Newest Patent Threat to MPEG-4

Sachin Garg writes "After the notorious JPEG patent which has made many big and small names pay huge amounts to Forgent (total more than $105 million), PCMag reports that AT&T claims to have a patent covering core MPEG-4 technology and has warned Apple and others of Patent Infringement. Pentax and Nero have already paid them."

Will Dirac be ready in time to rescue us?

[TripMaster Monkey]

Some information on Dirac can be found here [sourceforge.net] and here (PDF warning) [bbc.co.uk].

Re:ffmpeg?

[scuba0]

They have three options * If stationed outside of US don't bother * Exclude the codec * Pay the money Or maybe AT/T doesn't care about the opensource community because they can't collect any money there. Best option would be to let the opensource projects to roam free.

Re:Typical

[Hatta]

But honestly, is this the way for people to get their money nowadays? Claim "prior art" on any patent which seems convenient and then hold any company which uses the format to cut a hole in their wallet?

That's not what prior art means. Prior art is a way of invalidating a patent by showing that the idea existed and was in use before it was patented. If MPEG-4 or something like it existed before the patent was filed, that would be an example of prior art.

Re:How long have they been sitting on this?

[yeremein]

Perhaps I am confusing my types of Intellectual Property, but don't you have to show that you are actively defending your IP, or you give up your rights to it?

You are. Trademarks must be defended, but patents don't have to be.

You don't need your step 4

[Soybean47]

The point of a "..." or "????" step is that it's not clear how to get from the previous step to the following one. In this case, there's no "..." step. There's just proft.

Re:Hurting innovation

[gnasher719]

'' Are there any cases of patents actually helping people/companies? ''

In the case of MPEG 4, there are dozens and dozens of patents that all the parties involved have thrown together to create that standard, and they all license them to each other. You can get a license for that whole patent pool relatively cheaply, and I guess for free if you supplied patents to the pool.

The problem here is that AT & T is not in the pool, and that they don't have any MPEG 4 products. Apple or Microsoft couldn't do this kind of thing because they are members of that pool, and by making patent claims they would lose the right to use the other two dozen patents. AT&T has nothing to lose here as they have no MPEG 4 product.

Companies like Apple and Microsoft mostly benefit because the system allows standards to develop _without_ everyone having to check that there are no patents violated. Specialist companies that concentrate on producing that kind of intellectual property benefit because they have a much better chance to get paid; on the other hand, they can't demand extortionate fees because otherwise their stuff will not be made part of the standard. Companies like Nero benefit first because there is a standard, which makes life easier, and second, because they can get licenses for everything quite cheaply.

The whole system suffers if there are any outsiders involved who don't play by the rules.

Re:Next gen codecs

[WWWWolf]

Or rather, Theora's [theora.org] time, which not only is actually implemented in multiple popular cross-platform player softwares (VLC, RealPlayer) and has a nice converter (ffmpeg2theora), it's also - hopefully - proven to be free of patent issues. =)

SBC

[chill]

Please note that AT&T here really means SBC. SBC purchased AT&T not too long ago but kept the AT&T name. It is run by the same cocksucker who thinks Google, Yahoo and other content providers are getting a "free ride" on his infrastructure and wants to charge them for the right to travel his wires -- peering be damned.

  -Charles

old AT&T is now part of SBC (renamed to AT&

[RocketJeff]

First, the article stares that the original letter about this was sent back in December of 2005 - this is before the merger/rename was completed. This means that we can't blame SBC (now renamed to AT&T) for starting this.

OTOH, knowing how the 'new' AT&T (aka SBC) has handled things before, I don't think there is any hope of them just letting this go and ignoring that they have the patent. If anything, they now have more money and lawyers to persue other companies.

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Re:Hurting innovation

[Zeinfeld]

Are there any cases of patents actually helping people/companies? Why do I see story after story of companies whipping out their patents and hurting technology by suing and/or demanding massive royalty payments? Can someone point to any good uses of patents?

Patents helping companies, yes, plenty. AT&T was founded on a patent.

Patents helping society, yes, some. It is doubtful that there would be as much medical research without the incentive of a patent.

Junk patents harming society, well lets start with Henry Ford.

Before he invented the assembly line Ford made a much more important step to making cheap motor cars possible. He took on the Selden patent and the automotive manufacturers cartel. At the time the cartel insisted that you could only get a patent license if you paid a large royalty per car and that the car cost at least a certain amount. The other motor manufacturers went along with it even though they knew the patent was junk because it kept their sales prices high.

