6 ms·

The future of innovation has patent-free standards

139 points by reedciccio 4y ago

kmeisthax 4y ago
Is this provoked by the recent investigation by the EU into AOM?[0] The biggest source of patent declarations for ISO is MPEG; video standards are the one part of software development where you really, really do need to worry about paying patent license fees. Everywhere else, the only thing software developers are worried about are patent trolls, who usually don't have enforceable patents, and rely on the cost of litigation alone as a way to extract licensing fees. Oddly enough, video standards used to be relatively free of this nonsense; but the actual patent revenues have been falling for a long time now, so all the patent owners are getting antsy and forming overlapping pools to try and make implementers pay more for the same patents. There's also the fact that ISO charges to purchase copies of their standards, but that only matters for people who want certifications. The actual standards aren't encumbered by any copyright ISO might hold on the document. [0] For context: The EU competition regulators believe AOM may have bullied people into royalty-free licensing. This could either be read as "Google screwed up their legal research" or the EU deciding that reciprocal royalty-free patent licensing itself needs to die.
- phh 4y ago
  > [0] For context: The EU competition regulators believe AOM may have bullied people into royalty-free licensing. This could either be read as "Google screwed up their legal research" or the EU deciding that reciprocal royalty-free patent licensing itself needs to die. Sounds like you're assuming that the issue is with AV1 itself. My personal guess is that the issue is rather that some AOM company could coerce some patent-owner companies into using AV1, and thus "relinquishing their patents". Stupid obviously unreal example: If Apple require iPhone resellers to display Apple's advertisement from AV1 codec. Then resellers have the choice to either stop selling Apple products, or give their patents for free to AOM. If that was real, it could be considered an abuse of Apple's dominant position.
  - kmeisthax 4y ago
    The issue would be with AV1 itself, because the investigation is about standards-essential patents (SEP) and the whole point of AV1 is to be royalty-free. If the EU decides that AOM violated competition rules to get blanket licenses to AV1 SEP, then that would (presumably) wipe away the SEP owner's obligations to reciprocally license those patents to new implementers. Then we're right back in the same overlapping-patent-pool hell that made H.265 so ludicrously expensive to license.
shreyshnaccount 4y ago
same goes for copyright atleast imo. when the revolution comes, let's do away with them
- xjay 4y ago
  ..and egos, and attribution.
- kube-system 4y ago
  Do you want to see what Linux looks like when it’s distributed as a binary with DRM? Because this is probably the best way to achieve that. “Abolishing copyright” is not the same as “abolishing people not wanting to cooperate”
  - goodpoint 4y ago
    This is correct. Unfortunately most people are pretty naive when it comes to the reasons and the history behind copyright and patents. Without any concept of authorship, moral rights and prior art we would go back to early 1900: a lot of technology was not only secret but even actively obfuscated. Companies would be secretive and uncooperative and society progresses much more slowly.
    - zozbot234 4y ago
      > a lot of technology was not only secret but even actively obfuscated. This is exactly the state of things today. It always takes significant time for a new technology area to open up and improve in transparency, and it's not at all clear that copyright and patents can really improve on this.
      - kube-system 4y ago
        IP rights are an olive branch to creators encouraging publishing, they don’t force anyone to publish their work. Taking away that incentive will result in a worsening of the situation, even though there will be a nonzero number of people who choose not to publish under both scenarios.
randcraw 4y ago
On a more general note, I wonder how much enforcement of patents will be rendered moot by two trends: 1) the rise of algorithms (which can't be patented) in replacing physical IP, and 2) the rising practice internationally of IP theft, esp in China? AFAIK, China has paid no price (legally) to date for stealing tech from others and disregarding patents/copyrights. What does that bode for IP enforcement if the #2 economy on Earth largely ignores it? Does this suggest we can expect enforcement of IP protection to fade everywhere someday soon?
- JacobiX 4y ago
  > Does this suggest we can expect enforcement of IP protection to fade everywhere someday soon? It could also be the other way around: in order to expand to new markets, Chinese companies will be obliged to comply with patents/copyrights laws. You can see that for instance Tencent and Huawei are AOM members, they can't simply use AV1 without license ...
- vkou 4y ago
  > AFAIK, China has paid no price (legally) to date for stealing tech from others and disregarding patents/copyrights. If you consider arresting Huawei executives, sanctions against that firm, and having their equipment banned/restricted for many use cases by a number of western governments to be 'no price', then sure, no price has been paid. We can split hairs as to the steps of the exact chain of causality that has lead us to that point, but I'm sure it was a factor.
  - trasz 4y ago
    Huawei _holds_ lots of patents there. It was sanctioned because US couldn’t compete on market terms, not because of alleged “IP theft” - which used to be a normal practice for US companies (and government; there are quite a few stories of American industrial espionage) until they got ahead.
    - kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
      They are sanctioned because their products are backdoored.
phh 4y ago
