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MPEG LA Announces Call For DASH Patents

Posted by Soulskill on from the grab-grab-grab dept.

An anonymous reader writes: The MPEG LA has announced a call for patents essential to the Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (or DASH) standard. According to the MPEG LA's press release, "Market adoption of DASH technology standards has increased to the point where the market would benefit from the availability of a convenient nondiscriminatory, nonexclusive worldwide one-stop patent pool license." The newly formed MPEG-DASH patent pool's licensing program will allegedly offer the market "efficient access to this important technology."

6 of 66 comments (clear)

  1. Not Quite by doas777 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    No, what we need is an abolishment on Software Patents, so that armed thugs like the MPEGLA can't extort licensing fees from a developer because the code they wrote on their own happens to do something that is abstractly claimed in some random poor quality patent.

  2. License-free provides the most efficient access by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The newly formed MPEG-DASH patent pool's licensing program will allegedly offer the market "efficient access to this important technology."

    This patenting places a burden on such access, the exact opposite of their declared purpose.

    Pure, unadulterated, greedy bastards.

  3. What is patentable? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Dash is an XML format containing the URL's to media files and additional metadata (bitrates etc). Is there something novel or none-obvious about the way it works that a 12 year old couldn't figure out?

    1. Re:What is patentable? by Holi · · Score: 4, Informative

      The patent office just issues patents, they think the courts are where those type of disputes should be handled. The courts think that since the patent office issued the patent it must be valid.

      You have two sides, neither of which are doing their job because they figure the other is.

      --
      Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
  4. Translation ... by gstoddart · · Score: 4

    "Market adoption of DASH technology standards has increased to the point where the market would benefit from the availability of a convenient nondiscriminatory, nonexclusive worldwide one-stop patent pool license."

    Which roughly translates into "Wouldn't it be awesome if all you bitches had to keep paying us money?".

    So many software patents are bloody terrible. They're stuff we all learned about in school, applied to a specific thing, and then made so generic as to claim ownership of pretty an entire class of computing.

    This entity needs to stop existing, as they're really nothing but parasites pretending they invented anything.

    Assholes.

    --
    Lost at C:>. Found at C.
  5. Obnoxious terminology by michaelmalak · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Here is the original MPEG-LA press release. They really did entitle it "call for patents", which is obnoxious because it plays off of "call for papers", which is a call to share technology information, not restrict it. This type of turning a phrase to be the opposite and evil intention of its original reminds me of Braveheart's jus primae noctis.