Looking at what we know of the AT&T case I can not tell whether it is in fact an example of a good or a bad patent. AT&T spent billions a year on Bell labs. Bell labs was founded as a patent factory. AT&T spent billions on research and then made it back licensing the patents.

This is a fair deal provided that two important criteria are met. First the party that gets the patent should be the actual real inventor of the invention. This is where the USPTO goes wrong by not following its own rules. They allow patents despite copious prior art and they allow patents that are far too broad.

The second criteria is that the 'invention' must be something that would not have been discovered anyway. This is where the US patent law needs to be changed. The 'obvious' criteria is not working.

A third criteria some people are trying to propose is some sort of fence test. A big problem with software patents is that you don't know where the field of the invention starts or stops. I think that this is probably just another aspect of the second prong.

I have no problem with the patentability of the RSA algorithm. There are four or five other patents I have read that are justifiable. But 98% of the software patents issued are pure junk.

Re:And to any "pro-business" (pro-patent) types...

[Tim C]

Where's our fusion energy?

There are a lot of things holding up fusion being a viable energy source, but trust me, patents are not one of them.

I'm not arguing against your main argument, but if you truly think that we don't have working fusion because of patents you need to do more research.

Re:MPEG-4 licensing confusion

[pruss]

Yes, a license was always required. But the MPEG LA visual license is royalty-free for less than 100,000 units, so someone who just wanted to personally use open source MPEG-4 stuff like xvid or tcpmp could just sign MPEG LA's license, compile his own copy of the code, and report to MPEG LA a sale of one unit (or few more with updates or multiple computers), and pay nothing. A nuisance (I do not know of anyone other than myself who has gone through this), of course.

They're already infringers.

[Spy der Mann]

The reason XVID binaries can only be found on underground networks, is because the MPEG4 standard is INFESTED with patents. There's no way an open source project can pay all the licenses. Ergo, they develop for "academic purposes", and provide only the source code so you have to compile it yourself. The binaries are unofficial, unsupported, in other words, taboo. Legally speaking, NOBODY should be using xvid AT ALL.

(Isn't it amusing how commercial interests hinder innovation? I've been expecting DivX-capable players since 5 years ago.)

There are NO patent free video codecs

[schngrg]

Opensource/freeware doesnt means patent free.

AFAIK, there arn't any open-source patent-free standards for video codecs, fortunately we have better luck with image (PNG) and audio (FLAC) formats.

Besides MPEG-4, JPEG2000 is the only other "standard" option available for cutting edge video compression. JPEG2000 recently gained traction [c10n.info] with digital cinema. But it will no longer be a surprise to see such patents come up for it within another 3-4 years. It has already had a near miss [c10n.info] recently.

Disclaimer: Shameless self promotion, above text taken from this post at Data Compression News Blog: After JPEG, Now Patent Threat to MPEG-4 [c10n.info]

Re:More like TradeMarks

[frinkster]

Maybe I'm completely off base, but I think I remember hearing that if you don't defend your trade mark, you can lose your rights to it. Patents should be the same way, if you knowingly allow your patent to be infringed apon for 3 years and never so much as mention it to the infringer, why should you have the right to sue?

I'm not a lawyer, but my wife is an intellectual property lawyer and tried explaining this to me. I'll try to explain it, but I may get some details wrong.

In fact patent infringers do have a similar protection. If you knowingly allow someone to infringe on your patent but wait for a while before filing an infringement lawsuit against them you give up the ability to collect damages during the period you knew about the infringement but did nothing about it. And I think it limits the amount of damages you can collect for the infringement after the lawsuit is filed.

In effect, you get a free ride on their intellectual property for as long as they knowingly allow you to infringe without doing anything to stop it. But as long as the patent is valid, they will always have the ability to stop you from infringing at any time.

If anyone can clarify further that would be appreciated.

Re:More like TradeMarks

[ubernostrum]

IANAL, etc., but the defense is called "laches", and this is my layman's understanding of it.

There are two things you have to demonstrate in order to use the laches defense:

1. There was an unreasonable delay between the time the patent holder found out about your infringment and the time he or she filed suit against you.
2. This delay caused "material prejudice or injury" to you.

So, to take an example, suppose that you're getting into the business of manufacturing widgets, and Acme Corp. sees your press releases and realizes you're infringing on their widget patent. Rather than take immediate action, they sit back and wait and, after you've been up and running for a while, they file a patent-infringement lawsuit and seek an injunction to stop you from making any more widgets until the suit is settled. At this point, you can meet both conditions of the laches defense: Acme Corp. delayed unreasonably in taking action, because they knew you were infringing long ago, and as a result you've suffered material injury -- had they acted sooner, you would either have licensed the patent, or found a way to make widgets that didn't infringe, and your business wouldn't be in deep trouble right now.