I think there is some middle ground to find. As of right now, looking at audio codecs on Play Store, there is some status quo which is IMO good (but it requires to actually be written somewhere, otherwise shit will happen): Opensource applications that are not shipped with devices but are available "on the internet", or some app store aren't threatened by patents holder. (Source: I'm a contributor of opensource NOVA Video Player, which was previously closed-source Archos Video Player) As a company, I think that paying for standards is fair, but it must be reasonable. Reasonable implies 1. clear rules which never blocks innovation [1][1b] 2. reasonable fee [2], 3. freedom of using whichever implementation of that standard I want, 4. If fee has been paid on HW, then any SW on that HW is allowed to use that license [1] Some vendors will sell their licenses exclusively on hardware, so if you sell an app, you're screwed [1b] Some vendors will require you to make different SKUs whether you enable it or not. What if user need to enable it later? [2] Sisvel's AV1 license is 15c, which is imo fair for a 200$ HW, but not for a 1$ ad-less video app. That being said, I have no idea how to actually make it fair. (Note that as I understand it, Sisvel's AV1 license is for HW, not SW, no idea how it works for SW)
- est31 4y ago
  > Sisvel's AV1 license is 15c, which is imo fair for a 200$ HW, but not for a 1$ ad-less video app. Yeah that's the problem. There is a multitude of business models, and some vendors give away their software for free completely. E.g. Mozilla ships their software to >200 monthly active users for free and only very weakly monetizes it. That means slightly over 2 USD of revenue per user in 2020. For comparison, Meta had 40 USD in 2021.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- marcosdumay 4y ago
  > Sisvel's AV1 license is 15c, which is imo fair for a 200$ HW, but not for a 1$ ad-less video app. I'd say that this is perfectly fair (as long as everybody pays the same), and it's a problem for the creator of the $1 app to sort out. The patent owner is explicitly disallowing the usage of his patent in low-value products, but there isn't anything wrong with this. Either somebody will make a killing selling a $5 app with it, or nobody will care about his standard. (Relatedly, you don't have a right to get the costs of your app to adjust around any price you want.) What is definitively not fair: 1 - Changing the price between licensees; 2 - Varying the price with product price, revenue, or any other metric; 3 - Embedding the license with any term that isn't payment from one side, license from the other.
nynx 4y ago
I absolutely hate to see consortiums patent and license out standards. I sort of get it if it’s a company patenting it, but a consortium should be separate from the business side of it.
- ChrisLomont 4y ago
  >but a consortium should be separate from the business side of it Who then pays for the consortium?
  - nynx 4y ago
    I don’t understand why a consortium would need a lot of funding if all it is doing is standardizing something that private companies have put together.
    - ChrisLomont 4y ago
      > all it is doing You mean hold meetings for perhaps hundreds of people many times a year, provide marketing, provide offices and a point of contact for those interested in the standard, hire lawyers to work on legal issues, hire editors to make standards well written, entice companies to join your standard as opposed to competing standards consortiums via using sales people to visit them, handle mailing lists, trackers, review cycles, secretarial staff, janitorial staff, renting collaborate workspaces for meetings, and on and on..... >that private companies have put together I think you have misunderstood the process. No single company usually makes such a standard, otherwise there would be no consortium. You want a consortium to be a mostly separate group that obtains input from companies to make a standard. Companies send members to sit in on meetings to craft or guide or merely be aware of how the standard is evolving over time so the company can gain some benefit. Simply google how to start a technical consortium to find some of the issues, things you'd need to do, and ways to get it all paid for. Take SMPTE, for example, the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers, which creates video standards among other things. They've published over 800 standards since founding in 1916. Check out their website https://www.smpte.org/ https://www.smpte.org/ They have global outreach, including education functions. Their staff page shows the major staff and functions - those people require offices and support staff. They provide market matching to connect groups to each other to further their standards - this takes effort and people. They have offices in many countries around the world..... Also in this space are the standardization consortiums ATSC, MPEG, JPEG, CCIR, CCITT, and a few others. So these are not simply copy and paste operations. Making a good standard and getting the market to adopt it is a lot of work.
Nasrudith 4y ago
With standards the question is "Do you really want the expense and hassle of a patent?" The answer is of course hell no. If you make a patented standard now you have two standards.
kache_ 4y ago
Patent law is going to get really ridiculous with all this AI IP generation The general ethos of most hacker SWEs I know building cool shit is: just build, if I get sued, it's a speeding ticket (That some VC will give me money to hire some lawyers to deal with).
acd 4y ago
Predict the following, higher inflation will cause central banks to raise interest rates to fight inflation. Higher interest rates will stop easy central bank and founder exit money flow to fund capital for startups. Startups without easy access to new rounds of capital will have to lay of staff. Engineers from previous startups will cause a resurge in opensource projects. Stable companies with solid profit track records will become popular to work for. As will working as own consultants freelancers writing open source. Patent free standards, open source and open hardware will become very popular. Trends being driven by more environmentally aware consumers and credit access.
phendrenad2 4y ago
The title states that patent-free is the future, but the article only says that it should be the future. I don't see that happening, as companies would rather pool their resources and make a closed standard (where they each have both a stake and some control) than use an open standard where their competitors may have zero stake, and the governance is provided by essentially whoever shows up and wants to govern.

