Can We Legislate Past the H.264 Debate?

Midnight Warrior writes "We could solve the H.264 debate if a country's legislature were to mandate that any patents that contribute to an industry-recognized standard were unenforceable in the application of that standard. Ideally, each standard would also be required to have a 'reference design' that could be used without further licensing. This could also solve problems with a ton of other deeply entrenched areas like hard drives, DRAM, etc. RAND tries to solve this strictly within industry, but both the presence of submarine patents and the low bar required to obtain a patent have made an obvious mess. Individual companies also use patent portfolios to set up mutually assured destruction. I'm not convinced that industry can solve this mess that government created. But I'm not stupid; this clearly has a broad ripple effect. Are there non-computer industries where this would be fatal? What if the patents were unenforceable only if the standard had a trademark and the implementer was compliant at the time of 'infringement'? Then, the patents could still be indirectly licensed, but it would force strict adherence to standards and would require the patent holders to fund the trademark group to defend it to the end. In the US model, of course."

Comments

What's an "industry-recognized standard"?

[fph il quozientatore]

What's an "industry-recognized standard"? Who has the authority to make them? Defining this could raise more problems than the ones this whole thing is supposed to solve...

Re:What's an "industry-recognized standard"?

[WrongSizeGlass]

Can We Legislate Past the H.264 Debate?

No.

What's an "industry-recognized standard"?

"No" is recognized by almost every person, corporation and country. I'd say that's pretty standard.

This is just a bad idea ... even worse than letting people like me post on Slashdot.

Re:What's an "industry-recognized standard"?

[larry bagina]

Congress could.

Whereas H.264 ("The Standard") is a standard licensed under reasonable and non-discriminatory terms which promotes the science and useful arts.... bleh bleh bleh... any patent infringement claims against H.264 must be made known within 6 months of the passage of this law. Failure to make said patent infringement claims known within the specified time period shall prevent any future claims, actions, lawsuits, or other method of redress with respect to the implementation and/or use of the standard

Yeah that's a fucking great idea

[Dragoniz3r]

"I'm sorry sir, your idea has become too successful, we're going to have to take it away from you now."

Is this some sort of joke? This is similar to claiming that is too important to fail, thus the government should take it over and run it "for the people." The real solution is to make sure you can't get patents on trivial algorithms that anyone would come up with, when presented with a particular problem. Not to take away genuinely innovative approaches that just so happen to become popular.
Yes, it's true that most software patents are trivial. But not all are, and the ones that aren't should be protected just like any other innovation or invention.

Re:Yeah that's a fucking great idea

[loufoque]

Is this some sort of joke? This is similar to claiming that is too important to fail, thus the government should take it over and run it "for the people."

I don't see it as a joke, on the contrary I find it very sensible.
I guess it's a matter of political opinion. The government should ensure the best for the people rather than allowing a single company (or consortium) to get royalties for things that have become ubiquitous in today's world, as that is hindering both innovation and regular activity.

Re:No. Just pay up

[peragrin]

but you then can't redistribute said videos.

You buy an HD camera. it records in h.264 The moment you upload it tot he web you are supposed to buy another license for that video. The moment you share that video at your friends house on their TV. You need another license. what's that, you want to transfer that video onto a DVD, that's two more license violations.

I wish people would stop and read more about the licensing issues of H.264 They are currently generous, but MPEG-LA can literally revoke all licenses and make everyone pay fora separate license to create,view, edits, or distributes H.264 video.

Re:Flame on, baby, flame on

[Mindcontrolled]

I called it a troll because it is very hard to lead a rational discussion on patent matters at the best of times. The article at issue here uses very loaded language from the beginning - e.g. the "government-created mess". This is designed to incite a flamefest, in my opinion.

Regardless of the trolling-or-not-issue, the whole topic is half-arsed, not remotely thought through. The questions you are asking are good ones that aim at the heart of the problem. There is a deeper issue, though: What exactly *is* an industry standard for the purpose of this? Who defines it?