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MPEG-LA Considering Patent Pool For VP8/WebM
An anonymous reader writes "Well, that didn't take long. Larry Horn, CEO of MPEG-LA, the consortium that controls the AVC/H.264 video standard, says the group is looking at creating a patent pool license for VP8 and WebM, Google's new open source, royalty-free HTML5 video format... So much for a Web video standard unencumbered by patent issues." We talked about VP8/WebM a couple of days ago when Google open sourced it. Reader Stoobalou points out another late-night email from Steve Jobs, who was asked to comment on VP8 vs. H.264. Jobs laconically sent a pointer to the technical analysis we linked before, where the poster says "VP8 copies way too much from H.264 for anyone sane to be comfortable with it, no matter whose word is behind the claim of being patent-free."
Sounds good: Let's get the patents that MPEG-LA claims might affect VP8 out in the open. Let's get an explicit listing of exactly where they think it infringes. And then we'll fix it.
This as opposed to Microsoft's approach to everything else, and Apple's approach so-far, of obliquely threatening that someone may someday find something that vaguely infringes some potential patent by some unknown party.
Except for the fact that Google has already placed themselves in the crosshairs by using VP8/WebM themselves. Are you worth more than Google? Didn't think so.
Game! - Where the stick is mightier than the sword!
They don't ensure any such thing. They ensure their patent pool holders won't sue you over H.264; but buying a licence from them does not mean they'll protect you against others suing you over H.264.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
MPEG-LA ensures that H.264 and you are free from any patent violations.
Free of any patent violations of any patent in their pool. Once you pay for their protection. If someone outside the pool asserts a patent, sorry, that's not covered. You're only paying Mr. Guido and his organization for protection. If Mr. Vinny decides to burn down your warehouse because you didn't pay HIM, well, that's just unfortunate.
This is where patent pool organizations are more worthless than real organized crime. In the real protection racket, if some shopkeeper is paying you off on schedule, you prevent other punks from trying to horn in on your territory. In a patent pool, once you've got the developer's license money, if someone else declares that they want in on the action, you can either ignore them and let your licensee deal with it, or invite the new patent holder into the pool and jack up the rates to make sure he gets his cut of the racket too.
so it's a patent bomb waiting to happen and any company that uses it takes risks.
Don't kid yourself. In computers, everything is either patented or is about to be. If you do anything creative you're exposed. Suck up the risk and proceed, or shut yourself in your room and accomplish nothing.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
You know, On2 has been around a while now in the video codec game. I wonder how many patents they hold that MPEG-LA are violating with their video codecs. If MPEG-LA goes up against Google/On2 chances are they'll retaliate with patents that MPEG-LA is infringing upon.
I'm surprised no one has thought of this (at least all the news posts I've seen), that MPEG-LA may be opening themselves up to some pretty serious patent retaliation.
Without that guarantee of return, these companies would have never bothered to invent VHS, CD, MPEG in the first place.
Maybe these companies wouldn't have. Does this mean that these technologies would not have been invented anyway ? I don't think so. MP3 was invented partially thanks to public funds (Fraunhoffer is a half-public R&D institute) and most of the patented "innovations" of private R&D labs are often base on public research publication. What my experience showed me is that usually, in "R&D" the "R" is often made by public labs and the "D" by private companies. Therefore, it should be lawful to reuse the "R" part. In the context of software, that often means the core algorithm, exactly what is concerned by these patents. The 'D' part is well covered by copyright.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
The last of the h.264 patents should expire around 2025. Approximately 15 years from now.
That does, of course, assume no-one manages to successfully lobby for increased patent terms any time during the next 15 years.
With or without the authority to sublicense these patents?
They are explicitly not providing patent protection for anyone else.
How about adding something like this to the TOS of an unrelated, widely used Google service: "By entering a query into Google Search, you agree not to sue users of WebM multimedia technology for infringement of any patent that you believe is essential to WebM multimedia technology."
Because that wouldn't stand up in any court of law?
I try to avoid "See I Told Ya So" types of posts, but in this case SCNR: WebM/VP8 patent risk for software developers" (and I previously made that suggestion on my blog in this post on video codecs)
I'm all for open-sourcing useful program code but the question here is whether it's fair for Google to expose an entire community, including the commercial adopters of open source, to this kind of risk. The situation surrounding Android serves as a warning. Google is unfortunately in favor of software patents and doesn't do anything against the problem. They're entitled to their patent strategy. But it's important that third parties don't run into patent problems in reliance upon Google's vague promises.
If Google really believed that WebM/VP8 was safe from a patent perspective, then why in the world don't its WebM license terms contain a hold-harmless clause or at least some basic indemnification (less value than holding harmless but better than nothing) in favor of developers adopting it?
People should think twice (at least!) before relying on any vague promises and they should also consider that Google isn't the patent powerhouse that could start a "pissing contest" with the major contributors to the MPEG LA pool. I explained Google's limits in that regard in this recent slashdot comment, The idea of Google countersuing isn't realistic.
That's why it might make more sense to just use H.264 and save yourself from future problems.
"Nice little codec ya gotcherself there... shame if something should... happen to it."
