7 ms·

I think you gravely misunderstand the patent system. When you can get a patent on drawing a line onto the screen (http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=KYwhAAA

by fryguy 16y ago

I think you gravely misunderstand the patent system. When you can get a patent on drawing a line onto the screen (http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=KYwhAAAAEBAJ&dq=render+line+raster+display http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=KYwhAAAAEBAJ&dq=r...), it means that anything in your codec might be patented by some ridiculous patent already.

tomlin 16y ago
Granted. I know very little about patents, I still see these loaded statements as conscience injections, red herrings, and convenient sound bites for zealots like Gruber. Might is different that is, but on Gruber's blog it's a testament to an agenda. The MPEG LA knows this.
- fryguy 16y ago
  There is no doubt in my mind that someone has a registered patent that the VP8 codec infringes on, due to the terrible state of the patent system as a whole. Now whether that is a valid patent is something that lawyers and lots of money will determine. However, someone needs to front that money, and AFAIK Google isn't providing patent indemnity for using the codec. It really is a smart business move to pay the relatively small license fee to MPEG LA than risk losing your entire company to a lawsuit (or lawyer fees)
  - ZeroGravitas 16y ago
    If you really believe the patent system is that bad, then it's just as likely that a rogue patent reads on H.264. Although popularly believed, the MPEG-LA doesn't provide patent indemnity for H.264 so you can pay the small licence fee and still lose your entire company in a lawsuit.
    - fryguy 16y ago
      Well the odds are somewhat high that if one has a patent on something in h.264, they would have joined the consortium and gotten royalties for it already. Plus there are a lot of patents that already exist in the patent pool that MPEG-LA has, which is indirectly what the MPEG-LA guy is saying, that one of them probably infringes. My head hurt after going through one software patent trying to figure out what it actually meant. I can't imagine cross referencing every single patent against everything that WebM does.
chc 16y ago
So might your own proprietary software. And the Pope might be an axe murderer. A very large number of things might be true. Singling out this software as particularly hazardous because of mights smacks of FUD.
- kronusaturn 16y ago
  If you walk across a minefield, you might step on a mine. Singling out minefields as particularly hazardous because of mights smacks of FUD. Joking aside, this is a false dilemma. Patent trolls actually exist, inadvertent patent infringement is not some purely hypothetical risk. Particularly in fields like video codecs where the mines are laid especially thick.
  - chc 16y ago
    If you walk across a minefield, you are walking into a place where there are proven to be mines in your likely path. That's a much more present danger than the mere possibility of a mine's existence. A minefield verifiably has mines, not just might have mines, and thus walking in an arbitrary path there has a measurable chance of blowing you up (and there might be some specific paths with a 0% chance of blowing you up, which are also different from the minefield in general). In spite of this supposed huge vulnerability, nobody has ever suggested even one single patent that could potentially be read as covering anything in Google's WebM tech, much less the "minefield" that MPEG-LA try to conjure up with their vague insinuations. You'd be about as well-supported by the evidence if you claimed that God just hates WebM and will smite down anyone who uses it to encode video. I'm not saying that WebM isn't on a patent minefield. I can't prove that negative claim. But I can say that I've never seen anyone offer any credible evidence for this minefield.
    - rbarooah 16y ago
      Is there a reason that Google isn't offering patent indemnification other than that they aren't sure WebM is patent free either?
      - 16y ago

by fryguy 16y ago

tomlin 16y ago

Granted. I know very little about patents, I still see these loaded statements as conscience injections, red herrings, and convenient sound bites for zealots like Gruber. Might is different that is, but on Gruber's blog it's a testament to an agenda. The MPEG LA knows this.

fryguy 16y ago
There is no doubt in my mind that someone has a registered patent that the VP8 codec infringes on, due to the terrible state of the patent system as a whole. Now whether that is a valid patent is something that lawyers and lots of money will determine. However, someone needs to front that money, and AFAIK Google isn't providing patent indemnity for using the codec. It really is a smart business move to pay the relatively small license fee to MPEG LA than risk losing your entire company to a lawsuit (or lawyer fees)
- ZeroGravitas 16y ago
  If you really believe the patent system is that bad, then it's just as likely that a rogue patent reads on H.264. Although popularly believed, the MPEG-LA doesn't provide patent indemnity for H.264 so you can pay the small licence fee and still lose your entire company in a lawsuit.
  - fryguy 16y ago
    Well the odds are somewhat high that if one has a patent on something in h.264, they would have joined the consortium and gotten royalties for it already. Plus there are a lot of patents that already exist in the patent pool that MPEG-LA has, which is indirectly what the MPEG-LA guy is saying, that one of them probably infringes. My head hurt after going through one software patent trying to figure out what it actually meant. I can't imagine cross referencing every single patent against everything that WebM does.

chc 16y ago

So might your own proprietary software. And the Pope might be an axe murderer. A very large number of things might be true. Singling out this software as particularly hazardous because of mights smacks of FUD.

kronusaturn 16y ago
If you walk across a minefield, you might step on a mine. Singling out minefields as particularly hazardous because of mights smacks of FUD. Joking aside, this is a false dilemma. Patent trolls actually exist, inadvertent patent infringement is not some purely hypothetical risk. Particularly in fields like video codecs where the mines are laid especially thick.
- chc 16y ago
  If you walk across a minefield, you are walking into a place where there are proven to be mines in your likely path. That's a much more present danger than the mere possibility of a mine's existence. A minefield verifiably has mines, not just might have mines, and thus walking in an arbitrary path there has a measurable chance of blowing you up (and there might be some specific paths with a 0% chance of blowing you up, which are also different from the minefield in general). In spite of this supposed huge vulnerability, nobody has ever suggested even one single patent that could potentially be read as covering anything in Google's WebM tech, much less the "minefield" that MPEG-LA try to conjure up with their vague insinuations. You'd be about as well-supported by the evidence if you claimed that God just hates WebM and will smite down anyone who uses it to encode video. I'm not saying that WebM isn't on a patent minefield. I can't prove that negative claim. But I can say that I've never seen anyone offer any credible evidence for this minefield.
  - rbarooah 16y ago
    Is there a reason that Google isn't offering patent indemnification other than that they aren't sure WebM is patent free either?
    - 16y ago