committed our whole business to this technology. Better pay up.'
There's more profit to be had this way, which is why it's done like this. What, you expected some ethical or technical reason?
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
We moved from a manufacturing based economy to a "service" based economy.
Now it's lovely that we are moving on from even that, and can earn money by letting others do the hard work and implementation while we can sit at the patent office all day and submit vague, obtuse applications (that read like and are about as specific as Nostradamus predictions, he predicted Hister you know!) to gain a monopoly on "methods", "software", etcetera all in the name of "innovation" (because without patent, there wouldn't be any you know. Civilization started when Romulus and Remus instituted the first patent office.....)
A great time to be an American. It's also nice we are exporting this type of mentality to the rest of the world too.
A "device" either infringes on a patent or it doesn't. Independent invention is neither a license nor a defence.
If a company is going to force this kind of licensing patent issue on another company, then they should be obliged to issue this kind of legal action within a number (say 90? 120?) days of first learning about any infringement. This company has clearly waited until MPEG-4 is hugely popular, having been implemented in popular technologies like Qucktime, the PSP, in HD DVD codecs (I believe in the form of H.264), Nero Digital and Xvid..........
If a company with any patent rights had asserted its right in the first place, then maybe they would be in the right here, but to allow a technology to grow for a number of years and then assert your claim to large amounts of money is immoral and should be illegal.
What if a company like Apple submits and then counter-sue the company for deliberately allowing a free lunch then asserting it's patent, causing financial and legal pain to Apple et. Al.
It's like a bar giving out water to customers and then trying to back-charge for it when they're halfway through the evening, under threat of kicking them out of the bar otherwise.
When the posters fear their moderators, there is tyranny; when the moderators fears the posters, there is liberty.
Problem is AT&T is what in the top 5 largest companies in the US? I'm sure they can hire a staff of ambulance chasers just to handle this one issue. If they are on staff, then no 30% legal settlement for them - just a bonus for each company they get to fork over cash.
Also, I do not believe there is an enforcement provision in the Patent system - although yes there is on trademarks - if you let people use them, you are seen as having allowed them to fall into public domain.
IINAL but I think that what should be patentable is:
* Physical objects or individual components: a new type of car transmision or even just the shift mechanism. * Specific processes: you make asprin by doing steps 1-58 in this exact order - protects drug patents etc. What should NOT be patentable:
* An idea: ie: Moron trying to patent a storyline. * A general process: making asprin - in any way shape or form. * Anything built with prebuilt components: No patenting that nifty LEGO robot. No patenting web page design. No patenting software.
As for this whole wait-until-it's-a-standard-then-sue ploy, I say if you don't enforce your patent within 2 years of being aware of someone starting to use it, then you have tacitly liscenced it to them. In this case, AT&T has known from the beginning that MPEG4 infringes on their patent - they did nothing. They have therefore tacitly liscenced their patent to the MPEG consortium for this use. New uses may of course require a new liscence, but you shouldn't be able to go back and retroactively enforce patents like this.
The problem is that this test can not* easily be applied in a proper manner.
If you place a dozen random engineers in a room, and ask them to solve a problem, you are likely to get only a couple of different solutions. Patents on these should be disallowed. Other solutions would be patentable.
Note from the link that An invention is nonobvious if it would be viewed as an unexpected or surprising development by someone skilled in the technology of the particular field. Note that it's not nonobvious to joe-six-pack, but to someone who is knowledgeable in the field. Are we really to believe that the poor people down at the USTPO are experts in every field? Almost by definition, even if you start by hiring 'skilled' people, they lose their 'skilled' status as soon as they leave the field (due to changes in the field) to work the patent desk, and you end up with non-skilled people reviewing for obviousness.
The patent system as designed is set up to fail...it can end nowhere other than where we are today.
*some suggest independant review boards, but that smells like the old-boys club to me... i.e:the system will just be broken for some peope, not everyone. Perhaps patent review would be like jury-duty for engineers.... :)
If you think imaginary property and real property are the same, when does your house become public domain?
I think something that should go along with an idea like this is that the USPTO should "Standards" registration. That way, when whatever working group comes up with a standard, they submit it to the USPTO, it undergoes review for patent implications by PTO -and- it is held for public comment and patent dispute for a time before being registered. After that point it should be immune from claims by any owner of patents not already attached to the registration. That way everyone knows up front what the IP implications are and it can be worked out before the standard is put into use.
Of course, I won't hold my breath..
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.