9 ms·

Theora More of a Patent Threat than H264? Wait, What?

33 points by nnutter 17y ago

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
noonespecial 17y ago
"No one in the market should be under the misimpression that other codecs such as Theora are patent-free," Horn claims, "Virtually all codecs are based on patented technology, and many of the essential patents may be the same as those that are essential to AVC/H.264. Translation: There's enough vague patents floating around out there that read "Its like TV but on the inter-computer-web-thingee" that no coding technology can ever be considered demonstrably free from infringement. So just pick a codec and know that if you make money, the trolls are going to be at your door, no matter what the pretext. If its not your video codec, it'll be your "one click shopping cart" or something else equally inane.
- papachito 17y ago
  Big games are shipping with both theora and vorbis. Nobody sued them. Also Youtube used VP6 and VP7 for a while which were just slight modifications of VP3, just like Theora. And nobody sued Youtube. So why would they wait for theora to become used if they could have just sued google? Doesn't make sense.
  - noonespecial 17y ago
    Because they don't want to sue google first. (There are much easier things to sue google/youtube over right now.) They want to sue a smallish company who will "license" rather than fight because they can't afford to. After a few of those build up some precedence, then they go after the really big fish. For the submarine to work on this type of thing, you have to wait until a great many players of all sizes adopt a technology and commit to it. I'm not saying we shouldn't use theora. We should keep our options open and use everything. I'm just saying that whatever becomes the dominant standard, be prepared for "I'm a pc and windows 7 was my idea", only with lawyers and stuff.
  - ZeroGravitas 17y ago
    Youtube have never used any On2 VPx codec to my knowledge, but Adobe Flash and basically every video site on the web used them up until about 2 years ago when they started to transition to H.264 (though many still use it for certain bitrates) so your basic point remains that lots of companies, big and small, used or are using it right now without any patent problems. (I assume Flash on mobile phones means they'll now all be exposed to the exact same patent risk too)
  - kierank 17y ago
    Whilst there are many big games which use Vorbis (Halo comes to mind) as far as I know there are none that use Theora. Most use Bink because of its simplicity.
    - ZeroGravitas 17y ago
      http://wiki.xiph.org/Games_that_use_Theora http://wiki.xiph.org/Games_that_use_Theora That's not a complete list since it is missing e.g. Starcraft 2
      - kierank 17y ago
        None of those I would consider "big games"
        ZeroGravitas 17y ago
        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman ?
        kierank 17y ago
        It would be if "big games" was as clear a category as "Scotsman".
tptacek 17y ago
This article is an attempt to win support for Theora over H.264 not by refuting the basic facts of the case, but by making us feel angry about those facts. Gruber in fact does not appear to be wrong: there are indeed two classes of patents that Theora is exposed to (general but poorly known patents covering modern codecs, and the patents MPEG LA owns). There clearly are codec patents that MPEG LA doesn't own. There clearly are codec patents that they do own. MPEG LA clearly isn't going to sue, in the immediacy, over their own patents. Meanwhile, it is indeed entirely in MPEG LA's own hands whether or not they will sue over use of Theora. They sure are a bunch of evil jerks. But that changes the facts of the case not one whit. Being upset about MPEG LA's IP position doesn't change what that position is.
- mmastrac 17y ago
  The article refutes the assertion that Theora is infringing on patents held in the MPEG LA patent pool. The MPEG LA has been shaking a stick over Theora's head, but has yet to point out which specific patent(s) Theora is indeed infringing. In fact, noone has come forward with a specific patent that has been shown to infringe after scrutiny and noone has yet sued Firefox for shipping this so-called infringing codec. The tone of the article is basically a "put up or shut up" directed at the MPEG LA members. When someone is trying to spread FUD about your product, there's not much else you can do except ask that they stop talking and start showing evidence. Since they've been unwilling to do so for some time, it's natural to conclude that this is nothing more than sabre-rattling to try and drum up some extra MPEG LA licensees.
  - tptacek 17y ago
    Do people familiar with the state of the art in codecs seriously think that MPEG LA doesn't have patents they could reasonably claim are infringed by Theora? That isn't the impression I had.
    - mmastrac 17y ago
      Noone, either familiar with the state of the art in codec or not, has come up with a reasonable set of patents that Theora's ancestor codec from 2001, VP3, could have possibly been infringing. Individuals are free to believe whatever they like, but there hasn't been any evidence of infringement beyond the MPEG LA's CEO making vague assertions. The MPEG LA has a financial interest in keeping the patent situation around Theora murky, which they've clearly done well. Just so it's clear (and some of the quotes by the MPEG LA's CEO make more sense from this page http://www.streamingmedia.com/article.asp?id=11746 http://www.streamingmedia.com/article.asp?id=11746): * Theora is a patented codec (ie: there are active patents today on the concepts used within VP3) * One of the MPEG LA's patent holders, On2/Google does hold those patents * On2 has, however, licensed those patents globally, indefinitely and royalty-free, making the above two points true but entirely a non-issue
guelo 17y ago
There seems to be some confusion around the term "submarine patent". One use of the term, which came around during the 1995 GATT/WTO debate and which is described in the Wikipedia article, refers to patent holders manipulating the PTO in order to keep them from issuing a patent until later when they are ready to sue. This practice was struck down by the courts and made impracticable by the 1995 law. The other use of the term is to refer to unknown patent infringement. This comes about because software patents are such a joke that nobody knows who exactly owns the patent to what. Even the inventor might not know that something infringes on their patent until lawyers start rummaging through their patent war chest looking for something to sue with. This second use of the term seems to be what Apple and MPEG LA are referring to.
maxharris 17y ago
You can't write an open letter and expect patent owners to tell you if you're infringing or not. The accepted thing is to conduct patent searches (money and lawyers), and make sure that your product does not run afoul of something that's already in there. I'm not saying that this system is ideal, (It is not! Let's make something better to replace the patent system - something based on private contract alone) but Theora is not necessarily legally OK (under the existing patent regime) just because some guy wrote a few open letters and posted them to a website. What would I do? I would go with whatever is the better technology. (And from what I've read, Theora is a terrible format.)
- akeefer 17y ago
  Making sure that some piece of software doesn't run afoul of an existing patent is basically impossible no matter how many billable lawyer hours you throw at the problem. You'll either come to the conclusion that everything has already been patented and thus you can never build anything ever again, if you read patents broadly, or you won't find anything at all, if you read them more narrowly and throw out the ones that obviously have prior art and should never have been granted. The only 100% reliable method of patent lawsuit control is software development abstinence . . .
- ZeroGravitas 17y ago
  Xiph and Mozilla have both done patent searches. The lawyers that they spent the money on told them that publicizing the results would reduce their options if they were ever sued so the only evidence they haven't found problems is that they haven't altered Theora to work around problems and that they ship it in their product, respectively. I would assume Google (and Opera and a bunch of other companies with slightly less impressive amounts of cash and lawyers) have done the same, though I don't think they've mentioned it if they have.

