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."

Comments

Typical

[DoddyUK]

1) Help to form new "revolutionary" file format.
2) Wait for it to take off and become popular
3) Use new file format popularity to hold companies to ransom thanks to the incompetancy of the current USPTO system.
4) ...
5) PROFIT!

But honestly, is this the way for people to get their money nowadays? Claim "prior art" on any patent which seems convenient and then hold any company which uses the format to cut a hole in their wallet? Any patent issues should be resolved before a file format is made readily available, therefore any companies who happen to use the format will know of any pitfalls.

I still admit that this may be nothing compared to the JPEG patent (which about 99.9% of websites use), but it still seems silly, just like any other USPTO story which is posted on /.

Oh, and FP :)

XVID?

[Danathar]

How would this affect open source/freeware implementations of standardized codecs like H.264?

Re:XVID?

[NTiOzymandias]

The behavior of the software, according to current patent law, can be considered to constitute a device. This may include behavior pertaining not to its implementation, but to its interface.

ffmpeg?

[Se7enLC]

What about ffmpeg? I assume that will also be affected, as they provide MPEG-4 compression/decompression. What happens when you try to collect licensing fees from an open source project?

More like TradeMarks

[RingDev]

Maybe I'm completely off base, but I think I remember hearing that if you don't defend your trade mark, you can lose your rights to it. Patents should be the same way, if you knowingly allow your patent to be infringed apon for 3 years and never so much as mention it to the infringer, why should you have the right to sue?

-Rick

Re:More like TradeMarks

[SchrodingersRoot]

It's called genericization, or "genericide." If a word becomes used often enough by the public regardless of branding, the courts can declare a trademark a generic word.
Heroin, Allen wrenches, and I think Spandex (Hence the new name Lycra) are all examples of this. There are many more, and there are plenty of companies that have trademarks that would appear to be in danger of "genericide" (the apparent legal term).

Xerox actually was in danger of this, and started a campaign against "xeroxing", strongly suggesting that people instead "photocopy" documents.

Next gen codecs

[lisaparratt]

I guess Dirac's time has come.

Re:Hurting innovation

[Anonymous Coward]

Before there were patents, there weren't any multinational companies with huge research teams; there were guys like Whitney and Franklin, who invented things on their own.

Before the patent was invented, if you invented a way to do an existing process or manufacture an object cheaper and/or faster and/or better, you could put all your competetion out of business.

Of course, under this system you would be a fool to let anyone else know how to make a cotton gin or whatever. So what happened was that novel things and processes were invented, and the secrets of these inventions died with their inventors.

The patent system was thus itself invented - you have a limited time monopoly on your invention, but in return you have to let everyone know how it works.

Like everything else, after a couple hundred years it's been twisted by those with the power to change laws. The patent was supposed to do away with the trade secret; now the big multinationals have patents AND trade secrets.

Power corrupts, but it doesn't corrupt people, the people who seek power are already corrupted. What power corrupts is the system itself.

(lame MRC="recruits")

Patent warfare

[lisaparratt]

Surely Apple's been in the game long enough that they've got something in their IP portfolio to sting AT&T with, and thus enter a cross licensing deal, rather than licensing it straight out?

And to any "pro-business" (pro-patent) types...

[Caspian]

Before you start in on your rose-tinted "but we have Teh Intarweb now, and computers are so cheap thanks to the Free Market(TM)" drek...

Yeah? And? Where are the flying cars we were all supposed to have? Where's our fusion energy? (Other than that big fiery lamp out in the Big Room) Where's our moonbase? Where's our Mars colony? Where's my fucking robot sex toy?

We'd have all of this shit by now if humanity were focused more on developing as a species and less on making money with the least possible effort. We need more cooperation as a species-- and note that "cooperation" and "competition" aren't necessarily mutually exclusive. During the Space Race, broad swaths of humanity came together and cooperated to compete-- the West versus the soviet East. What did we accomplish? We went from the first suborbital flight to landing on the fucking moon in less than a decade.

THAT is what humanity can do when its priorities are aligned properly.

Now, it's Megacorp A versus Megacorp B versus Megacorp C, and they're all so busy playing chess with patents and lawsuits, they can't be bothered to innovate. It's fucking sickening.

AT&T or SBC?

[Verteiron]

Didn't SBC recent buy AT&T? SBC has pursued bizarre patent claims like this before, I wonder how much of this is SBC looking through AT&T's patent portfolio and thinking, "Hmmmm...."

If I'm right we can expect a lot more of these from "AT&T" in the near future.

Re:What's the time limit?

[Zeinfeld]

I think the thing that stinks is that they sit there, knowing full well that they hold the patent, and let the tech go into wide-spread use before informing anyone that they hold the patent.

I agree it stinks, in fact I have been working on a part 4 to my essay where I make the same point.

The problem is how to get from 'this stinks' as Plankton would say,to solving the problem without creating ways to game the patent system entirely.

One solution would be to have a requirement that patent holders have to monitor major standards efforts in their field of invention, but how do you arrive at a legal definition of a standards effort? How do you avoid the problem of someone creating a bogus standards organization for the sole purpose of creating an exclusion to a patent?

OK I know this particular problem would not make slashdotters upset. However it would likely allow the patent trolls to stop the law being changed.

I am not interested in just debating the problem ad nauseam on slashdot, I want to get it fixed. To do that we need to create a wedge between the patent trolls and the major corporate holders of IP.

If you look at what free software people want and where the interests of the big computer corporations lie there is a huge overlap, probably 95%. The problem is that a small number of ultras insist on all or nothing.

Re:Typical (Submarine patents)

[mikael]

But honestly, is this the way for people to get their money nowadays? Claim "prior art" on any patent which seems convenient and then hold any company which uses the format to cut a hole in their wallet?

This is an example of submarine patents. You have an idea, quietly patent it, but noisily advertise the technology. Then you wait for the patents to be granted and for industry to incorporate your technology into their products. Once the market has matured, you fire off multiple patent violations in every direction. By then, the cost of removing your technology from their products will cost far more than it would to pay the license fee.
(For digital file formats, this is especially true, since both software and hardware codecs will already have been distributed, and third party customers will have distributed their data into this format.