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Cisco Developing Royalty Free Video Codec: Thor
An anonymous reader writes: Video codec licensing has never been great, and it's gotten even more complicated and expensive in recent years. While H.264 had a single license pool and an upper bound on yearly licensing costs, successor H.265 has two pools (so far) and no limit. Cisco has decided that this precludes the use of H.265 in open source or other free-as-in-beer software, so they've struck out on their own to create a new, royalty-free codec called Thor. They've already open-sourced the code and invited contributions.
Cisco says, "The effort is being staffed by some of the world's most foremost codec experts, including the legendary Gisle Bjøntegaard and Arild Fuldseth, both of whom have been heavy contributors to prior video codecs. We also hired patent lawyers and consultants familiar with this technology area. We created a new codec development process which would allow us to work through the long list of patents in this space, and continually evolve our codec to work around or avoid those patents."
Cisco says, "The effort is being staffed by some of the world's most foremost codec experts, including the legendary Gisle Bjøntegaard and Arild Fuldseth, both of whom have been heavy contributors to prior video codecs. We also hired patent lawyers and consultants familiar with this technology area. We created a new codec development process which would allow us to work through the long list of patents in this space, and continually evolve our codec to work around or avoid those patents."
Doesn't it all come down to math? That is, the algorithms being used for compression is just math. How can these patents remain valid?
your brightly polished license-free codec is going nowhere.
Not really. The target for NetVC is the Internet and particularly the web (HTML5 video and WebRTC). It doesn't matter if it isn't used in studio production or theatrical distribution. That wasn't the goal in the first place.
It all comes down to levers. Any machine made of metal or wood is a bunch of levers, arranged in some way to be useful. (Realizing that cranks and gears are simply levers that go all the way around).
If someone invents a NEW way of arranging levers to make something that does something USEFUL, they can apply for a limited-time"monopoly on that invention. If someone invents a NEW way of arranging of arranging goto statements to create a new thing that something something useful, they can similarly also apply for a patent.
Such is necessary because software is a large series of logic 'gates'. That exact same arrangement of gates can be built in C, silicon, PHP, or copper coils. A scissor is a scissor whether it's made in steel or in brass. An mpeg decoder is an mpeg decoder whether it's made in silicon or made in C - it's the same machine.
Because patents are issued by government bureaucrats, there is little incentive for the patent workers to do a good job, so we end up with bad patents, patents on "inventions" which are not new, and are not useful. That happens with "inventions" made with wood and"inventions made with C#.
The anti-patent activists have spread a misconception that "math can't be patented ", and therefore any use of math can't be patented. That's plain false. The actual text is "the laws of nature, including the laws of science and mathematics" are not patentable. In other words, you can't patent gravity, but you CAN patent an invention based on gravity, such as a new type of elevator. You can't patent magnetism, you can patent a new type of motor which uses magnetism. You can't patent multiplication, you can patent a new invention which uses multiplication to create some useful new thing (such as a better code ).