Newest Patent Threat to MPEG-4 365
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."
Typical (Score:4, Interesting)
1) Help to form new "revolutionary" file format. ...
2) Wait for it to take off and become popular
3) Use new file format popularity to hold companies to ransom thanks to the incompetancy of the current USPTO system.
4)
5) PROFIT!
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? Any patent issues should be resolved before a file format is made readily available, therefore any companies who happen to use the format will know of any pitfalls.
I still admit that this may be nothing compared to the JPEG patent (which about 99.9% of websites use), but it still seems silly, just like any other USPTO story which is posted on /.
Oh, and FP :)
XVID? (Score:5, Interesting)
ffmpeg? (Score:5, Interesting)
More like TradeMarks (Score:5, Interesting)
-Rick
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Hurting innovation (Score:3, Interesting)
Before the patent was invented, if you invented a way to do an existing process or manufacture an object cheaper and/or faster and/or better, you could put all your competetion out of business.
Of course, under this system you would be a fool to let anyone else know how to make a cotton gin or whatever. So what happened was that novel things and processes were invented, and the secrets of these inventions died with their inventors.
The patent system was thus itself invented - you have a limited time monopoly on your invention, but in return you have to let everyone know how it works.
Like everything else, after a couple hundred years it's been twisted by those with the power to change laws. The patent was supposed to do away with the trade secret; now the big multinationals have patents AND trade secrets.
Power corrupts, but it doesn't corrupt people, the people who seek power are already corrupted. What power corrupts is the system itself.
(lame MRC="recruits")
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
the worst part is.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:XVID? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:More like TradeMarks (Score:5, Interesting)
Heroin, Allen wrenches, and I think Spandex (Hence the new name Lycra) are all examples of this. There are many more, and there are plenty of companies that have trademarks that would appear to be in danger of "genericide" (the apparent legal term).
Xerox actually was in danger of this, and started a campaign against "xeroxing", strongly suggesting that people instead "photocopy" documents.
What underlying technology? (Score:3, Interesting)
AT&T or SBC? (Score:4, Interesting)
If I'm right we can expect a lot more of these from "AT&T" in the near future.
Re:Typical (Score:2, Interesting)
I think you will find that the more powerful government becomes, the more coercion and corruption you will find in the market (as opposed to voluntary association). The winners are those who can figure out how to exploit the power of government. The losers are those who rely on persuasion (voluntary association) to sell their product. Increasingly, the winners will be the bad guys, and the losers will be the good guys. There is no remedy to this problem short of reducing the power of government.
There are two modes of human interaction: voluntary association and coercion. Government is founded on the principle of coercion, whether one wants to admit it or not. (The social contract theory is false, because it is impossible to volunteer to subject oneself to coercion, just as it is impossible to coerce a person into volunteering!) As government grows more powerful, the ratio tilts in favor of coercion. Naturally, the path to financial success will be paved with coercion, not voluntary association.
Welcome to big government, where the crooks are the winners.
Re:What's the time limit? (Score:4, Interesting)
I agree it stinks, in fact I have been working on a part 4 to my essay [blogspot.com] where I make the same point.
The problem is how to get from 'this stinks' as Plankton would say,to solving the problem without creating ways to game the patent system entirely.
One solution would be to have a requirement that patent holders have to monitor major standards efforts in their field of invention, but how do you arrive at a legal definition of a standards effort? How do you avoid the problem of someone creating a bogus standards organization for the sole purpose of creating an exclusion to a patent?
OK I know this particular problem would not make slashdotters upset. However it would likely allow the patent trolls to stop the law being changed.
I am not interested in just debating the problem ad nauseam on slashdot, I want to get it fixed. To do that we need to create a wedge between the patent trolls and the major corporate holders of IP.
If you look at what free software people want and where the interests of the big computer corporations lie there is a huge overlap, probably 95%. The problem is that a small number of ultras insist on all or nothing.
Call me stupid, but how does AT&T have a claim (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:ffmpeg? (Score:3, Interesting)
As well, software patents are not valid in Europe, amongst other locales.
Thus, the FFMPEG implementation in that light is not infringing. However *actually using* the FFMPEG library in the US for anything other than research would be. Only people who hold a license to the disputed patent would be allowed to use the FFMPEG library for anything.
As illustrations of this point, see the VTK, which embeds patented technology such as the Marching Cube algorithm. When compiling the VTK, one can decide to include such pieces of software or not, depending on whether one is a licensee. See also various X11 antialiasing libraries which include code for a hinting interpreter, which is patented and labelled as such in the code. Most distributions turn it off, but it is there and can be enabled in jurisdictions for which the patent is not valid or if one holds a license for example.