139 points by reedciccio 4y ago

Is this provoked by the recent investigation by the EU into AOM?[0] The biggest source of patent declarations for ISO is MPEG; video standards are the one part of software development where you really, really do need to worry about paying patent license fees. Everywhere else, the only thing software developers are worried about are patent trolls, who usually don't have enforceable patents, and rely on the cost of litigation alone as a way to extract licensing fees. Oddly enough, video standards used to be relatively free of this nonsense; but the actual patent revenues have been falling for a long time now, so all the patent owners are getting antsy and forming overlapping pools to try and make implementers pay more for the same patents. There's also the fact that ISO charges to purchase copies of their standards, but that only matters for people who want certifications. The actual standards aren't encumbered by any copyright ISO might hold on the document. [0] For context: The EU competition regulators believe AOM may have bullied people into royalty-free licensing. This could either be read as "Google screwed up their legal research" or the EU deciding that reciprocal royalty-free patent licensing itself needs to die.

phh 4y ago
> [0] For context: The EU competition regulators believe AOM may have bullied people into royalty-free licensing. This could either be read as "Google screwed up their legal research" or the EU deciding that reciprocal royalty-free patent licensing itself needs to die. Sounds like you're assuming that the issue is with AV1 itself. My personal guess is that the issue is rather that some AOM company could coerce some patent-owner companies into using AV1, and thus "relinquishing their patents". Stupid obviously unreal example: If Apple require iPhone resellers to display Apple's advertisement from AV1 codec. Then resellers have the choice to either stop selling Apple products, or give their patents for free to AOM. If that was real, it could be considered an abuse of Apple's dominant position.
- kmeisthax 4y ago
  The issue would be with AV1 itself, because the investigation is about standards-essential patents (SEP) and the whole point of AV1 is to be royalty-free. If the EU decides that AOM violated competition rules to get blanket licenses to AV1 SEP, then that would (presumably) wipe away the SEP owner's obligations to reciprocally license those patents to new implementers. Then we're right back in the same overlapping-patent-pool hell that made H.265 so ludicrously expensive to license.

