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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."
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 :)
Some think the Internet is a bad thing. I just think that AOL is a bad thing.
And I have a patent for Windows Viruses ... so ya 'all better stop writing them or I'll sue your @ss.
Is AT&T Serious?
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.
How would this affect open source/freeware implementations of standardized codecs like H.264?
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?
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
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
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?
Some information on Dirac can be found here and here (PDF warning).
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
I guess Dirac's time has come.
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.
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")
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?
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.
With spending like this, exactly what are "conservatives" conserving?
Perhaps I am confusing my types of Intellectual Property, but don't you have to show that you are actively defending your IP, or you give up your rights to it?
You are. Trademarks must be defended, but patents don't have to be.
The point of a "..." or "????" step is that it's not clear how to get from the previous step to the following one. In this case, there's no "..." step. There's just proft.
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.
Please note that AT&T here really means SBC. SBC purchased AT&T not too long ago but kept the AT&T name. It is run by the same cocksucker who thinks Google, Yahoo and other content providers are getting a "free ride" on his infrastructure and wants to charge them for the right to travel his wires -- peering be damned.
-Charles
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
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.
End of lesson. You may press the button.
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.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
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.
I am afraid that you are infringing on one of my patents.
/. With content that is directly related to the article to which said First Post was posted is contained."
"A First Post on
I would kindly ask that you remove your post and rewrite it at some later point in this discussion.
Intelligent First Posts, next they actually look at patents before the issuing them... What is the world coming to?
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.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
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?
Some people claim that the US patent system is broken, but that way of expressing the problem is a bit misleading. The word "broken" implies that something undefined caused the patent system to be disfunctional. That's not what happened. The disfunctionality was caused deliberately. Those who want government corruption so that they can make money have caused the patent system to be underfunded. They've done the same to the Internal Revenue Service and the Securities and Exchange Commission. Here are short reviews of books about the corruption: Unprecedented Corruption: A guide to conflict of interest in the U.S. government.
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.