At this point, the patent is still valid and you will have to pay royalties on any widgets you make in the future (so this isn't really analogous to the situation with trademarks), but Acme Corp. can't demand back royalties for the widgets you made in the past.

So, basically, the doctrine of laches tries to make situations like this fair to everyone (you'll actually see it called "the equitable doctrine of laches" in a lot of places); it's fair to the patent holder, because they get royalties going forward, but it's fair to you because you're not held responsible for the damages incurred by their delay.

Parent is partially correct

[PCM2]

The parent is correct that MPEG-4 is "infested" with patents. You could easily say that the main reason the MPEG organization exists at all is due to the issue of patents in multimedia. They are countless. There are so many patents governing every individual aspect of multimedia file formats like MPEG, in fact, that it would be virtually impossible for anyone to move forward with a product without licensing some of them.

Seriously. If the companies that hold the multimedia patents did not work together, there would be no multimedia.

The MPEG-LA organization mentioned in TFA is the compromise these companies achieved. The purpose of MPEG-LA is to license those patents on a "reasonable and non-discriminatory" basis. "Non-discriminatory" means anyone is entitled to license the patents -- the patent owner cannot wield the patent as an anti-competitive tool. "Reasonable" means the fee does not amount to holding the licensee hostage; it does not, however, necessarily mean that the fee is affordable to anyone who asks.

An open source project like XviD, which has no money, is not in a position to license the MPEG patents, so they don't. As the parent said, the source code is available "for academic purposes." It's not illegal. The source code itself doesn't do anything. A working binary, on the other hand, may be infringing.

Given this legal gray area, why would a company like Philips take the risk of incorporating XviD compatibility into its products?

Easy. There's no risk. Philips licenses the patents. Case closed.

Patent system disfunctionality is deliberate.

[Futurepower(R)]

Some people claim that the US patent system is broken, but that way of expressing the problem is a bit misleading. The word "broken" implies that something undefined caused the patent system to be disfunctional. That's not what happened. The disfunctionality was caused deliberately. Those who want government corruption so that they can make money have caused the patent system to be underfunded. They've done the same to the Internal Revenue Service and the Securities and Exchange Commission. Here are short reviews of books about the corruption: Unprecedented Corruption: A guide to conflict of interest in the U.S. government [futurepower.org].

Re:Ignore the shouting - want to hear the truth?

[ebrandsberg]

You must have a dumbass lawyer if this [uspto.gov] patent can get through and you had issues. Not to be rude, but that patent PROVES there is an issue.

Re: AT&T

[dch24]

I live in the Bay Area. SBC advertises all the time here, trying to boost their image with "feel-good" ads like "SBC...powered by AT&T." But while they're buttering up the customers with TV ads on one hand, they're lobbying for government protection against the cable companies, [wibw.com] setting up a tiered internet [slashdot.org] to double-charge for traffic, and generally lobbying heavily [phoneplusmag.com] to maintain their position as the premier supplier of landlines.

Here's an example of how SBC is trying to win back the consumer [sfist.com]. (The reason for this blog was SBC's incredibly poor customer service. The U.S. lags considerably behind other countries on price and speed. Taiwan [tealit.com]: $23 USD. Hong Kong [wikipedia.org]: $19 USD. etc.)

You should probably know that SBC has expanded outside California, even before it merged with AT&T. And you are right about them having a bad name. Not that AT&T has a much better one.

Re:Pay Me Instead

[Anonymous Coward]

Bell Labs *was* a patent factory for the then-Bell.

When Bell was split up, some of Bell Labs went to the baby Bells as Bellcore which later became Telcordia, the rest stayed on as AT&T Bell Labs.

In the 90s when then-AT&T sold off Lucent, AT&T Bell Labs was again divided into two: most of the equipment-side research activity went to Lucent; the pure telecomms, largely operatioinal side of Bell Labs stayed with AT&T.

A merger of several baby Bells under the name SBC recently bought AT&T, and so controls a large fraction of Telcordia, as well as the remainder of AT&T Bell Labs.

There are also research holdings within now-AT&T in their overseas holdings and joint ventures like TeleDanmark or AT&T-Unisource.

Which Bell Labs this is is unclear, or even if the historical parts of Bell Labs is involved at all. The entity in TFA is AT&T, which is now pretty big.

What would really help is a patent number... no such luck there. :-(

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