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
You're thick, because that's precisely what they did. Theora is essentially VP3, the predecessor of VP8, which is what Google released 2 days ago. Oh that and Vorbis is the audio codec. Notice how they use Vorbis as the audio codec in WebM. And yes, WebM is a subset of Matroska (MKV) before you ask about that.
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
You are right about the 15 years.
Anyhow, h.264 will be about as useful 15 years from now as Intel Indeo is right now.
Patents on nineteenth century machines kind of made sense, because they might have helped moving some industries forward. Of course, patents did last a short amount of time compared to the usefulness of the invention. Right now we are still using combustion engines, and for the most part of the time they had no patents.
Patents in software, right now, cover a lot more than the lifetime of the invention. That way, they are useless to the general public.
It's not that you and your grandchildren will be dead, it's that patents will expire long after the technology becomes obsolete.
This is just like all those anti-gun politicians who won't go anywhere without their armed bodyguards. Hey, they don't believe in carrying guns personally, but you know, there are bad people out there...
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
It is a BSD style license, and also licenses you to use the patents on it royalty free, however it is revoked in the event you file a patent claim against VP8. Well this implies two things:
1) If you go after VP8, you can't use it in any form in any of your stuff. So say Sony sues over an H.264 patent they hold that they say VP8 infringes on. Ok now all their hardware can't legally play VP8 anymore, their license has been revoked. However that hardware may have the ability to do so because it is part of the TI chip they use (Google is working with chip makers). So now they have to recall existing hardware and redesign using a new chip, or face counter-litigation. Oh, and of course even if they do it means they can't play VP8 content anymore, which means their devices aren't as attractive.
2) Google has patents on VP8, that they got when they bought On2. If any technology the company filing suit makes use of infringes on those, well then they can count-sue. Perhaps one of the VP8 patents applies to H.264 as well. So you could risk getting nailed with a similar suit and finding yourself unable to sell hardware using H.264. Remember: MPEG-LA only says that their members can't sue you if you have a license. If anyone else who's not a member has a patent, well you are on your own.
Google is not stupid. They have a lot of smart people working there. They also, as with any company, have a plenty large legal staff. Given that they bought On2 some time ago, this is clearly not a spur-of-the-moment kind of decision. They've considered this. Well that tells me that they have come to the conclusion that either VP8 doesn't infringe, or that they have the resources to fight it.
Something else to remember is that while it might infringe on some patents, perhaps those patents are invalid, perhaps there's prior art. Now, who would be able to find that sort of thing the best? Probably someone who had access to a lot of information and was good at data mining. Well, that would be Google. They are the kings of data mining, they have access to more information than, well, probalby anyone except maybe the NSA.
So perhaps they looked at the MPEG-LA patents and said "Well, all of the ones VP8 might infringe on have prior art out there, so we can get them shot down."
Whatever the case, I bet this was a reasoned, thought out, move. They didn't just say "Hey, let's open source some shit for fun!" Also please note the coincides with their Google TV stuff. Google wants in to the video distribution market in a big way, they've been working on this and planning.
Now that doesn't mean they'd be successful. This could all get fought in court, Google could lose, etc. However they have the resources, in terms of money, brainpower, technology, and so on to fight. I'm guessing they think they can win.
Apple is just scared because they were starting to believe they were going to become the kings of all media, that everything would have to come through their devices, and Google is now threatening to take that away.
Yeah, but even MPEG-2 is better than MPEG-2.
That's not a joke or a typo. The codec world has moved on quite considerably since the release of MPEG-1, and development of MPEG-2 encoders has resulted in stunning improvements in the last few years, in part because of the requirements of ATSC, and in part because of the improvements in processor technology.
I've been wondering for a while if the right approach for the whole codec mess is to wait until MPEG-1 is truly free and clear, and adopt that. You may laugh, but try encoding something in MPEG-1 with ffmpeg, using large (> 100) GOP sizes, and high numbers of B-frames (16+.)* On a normal high performance computer in 2010, the speed of compression is too low to be practical, but the results are excellent, even at relatively low bitrates. 4-6Mbps is more than enough for high quality 720p24, in most cases.
For that reason, I think the Internet video codec debate will be over sooner than people think. The real work has to be done on the encoder side, improving the capabilities of encoders for older formats that'll be patent free soon. But if you look at the bigger picture, MPEG-1 video (and MPEG-1 layers 1/2 audio) will soon be free (some claim they already are), bandwidth is improving, CPU power is improving, While a superb MPEG-1 encoder will never be as good as a superb H.264 encoder, the necessity of one over the other will diminish in time.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
After the first billion or so, there's a limit to how much better of a lawyer you can buy.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
Yes, the problem is that there are some really bad patent thickets out there, and codecs are one of the worst patent thickets (also in terms of enforcement).
Yes, but it does show the amount of protection that the MPEG-LA license afforded. Absolutely none. Microsoft still had to go pay to defend itself from litigation, it still lost the litigation, and if it wouldn't have been for a judge that was willing to overturn a jury verdict Microsoft would still have been on the hook for millions of dollars.
The MPEG-LA license did absolutely nothing to protect against patent claims from parties outside the pool.