33 points by nnutter 17y ago

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

"No one in the market should be under the misimpression that other codecs such as Theora are patent-free," Horn claims, "Virtually all codecs are based on patented technology, and many of the essential patents may be the same as those that are essential to AVC/H.264. Translation: There's enough vague patents floating around out there that read "Its like TV but on the inter-computer-web-thingee" that no coding technology can ever be considered demonstrably free from infringement. So just pick a codec and know that if you make money, the trolls are going to be at your door, no matter what the pretext. If its not your video codec, it'll be your "one click shopping cart" or something else equally inane.

papachito 17y ago
Big games are shipping with both theora and vorbis. Nobody sued them. Also Youtube used VP6 and VP7 for a while which were just slight modifications of VP3, just like Theora. And nobody sued Youtube. So why would they wait for theora to become used if they could have just sued google? Doesn't make sense.
- noonespecial 17y ago
  Because they don't want to sue google first. (There are much easier things to sue google/youtube over right now.) They want to sue a smallish company who will "license" rather than fight because they can't afford to. After a few of those build up some precedence, then they go after the really big fish. For the submarine to work on this type of thing, you have to wait until a great many players of all sizes adopt a technology and commit to it. I'm not saying we shouldn't use theora. We should keep our options open and use everything. I'm just saying that whatever becomes the dominant standard, be prepared for "I'm a pc and windows 7 was my idea", only with lawyers and stuff.
- ZeroGravitas 17y ago
  Youtube have never used any On2 VPx codec to my knowledge, but Adobe Flash and basically every video site on the web used them up until about 2 years ago when they started to transition to H.264 (though many still use it for certain bitrates) so your basic point remains that lots of companies, big and small, used or are using it right now without any patent problems. (I assume Flash on mobile phones means they'll now all be exposed to the exact same patent risk too)
- kierank 17y ago
  Whilst there are many big games which use Vorbis (Halo comes to mind) as far as I know there are none that use Theora. Most use Bink because of its simplicity.
  - ZeroGravitas 17y ago
    http://wiki.xiph.org/Games_that_use_Theora http://wiki.xiph.org/Games_that_use_Theora That's not a complete list since it is missing e.g. Starcraft 2
    - kierank 17y ago
      None of those I would consider "big games"
      - ZeroGravitas 17y ago
        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman ?
        kierank 17y ago
        It would be if "big games" was as clear a category as "Scotsman".

