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Audio and Video Patents Haunt Apple and Android
FlorianMueller writes "There seems to be no end to those smartphone patent suits. This week's special: audio and video patents that its owners claim are key to formats like MP3 and MPEG 2. The targets: Apple and Android. On Monday, Alcatel-Lucent subsidiary Multimedia Patent Trust filed a patent infringement suit in Southern California against Apple, LG (over 64 different phones including some Android-based ones), Canon and TiVo over four video patents. Fortunately for Apple and LG, none of the patents asserted against those two companies are likely to be in force by the time the judge decides, so there's no risk of an injunction. They may nevertheless have to pay for past damages. The same company once obtained a record $1.5 billion jury verdict against Microsoft but saw it slashed by a judge. And on Tuesday, Hybrid Audio LLC filed a suit in Eastern Texas, asserting a patent against various Apple products and certain Android-based products from HTC and Dell."
So MPEG-LA protection racket does not actually protect anybody? What a surprise.
The MPEG working group patented those formats almost 20 years ago
Except for the Spectral Band Replication (SBR) extension for MP3pro and AACplus. That was developed and owned by a private company, so it's possible there are other components that are also privately owned, rather than MPEG owned.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
I can only hope so many patent lawsuits will be started so that the whole system implodes upon its own stupidity.. Seems to much to ask for lawmakers to not take money from the industry so this might be the only way left..
Those companies themselves have more than enough patents to fence off possibile competitors (coincedently they are competitors of eachother ;)). So I wouldn't be too sure about them getting sick of patents. Especially since they also have the means to defend themselves from patent trolls and can afford an army of lawyers to get the best out of these lawsuits.
Exactly. The worst (but very likely) scenario is a cartel of software giants all holding patents and having agreements with others but meaning that no small developer or new company could develop anything without being attacked with thousands of general patents they could not afford to contest,
I keep hearing people blame this shit on the lawyers, but I just don't buy it. Lawyers don't have 100% say in whether a company sues another company for patent infringement. The lawyers merely point this out to the people in charge (the CEO, board of directors, etc). THOSE are the guys pulling the trigger and making the final decision to open these bullshit lawsuits...the lawyers are just doing their jobs. And no, I am not a lawyer.
Money is being spent on innovation........
The entire trust is managed by IPValue, a firm with nothing but lawyers who look for ways to extract money from others based on their patent portfolio.
I quote:
"IPVALUE’s operations are powered by a best-in-class team of experts in IP licensing and negotiations, IP law, business, and technology. Throughout their professional careers, our team members have generated more than $3 billion from IP transactions"
They don't make anything. You send them your unused or unenforced IP, and they go get you money through licensing or litigation.
So, yes, I blame the lawyers.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
big corps are being targeted by other patent trolls.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
now we can see why google bought on2 and provided (eventually) a royalty-free license for anyone implementing free software versions of the VP8 algorithm.
also we can see why the BBC developed "DIRAC" several years ago by combining the best algorithms they could find from *expired* patents.
so when you have situations where both ends of the (video) conversation can be controlled, there do exist "ways out" that terminate the possibility for patent trolls to get at you. (such as, for example, youtube being controlled by google and eventually transmitting VP8-encoded video and also android and webkit having VP8 receiver CODECs) ... it's just that there is still a sticking-point (due to the amounts of money invested) where the "de-facto" standard comes out of an organisation where patents are the norm. so i think this is a good thing, ultimately, for these big players to be smacked about and to lose billions off their profit margins. perhaps they will start to pursue similar strategies that google has with VP8, and the BBC did with DIRAC.
You both have good points, but I'd like to remind the GP that the legislators who've either taken IP law to absurd lengths or failed to correct it and the Judges who've been enforcing software and business method patents when they don't appear to be included in the intent of the law are almost all lawyers. American society seems to me be be of the Lawyers, by the Lawyers and for the Lawyers. The "Law" and the Legal system have become ends in themselves which is not why they were created. They were created in order to facilitate a more orderly and just society. Unfortunately its all devolved into a religious cult divorced from any higher purpose.
Very often, people confuse simple with simplistic. The nuance is lost on most. - Clement Mok
Except this is "gentleman's agreement to not sue" has already broken down.
Also, the patent system has become so shoddy that anyone can get a patent through now and sue these large companies. Countersuit? No - the plaintiff doesn't actually produce any product, so they cannot be in violation of any patent the company has.
This racket is starting to collapse under it's own weight. Before too long the large companies will see that its in their own best interest to lobby for patent reforms and abolish the software patents - if for no other reason than lobbying for such a law will save them money from being constantly trolled.
I sue you
You sue me
We're a sue-happy family
With a great big suit
And lawyer from me to you
We'll make sure we sue you too.
Blaming the lawyers is neither fair nor productive. The blame lies in a broken patent system that cripples innovation rather than promotes it. We need to change the laws such that software patents are not allowed. Blaming the lawyers is like shooting the messenger.
That can't be! Aren't patents there to protect the lone inventor in his garage from the existing big players that would otherwise just copy him ?!?
If you think imaginary property and real property are the same, when does your house become public domain?
So it's a half baked claim? ;)
Free Martian Whores!
No one is say that the Ogg Vorbis people are hiding patents under a rug waiting for someone to fall into their clever trap. What is considerably more likely is that someone, somewhere has patent on something that looks vaguely like Ogg Vorbis, and either hasn't realized it yet or hasn't yet found a juicy enough target to shoot a lawsuit at.
Example: Android. Open Source and and unencumbered by any patents from its inventor, Google. Google can, and has, guaranteed that they have left Android as free as possible for others to make use of. Unfortunately Oracle thinks they have some patents applicable to the technology that is the base of Android. So Oracle is suing both Google *and* the phone manufacturers. Google can't guarantee that their technology is unencumbered by other people's patents, no more can Ogg Vorbis.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
Be aware that almost every device that plays Ogg also plays MP3. There's little reason for Fraunhoffer et al to sue a manufacturer for violating their patents when that manufacturer is already licensing their patents for a different part of the same product. They're getting their cut, they're only going to get upset if Samsung et al stop licensing the patents, using as an excuse that having removed MP3 support from their players, they no longer need to license the technologies.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Software patents must die. Patents were never designed to protect ideas--especially mathematical ideas and a computer program is a mathematical idea that has been written down.
Copyright your code, treat it as a trade secret, but don't roadblock other developers from independently deriving their own mathematical ideas, however abstractly expresed. If you have code that you can link to a particular machine of yours, fine. But pure code must be free.
I see this thing as a ******* free speech issue. Mathematical speech is speech. So long as you're not copying somebody else's ******* speech, then you can say or write whatever the **** you want. This is ******* ******* America and it ****** me the **** off.
The problem is that our whole IP system exists -- according to the Constitution -- to advance innovation.
So the onus *should* be on its supporters to prove that it does that, not on everyone else to prove that it doesn't.
New stuff comes out so regularly we're practically numb to advances now. Innovation seems to be moving along at a pretty decent clip.
Every time a patent suit is settled or adjudicated without a finding of willful infringement, the patent system has failed to promote innovation.
I keep hearing people blame this shit on the lawyers, but I just don't buy it. Lawyers don't have 100% say in whether a company sues another company for patent infringement.
Lawyers don't sue people. People with lawyers sue people.
You'll take my lawyer when you pry him/her from my cold dead HR department.
If laws are outlawed, only outlaws will have laws.
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