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> Something like H.264 which is used by practically everything shouldn’t cost money to just look at the standard. While I generally agree, it sounds a bit like

> Something like H.264 which is used by practically everything shouldn’t cost money to just look at the standard. While I generally agree, it sounds a bit like "if you're successful, you're not allowed to earn money". It's a piece of work, still, and the creators should be allowed to earn money with it. I'd personally prefer if all standards are free, since especially with an obscure one you're SOL when it's locked behind a paywall; with H.264, you can probably find a way around. But its hard to combine that with intellectual property. Limiting the patent timeframe to five or ten years might be a good middle ground.

colejohnson66 6y ago
That is a very valid argument. I think the big problem (for me at least) is that these patents are (essentially) on math, just “done on a computer”. Sure, it’s math that would be impractical to do by hand, but it’s still just math. That’s the rub for me.
- newswasboring 6y ago
  You don't think mathematical ideas should be patentable?
xoa 6y ago
>While I generally agree, it sounds a bit like "if you're successful, you're not allowed to earn money". No, it's "if you're successful by NORMALLY ILLEGAL COLLUSION, than the ways in which you're allowed to earn money may be restricted." That's what "encumbered standards" are at the end of the day, explicitly established horizontal monopolies. Those mathematics patents covering H.264 wouldn't be worth remotely the same if there were a hundred different video formats going around of which only 1 or 2 used them. Or if everyone had just stuck with MPEG-2. Of course, the world would also overall be worse off in those cases too, with an even higher risk of vertical monopolies, wasted hardware/bandwidth, etc. So it makes sense to have a middle ground, to allow "standards" to grow the total pie non-linearly larger than it would have been otherwise. But at the same time that needs to be combined with much more stringent controls to avoid all the normal obvious risks of monopolies. Actors like Nokia and Qualcomm have been trying to have their cake and eat it too. They like the enormous monopoly lock-in value the standards give their patents, but then they also want to treat them like normal individual patents they can cut deals around. That's not how it should work. The reward for a Standards Essential Patent should be a reliable, fair fixed cut of a very, very big and dependable pie for the life of the patents/pool. Companies have the choice to go it alone if they'd like instead and not join the standard, which can then seek to work around them (or if that's impossible, disband and give up and at least not form any monopoly there). But if they have patents in a standard, they should face more restrictions due to the extra monopoly. It should be one or the other, not both.
derf_ 6y ago
The reward is that if you are successful, you get to interoperate with other people. That is the value that is unlocked, and it is a pretty huge value. The problem with patents and standards is that people are trying to charge for that value (the value of the network effects), and not the value of the technology. The big ideas of video compression are mostly more than 30 years old now, but the new patents are mostly on slight tweaks or additions (or things like header flags and other nonsense). No one would pay money for them except for the fact that they are part of the standard.

colejohnson66 6y ago

That is a very valid argument. I think the big problem (for me at least) is that these patents are (essentially) on math, just “done on a computer”. Sure, it’s math that would be impractical to do by hand, but it’s still just math. That’s the rub for me.

newswasboring 6y ago
You don't think mathematical ideas should be patentable?

xoa 6y ago

>While I generally agree, it sounds a bit like "if you're successful, you're not allowed to earn money". No, it's "if you're successful by NORMALLY ILLEGAL COLLUSION, than the ways in which you're allowed to earn money may be restricted." That's what "encumbered standards" are at the end of the day, explicitly established horizontal monopolies. Those mathematics patents covering H.264 wouldn't be worth remotely the same if there were a hundred different video formats going around of which only 1 or 2 used them. Or if everyone had just stuck with MPEG-2. Of course, the world would also overall be worse off in those cases too, with an even higher risk of vertical monopolies, wasted hardware/bandwidth, etc. So it makes sense to have a middle ground, to allow "standards" to grow the total pie non-linearly larger than it would have been otherwise. But at the same time that needs to be combined with much more stringent controls to avoid all the normal obvious risks of monopolies. Actors like Nokia and Qualcomm have been trying to have their cake and eat it too. They like the enormous monopoly lock-in value the standards give their patents, but then they also want to treat them like normal individual patents they can cut deals around. That's not how it should work. The reward for a Standards Essential Patent should be a reliable, fair fixed cut of a very, very big and dependable pie for the life of the patents/pool. Companies have the choice to go it alone if they'd like instead and not join the standard, which can then seek to work around them (or if that's impossible, disband and give up and at least not form any monopoly there). But if they have patents in a standard, they should face more restrictions due to the extra monopoly. It should be one or the other, not both.

derf_ 6y ago

The reward is that if you are successful, you get to interoperate with other people. That is the value that is unlocked, and it is a pretty huge value. The problem with patents and standards is that people are trying to charge for that value (the value of the network effects), and not the value of the technology. The big ideas of video compression are mostly more than 30 years old now, but the new patents are mostly on slight tweaks or additions (or things like header flags and other nonsense). No one would pay money for them except for the fact that they are part of the standard.