tptacek 17y ago

This article is an attempt to win support for Theora over H.264 not by refuting the basic facts of the case, but by making us feel angry about those facts. Gruber in fact does not appear to be wrong: there are indeed two classes of patents that Theora is exposed to (general but poorly known patents covering modern codecs, and the patents MPEG LA owns). There clearly are codec patents that MPEG LA doesn't own. There clearly are codec patents that they do own. MPEG LA clearly isn't going to sue, in the immediacy, over their own patents. Meanwhile, it is indeed entirely in MPEG LA's own hands whether or not they will sue over use of Theora. They sure are a bunch of evil jerks. But that changes the facts of the case not one whit. Being upset about MPEG LA's IP position doesn't change what that position is.

mmastrac 17y ago
The article refutes the assertion that Theora is infringing on patents held in the MPEG LA patent pool. The MPEG LA has been shaking a stick over Theora's head, but has yet to point out which specific patent(s) Theora is indeed infringing. In fact, noone has come forward with a specific patent that has been shown to infringe after scrutiny and noone has yet sued Firefox for shipping this so-called infringing codec. The tone of the article is basically a "put up or shut up" directed at the MPEG LA members. When someone is trying to spread FUD about your product, there's not much else you can do except ask that they stop talking and start showing evidence. Since they've been unwilling to do so for some time, it's natural to conclude that this is nothing more than sabre-rattling to try and drum up some extra MPEG LA licensees.
- tptacek 17y ago
  Do people familiar with the state of the art in codecs seriously think that MPEG LA doesn't have patents they could reasonably claim are infringed by Theora? That isn't the impression I had.
  - mmastrac 17y ago
    Noone, either familiar with the state of the art in codec or not, has come up with a reasonable set of patents that Theora's ancestor codec from 2001, VP3, could have possibly been infringing. Individuals are free to believe whatever they like, but there hasn't been any evidence of infringement beyond the MPEG LA's CEO making vague assertions. The MPEG LA has a financial interest in keeping the patent situation around Theora murky, which they've clearly done well. Just so it's clear (and some of the quotes by the MPEG LA's CEO make more sense from this page http://www.streamingmedia.com/article.asp?id=11746 http://www.streamingmedia.com/article.asp?id=11746): * Theora is a patented codec (ie: there are active patents today on the concepts used within VP3) * One of the MPEG LA's patent holders, On2/Google does hold those patents * On2 has, however, licensed those patents globally, indefinitely and royalty-free, making the above two points true but entirely a non-issue

guelo 17y ago

There seems to be some confusion around the term "submarine patent". One use of the term, which came around during the 1995 GATT/WTO debate and which is described in the Wikipedia article, refers to patent holders manipulating the PTO in order to keep them from issuing a patent until later when they are ready to sue. This practice was struck down by the courts and made impracticable by the 1995 law. The other use of the term is to refer to unknown patent infringement. This comes about because software patents are such a joke that nobody knows who exactly owns the patent to what. Even the inventor might not know that something infringes on their patent until lawyers start rummaging through their patent war chest looking for something to sue with. This second use of the term seems to be what Apple and MPEG LA are referring to.

maxharris 17y ago

You can't write an open letter and expect patent owners to tell you if you're infringing or not. The accepted thing is to conduct patent searches (money and lawyers), and make sure that your product does not run afoul of something that's already in there. I'm not saying that this system is ideal, (It is not! Let's make something better to replace the patent system - something based on private contract alone) but Theora is not necessarily legally OK (under the existing patent regime) just because some guy wrote a few open letters and posted them to a website. What would I do? I would go with whatever is the better technology. (And from what I've read, Theora is a terrible format.)

akeefer 17y ago
Making sure that some piece of software doesn't run afoul of an existing patent is basically impossible no matter how many billable lawyer hours you throw at the problem. You'll either come to the conclusion that everything has already been patented and thus you can never build anything ever again, if you read patents broadly, or you won't find anything at all, if you read them more narrowly and throw out the ones that obviously have prior art and should never have been granted. The only 100% reliable method of patent lawsuit control is software development abstinence . . .
ZeroGravitas 17y ago
Xiph and Mozilla have both done patent searches. The lawyers that they spent the money on told them that publicizing the results would reduce their options if they were ever sued so the only evidence they haven't found problems is that they haven't altered Theora to work around problems and that they ship it in their product, respectively. I would assume Google (and Opera and a bunch of other companies with slightly less impressive amounts of cash and lawyers) have done the same, though I don't think they've mentioned it if they have.