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?

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.

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.

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.