OTOH, at the time of the LZW patent Unisys was actively harassing open source implementations of the algorithm, such as with the libtiff library, on the basis that mere distribution of code was usage. This behaviour never got challenged in court.
Richard Stallman was right (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:What underlying technology? (Score:3, Interesting)
Please explain, (Score:3, Interesting)
How is it that Daimler-Chrysler has a trademark on "Jeep," which started as a generic term used by servicemen ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeep#The_origin_of_th e_term_jeep [wikipedia.org] )? How does one go about taking a term in general public use, and turning it into private property?
Re:Typical (Submarine patents) (Score:5, Interesting)
This is an example of submarine patents [wikipedia.org]. You have an idea, quietly patent it, but noisily advertise the technology. Then you wait for the patents to be granted and for industry to incorporate your technology into their products. Once the market has matured, you fire off multiple patent violations in every direction. By then, the cost of removing your technology from their products will cost far more than it would to pay the license fee.
(For digital file formats, this is especially true, since both software and hardware codecs will already have been distributed, and third party customers will have distributed their data into this format.
Re:Patent Number (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:MPEG-4 was introduced over 7 years ago... (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Is it any wonder innovation is slowing? (Score:3, Interesting)
If you had any idea how much progress has been made in medical science in the past 15 years you wouldn't push these points. We've gone from knowing absolutely nothing about how some of these pathologies come about, to understanding the exact molecular mechanisms. Being able to do something about it (without killing the patient) is another story.
In the meantime, feel free to enjoy the fact that the mortality of your heart attack is now under 11% if you make it to the ER in time, down from over 50%. Plus now you can get a stent, or if you get coronary artery bypass grafts, they don't even need to stop your heart and hook you up to the pump anymore. Plus arterial grafts have a >90% patency at 10 years, up over 20% from venous grafts. Or that if you get many types of cancer you can live long enough to die from some other cause first. Or that you can have virtually any kind of surgery done endoscopically (not to mention the fact that the anaesthesia risk is way down now due to better drugs and monitoring techniques).
But yeah, people still die. And will continue to do so. If you had any idea of how the influenza virus works, and how easily it mutates, you would understand how hard it is to deal with it.
It's very easy to knock something you know nothing about. But rest assured, many solutions to these problems are being presented every month. We're not idle in the bio-medical field.
Cartoon: BIG bite requires new logo (Score:3, Interesting)
Apple's Quartz avoids Adobe's Postscript license fee. iPod music is about to be fully abstracted. ATT will be left to sell MPEG-4 versions of pop music on their own damn network if they want a royalty cut. Jobs isn't going to let their fee ride over his iTunes service for free. Fees work both ways...SBC
Re:Is it any wonder innovation is slowing? (Score:3, Interesting)
We can't teach you anything about these topics unless you sign this NDA right here.
If you want to work in these fields go out and rediscover it for yourself, then hire a patent attorney before selling anything.
Thanks,
The American Way of Life.
Ignore the shouting - want to hear the truth? (Score:1, Interesting)
In fact, for the last three I had to personally travel to the USPTO offices in Crystal City VA to argue with the Examiners and, in one case, before the Appeals Board itself. Endless paperwork, legal documents, and attorney's fees were involved. This was no cakewalk - the Examiners came at me and my employers with refusal after refusal and we had to counter them all, claim by claim.
OK, so now let's say you have a patent. It's not as "easy" as the "submarine patent" stories would have you believe. For example, if someone uses your technology for ~6 years (depends upon which Federal Circuit you're in) and then you try to shut them down, they can get an estoppel which essentially grants them royalty-free access to your patent forever. The court's "reasoning" here is that the holder of a patent has some obligation to police the use of their government-issued monopoly. It's not fair, according to the court, to permit someone to blindly invest lots of time and money and they pounce upon them after the fact. So if the patent holder doesn't act within a "reasonable" amount of time (generally held to be around six years), it is presumed that the patent holder is aware of the activity and, by not stopping it, has granted implicit permission. Nice, eh?
It goes on and on. Lots of people gripe about the patent system, but no one with any personal experience in the process of inventing something, filing a patent application, arguing with the Examiner and the Appeals Board, and going over the claims language word by word to satisfy the USPTO will ever tell you that getting a patent is "easy". Nor will they tell you that, once you have a patent, enforcing it is "easy". Anyone who says those things is inexperienced or an attorney.
Re:Is it any wonder innovation is slowing? (Score:2, Interesting)
Ummm... did you miss that many of these things too are also being patented so that companies can sit back and wait for someone to discover that their patented gene cures some disease... then wait for someone else to spend money developing the cure and claim they have the patent to that very gene that made the whole process possible and that they therefore deserve a large chunk of the pie?