shreyshnaccount 4y ago

same goes for copyright atleast imo. when the revolution comes, let's do away with them

xjay 4y ago
..and egos, and attribution.
kube-system 4y ago
Do you want to see what Linux looks like when it’s distributed as a binary with DRM? Because this is probably the best way to achieve that. “Abolishing copyright” is not the same as “abolishing people not wanting to cooperate”
- goodpoint 4y ago
  This is correct. Unfortunately most people are pretty naive when it comes to the reasons and the history behind copyright and patents. Without any concept of authorship, moral rights and prior art we would go back to early 1900: a lot of technology was not only secret but even actively obfuscated. Companies would be secretive and uncooperative and society progresses much more slowly.
  - zozbot234 4y ago
    > a lot of technology was not only secret but even actively obfuscated. This is exactly the state of things today. It always takes significant time for a new technology area to open up and improve in transparency, and it's not at all clear that copyright and patents can really improve on this.
    - kube-system 4y ago
      IP rights are an olive branch to creators encouraging publishing, they don’t force anyone to publish their work. Taking away that incentive will result in a worsening of the situation, even though there will be a nonzero number of people who choose not to publish under both scenarios.

randcraw 4y ago

On a more general note, I wonder how much enforcement of patents will be rendered moot by two trends: 1) the rise of algorithms (which can't be patented) in replacing physical IP, and 2) the rising practice internationally of IP theft, esp in China? AFAIK, China has paid no price (legally) to date for stealing tech from others and disregarding patents/copyrights. What does that bode for IP enforcement if the #2 economy on Earth largely ignores it? Does this suggest we can expect enforcement of IP protection to fade everywhere someday soon?

JacobiX 4y ago
> Does this suggest we can expect enforcement of IP protection to fade everywhere someday soon? It could also be the other way around: in order to expand to new markets, Chinese companies will be obliged to comply with patents/copyrights laws. You can see that for instance Tencent and Huawei are AOM members, they can't simply use AV1 without license ...
vkou 4y ago
> AFAIK, China has paid no price (legally) to date for stealing tech from others and disregarding patents/copyrights. If you consider arresting Huawei executives, sanctions against that firm, and having their equipment banned/restricted for many use cases by a number of western governments to be 'no price', then sure, no price has been paid. We can split hairs as to the steps of the exact chain of causality that has lead us to that point, but I'm sure it was a factor.
- trasz 4y ago
  Huawei _holds_ lots of patents there. It was sanctioned because US couldn’t compete on market terms, not because of alleged “IP theft” - which used to be a normal practice for US companies (and government; there are quite a few stories of American industrial espionage) until they got ahead.
  - kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
    They are sanctioned because their products are backdoored.

phh 4y ago

I think there is some middle ground to find. As of right now, looking at audio codecs on Play Store, there is some status quo which is IMO good (but it requires to actually be written somewhere, otherwise shit will happen): Opensource applications that are not shipped with devices but are available "on the internet", or some app store aren't threatened by patents holder. (Source: I'm a contributor of opensource NOVA Video Player, which was previously closed-source Archos Video Player) As a company, I think that paying for standards is fair, but it must be reasonable. Reasonable implies 1. clear rules which never blocks innovation [1][1b] 2. reasonable fee [2], 3. freedom of using whichever implementation of that standard I want, 4. If fee has been paid on HW, then any SW on that HW is allowed to use that license [1] Some vendors will sell their licenses exclusively on hardware, so if you sell an app, you're screwed [1b] Some vendors will require you to make different SKUs whether you enable it or not. What if user need to enable it later? [2] Sisvel's AV1 license is 15c, which is imo fair for a 200$ HW, but not for a 1$ ad-less video app. That being said, I have no idea how to actually make it fair. (Note that as I understand it, Sisvel's AV1 license is for HW, not SW, no idea how it works for SW)

