5 ms·

Of course Jobs' answer is pure FUD. The MPEG LA and its Members (e.g. Apple) should either sue or shut up.

by Entlin 16y ago

_delirium 16y ago
It seems they're even more thrust into the sue-now-or-never position given Jobs's unwise email. Now that one of the patent-pool members has made an explicit, public threat of a patent lawsuit, the longer they wait, the more that estoppel tends against them.
- jacquesm 16y ago
  That's one excellent reason why as the CEO of a big company you should probably not be sending out emails to end users as a PR gimmick, stuff you write can come back to bite you, if you write it as the CEO then it can bite badly.
  - nitrogen 16y ago
    I've seen at least one situation where personal e-mail "from the CEO" was actually written by a committee, both to reduce individual liability and to free up more of the CEO's time. It was possible to identify who actually wrote the e-mail by the number of dashes used to separate the signature from the e-mail body. It's somewhat possible that, when it comes to e-mail, "Steve Jobs" is the official name of a cadre of executives and PR people with varying levels of expertise. Whether that actually is the case, or whether it actually works to provide plausible deniability, I don't know.
- astrange 16y ago
  Who ever said Apple is a member of the patent pool? Jobs certainly didn't, and Apple is not the sort of company that would own that kind of patent.
jacquesm 16y ago
I just read the mpeg LA roster (the pdf is posted in this thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1312344 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1312344), and I can't find Apple amongst the member list. Most of the other usual suspects are there (Microsoft, Samsung, Philips, etc), but Apple isn't mentioned, which is weird because on the http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/Licensors.aspx http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/Licensors.aspx site they are listed prominently. Any explanation for that ?
- pauldino 16y ago
  It might be that Apple joined MPEG LA after 2005 (when the PDF is dated) since their only patent listed in the pool was issued in 2007.
jws 16y ago
That would be convenient, but Jobs did not say it was MPEG LA assembling a patent portfolio to go after the OGG family. OGG poses no credible threat to H.264 and is not currently used by anyone with enough assets to make a lawsuit profitable. The business case for an OGG patent pool is to be in place when someone with deep pockets infringes. I'd put my money on one of the patent holders that got solicited for a possible pool being an Apple friendly and tipping Apple off. But back to the original article: Surely H.264 is a patent "mine field", but it is a mine field with a map. You buy your license and you are clear to go. Absent from the article is any description of how the OGG developers performed some sort of systematic patent search by people knowledgeable in patent law and compared them against the various format specifications and current algorithms. The developers not deliberately injecting patents isn't enough. You have to ensure you are not infringing all of them before you can use it if you are a target with deep pockets. I'm against almost all patents, but the OGG response doesn't do anything to convince me that OGG is patent proof and the Apple/MPEG LA villainy talk is irrelevant.
- CUViper 16y ago
  Well, that minefield map for H.264 only shows what patent mines the MPEG LA has laid down. But when it comes to hidden patents, why assume that H.264 is any better than Theora?
  - jws 16y ago
    The biggest companies in the video encoding industry, the ones with vast expertise in video patents, have a significant financial interest in making sure that no one else has a patent claim on their cash cow. It's a lot like buying mob protection.
    - nitrogen 16y ago
      But it doesn't work -- look at how Microsoft got sued by Alcatel-Lucent after licensing MP3 from Fraunhofer. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcatel-Lucent_v._Microsoft http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcatel-Lucent_v._Microsoft

Of course Jobs' answer is pure FUD. The MPEG LA and its Members (e.g. Apple) should either sue or shut up.

by Entlin 16y ago

Of course Jobs' answer is pure FUD. The MPEG LA and its Members (e.g. Apple) should either sue or shut up.

It seems they're even more thrust into the sue-now-or-never position given Jobs's unwise email. Now that one of the patent-pool members has made an explicit, public threat of a patent lawsuit, the longer they wait, the more that estoppel tends against them.

jacquesm 16y ago
That's one excellent reason why as the CEO of a big company you should probably not be sending out emails to end users as a PR gimmick, stuff you write can come back to bite you, if you write it as the CEO then it can bite badly.
- nitrogen 16y ago
  I've seen at least one situation where personal e-mail "from the CEO" was actually written by a committee, both to reduce individual liability and to free up more of the CEO's time. It was possible to identify who actually wrote the e-mail by the number of dashes used to separate the signature from the e-mail body. It's somewhat possible that, when it comes to e-mail, "Steve Jobs" is the official name of a cadre of executives and PR people with varying levels of expertise. Whether that actually is the case, or whether it actually works to provide plausible deniability, I don't know.
astrange 16y ago
Who ever said Apple is a member of the patent pool? Jobs certainly didn't, and Apple is not the sort of company that would own that kind of patent.

jacquesm 16y ago

I just read the mpeg LA roster (the pdf is posted in this thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1312344 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1312344), and I can't find Apple amongst the member list. Most of the other usual suspects are there (Microsoft, Samsung, Philips, etc), but Apple isn't mentioned, which is weird because on the http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/Licensors.aspx http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/Licensors.aspx site they are listed prominently. Any explanation for that ?

pauldino 16y ago
It might be that Apple joined MPEG LA after 2005 (when the PDF is dated) since their only patent listed in the pool was issued in 2007.

jws 16y ago

That would be convenient, but Jobs did not say it was MPEG LA assembling a patent portfolio to go after the OGG family. OGG poses no credible threat to H.264 and is not currently used by anyone with enough assets to make a lawsuit profitable. The business case for an OGG patent pool is to be in place when someone with deep pockets infringes. I'd put my money on one of the patent holders that got solicited for a possible pool being an Apple friendly and tipping Apple off. But back to the original article: Surely H.264 is a patent "mine field", but it is a mine field with a map. You buy your license and you are clear to go. Absent from the article is any description of how the OGG developers performed some sort of systematic patent search by people knowledgeable in patent law and compared them against the various format specifications and current algorithms. The developers not deliberately injecting patents isn't enough. You have to ensure you are not infringing all of them before you can use it if you are a target with deep pockets. I'm against almost all patents, but the OGG response doesn't do anything to convince me that OGG is patent proof and the Apple/MPEG LA villainy talk is irrelevant.

CUViper 16y ago
Well, that minefield map for H.264 only shows what patent mines the MPEG LA has laid down. But when it comes to hidden patents, why assume that H.264 is any better than Theora?
- jws 16y ago
  The biggest companies in the video encoding industry, the ones with vast expertise in video patents, have a significant financial interest in making sure that no one else has a patent claim on their cash cow. It's a lot like buying mob protection.
  - nitrogen 16y ago
    But it doesn't work -- look at how Microsoft got sued by Alcatel-Lucent after licensing MP3 from Fraunhofer. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcatel-Lucent_v._Microsoft http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcatel-Lucent_v._Microsoft