3 ms·

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

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.

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.