est31 4y ago
> Sisvel's AV1 license is 15c, which is imo fair for a 200$ HW, but not for a 1$ ad-less video app. Yeah that's the problem. There is a multitude of business models, and some vendors give away their software for free completely. E.g. Mozilla ships their software to >200 monthly active users for free and only very weakly monetizes it. That means slightly over 2 USD of revenue per user in 2020. For comparison, Meta had 40 USD in 2021.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
marcosdumay 4y ago
> Sisvel's AV1 license is 15c, which is imo fair for a 200$ HW, but not for a 1$ ad-less video app. I'd say that this is perfectly fair (as long as everybody pays the same), and it's a problem for the creator of the $1 app to sort out. The patent owner is explicitly disallowing the usage of his patent in low-value products, but there isn't anything wrong with this. Either somebody will make a killing selling a $5 app with it, or nobody will care about his standard. (Relatedly, you don't have a right to get the costs of your app to adjust around any price you want.) What is definitively not fair: 1 - Changing the price between licensees; 2 - Varying the price with product price, revenue, or any other metric; 3 - Embedding the license with any term that isn't payment from one side, license from the other.

nynx 4y ago

I absolutely hate to see consortiums patent and license out standards. I sort of get it if it’s a company patenting it, but a consortium should be separate from the business side of it.

ChrisLomont 4y ago
>but a consortium should be separate from the business side of it Who then pays for the consortium?
- nynx 4y ago
  I don’t understand why a consortium would need a lot of funding if all it is doing is standardizing something that private companies have put together.
  - ChrisLomont 4y ago
    > all it is doing You mean hold meetings for perhaps hundreds of people many times a year, provide marketing, provide offices and a point of contact for those interested in the standard, hire lawyers to work on legal issues, hire editors to make standards well written, entice companies to join your standard as opposed to competing standards consortiums via using sales people to visit them, handle mailing lists, trackers, review cycles, secretarial staff, janitorial staff, renting collaborate workspaces for meetings, and on and on..... >that private companies have put together I think you have misunderstood the process. No single company usually makes such a standard, otherwise there would be no consortium. You want a consortium to be a mostly separate group that obtains input from companies to make a standard. Companies send members to sit in on meetings to craft or guide or merely be aware of how the standard is evolving over time so the company can gain some benefit. Simply google how to start a technical consortium to find some of the issues, things you'd need to do, and ways to get it all paid for. Take SMPTE, for example, the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers, which creates video standards among other things. They've published over 800 standards since founding in 1916. Check out their website https://www.smpte.org/ https://www.smpte.org/ They have global outreach, including education functions. Their staff page shows the major staff and functions - those people require offices and support staff. They provide market matching to connect groups to each other to further their standards - this takes effort and people. They have offices in many countries around the world..... Also in this space are the standardization consortiums ATSC, MPEG, JPEG, CCIR, CCITT, and a few others. So these are not simply copy and paste operations. Making a good standard and getting the market to adopt it is a lot of work.

Nasrudith 4y ago

With standards the question is "Do you really want the expense and hassle of a patent?" The answer is of course hell no. If you make a patented standard now you have two standards.

kache_ 4y ago

Patent law is going to get really ridiculous with all this AI IP generation The general ethos of most hacker SWEs I know building cool shit is: just build, if I get sued, it's a speeding ticket (That some VC will give me money to hire some lawyers to deal with).

acd 4y ago

Predict the following, higher inflation will cause central banks to raise interest rates to fight inflation. Higher interest rates will stop easy central bank and founder exit money flow to fund capital for startups. Startups without easy access to new rounds of capital will have to lay of staff. Engineers from previous startups will cause a resurge in opensource projects. Stable companies with solid profit track records will become popular to work for. As will working as own consultants freelancers writing open source. Patent free standards, open source and open hardware will become very popular. Trends being driven by more environmentally aware consumers and credit access.

phendrenad2 4y ago

The title states that patent-free is the future, but the article only says that it should be the future. I don't see that happening, as companies would rather pool their resources and make a closed standard (where they each have both a stake and some control) than use an open standard where their competitors may have zero stake, and the governance is provided by essentially whoever shows up and wants to govern.