5 ms·

A Nokia spokesman is quoted in this article: http://www.fosspatents.com/2013/03/nokia-comments-on-vp8-patent.html http://www.fosspatents.com/2013/03/nokia-comme

by rlanday 14y ago

A Nokia spokesman is quoted in this article: http://www.fosspatents.com/2013/03/nokia-comments-on-vp8-patent.html http://www.fosspatents.com/2013/03/nokia-comments-on-vp8-pat... as stating “Nokia believes that open and collaborative efforts for standardization are in the best interests of consumers, innovators and the industry as a whole. We are now witnessing one company attempting to force the adoption of its proprietary technology, which offers no advantages over existing, widely deployed standards such as H.264 and infringes Nokia's intellectual property. As a result, we have taken the unusual step of declaring to the Internet Engineering Task Force that we are not prepared to license any Nokia patents which may be needed to implement its RFC6386 specification for VP8, or for derivative codecs.” So their position is that since VP8 does not offer any technical or licensing advantages over H.264 (Nokia being at least one company that owns or claims to own patents on it), they’re going to use their patents to prevent Google from promoting VP8. At this point, I don’t see why any reasonable person would still want to use H.264 over VP8.

derf_ 14y ago
Just a reminder to those who believe that royalty-free licensing _is_ an advantage, the IETF is a completely open standards body. Anyone can join the mailing lists and contribute to the decision making. The rtcweb chairs are currently planning to call for a decision on a Mandatory To Implement video codec on the mailing list in a few weeks, after Google publishes the license terms that came out of their deal with the MPEG LA. List information: https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/rtcweb https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/rtcweb
cromwellian 14y ago
In other words, this isn't really about innovation or "theft of ip", but suppressing competition, more evidence of the abuse of the patent system. As to why a reasonable person would want to not use H.264? It's simple. Organizations like Mozilla cannot ship software with IP encumbered codecs. WebRTC doesn't say that you cannot use H.264, it allows you to negotiate the codec, this debate over what is the minimum fallback codec that everyone has to support. Given that Microsoft/Skype/Nokia have been against the IETF WebRTC proposal, you can gather for very good business reasons. A non-IP encumbered spec widely deployed would be a threat to Skype/Cisco/Nokia et al who have commercial video conferencing stuff, it would commoditize the market for video chat and make it a trivial matter. The established players only have to gain by delaying an open spec. I think even if H264 were used over VP8, there Microsoft and others would find other reasons to stop it.
- rlanday 14y ago
  Well, I guess it looks like they’re suppresing competition, but if Nokia’s correct that they own patents on VP8, then VP8 is patent encumbered and promoting it just creates fragmentation. This argument seems kind of tautological if Nokia’s the only company with patents on VP8 that Google does not have a license to, but otherwise it seems reasonable. They could offer to license their VP8 patents at the same cost they offer their H.264 patents at, but instead they’re choosing not to license them at all. What other motive would they have for “suppressing competition” if they could charge the same to license their patents either way?
  - cromwellian 14y ago
    Realistically, everything is patent encumbered. It's probably impossible to write anything that has more than 1,000 lines of code that isn't. That's not a good argument for defeating a spec, it's a good argument for opposing patent trolling and reforming the patent system. Clearly, Nokia, which used to be a leader in the mobile market, is on is on a downhill slide and like Kodak was with film, and is turning to their patent portfolio to slow down the slide into the abyss. This is typical in the industry, when companies start losing marketshare to competition, they start getting litigious. For example, they are suing HTC over a 1995 patent on "tethering". Really? The entire internet going back to the 80s is about tethering. I used to tether my Amiga off of a PC via a null-modem cable to get internet access. This is a pretty offensive patent, in the "disgusting" sense. Apple similarly sued poor old HTC over a 90s patent on using regular expressions to detect phone numbers in a page and make them clickable. Legal or not, the whole idea of "ownership" of this kind is deeply disturbing to me. The new generation of entrepreneurs have to contend with an environment that was far more litigious than it was in the dawn of personal computing, and often the very same players who benefited early on by lack of trolls, are now some of the biggest. The only glimmer of light for me is that by the time my son is old enough to make his way in the world, most of this crap will have expired.

by rlanday 14y ago

derf_ 14y ago

Just a reminder to those who believe that royalty-free licensing _is_ an advantage, the IETF is a completely open standards body. Anyone can join the mailing lists and contribute to the decision making. The rtcweb chairs are currently planning to call for a decision on a Mandatory To Implement video codec on the mailing list in a few weeks, after Google publishes the license terms that came out of their deal with the MPEG LA. List information: https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/rtcweb https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/rtcweb

cromwellian 14y ago

In other words, this isn't really about innovation or "theft of ip", but suppressing competition, more evidence of the abuse of the patent system. As to why a reasonable person would want to not use H.264? It's simple. Organizations like Mozilla cannot ship software with IP encumbered codecs. WebRTC doesn't say that you cannot use H.264, it allows you to negotiate the codec, this debate over what is the minimum fallback codec that everyone has to support. Given that Microsoft/Skype/Nokia have been against the IETF WebRTC proposal, you can gather for very good business reasons. A non-IP encumbered spec widely deployed would be a threat to Skype/Cisco/Nokia et al who have commercial video conferencing stuff, it would commoditize the market for video chat and make it a trivial matter. The established players only have to gain by delaying an open spec. I think even if H264 were used over VP8, there Microsoft and others would find other reasons to stop it.

rlanday 14y ago
Well, I guess it looks like they’re suppresing competition, but if Nokia’s correct that they own patents on VP8, then VP8 is patent encumbered and promoting it just creates fragmentation. This argument seems kind of tautological if Nokia’s the only company with patents on VP8 that Google does not have a license to, but otherwise it seems reasonable. They could offer to license their VP8 patents at the same cost they offer their H.264 patents at, but instead they’re choosing not to license them at all. What other motive would they have for “suppressing competition” if they could charge the same to license their patents either way?
- cromwellian 14y ago
  Realistically, everything is patent encumbered. It's probably impossible to write anything that has more than 1,000 lines of code that isn't. That's not a good argument for defeating a spec, it's a good argument for opposing patent trolling and reforming the patent system. Clearly, Nokia, which used to be a leader in the mobile market, is on is on a downhill slide and like Kodak was with film, and is turning to their patent portfolio to slow down the slide into the abyss. This is typical in the industry, when companies start losing marketshare to competition, they start getting litigious. For example, they are suing HTC over a 1995 patent on "tethering". Really? The entire internet going back to the 80s is about tethering. I used to tether my Amiga off of a PC via a null-modem cable to get internet access. This is a pretty offensive patent, in the "disgusting" sense. Apple similarly sued poor old HTC over a 90s patent on using regular expressions to detect phone numbers in a page and make them clickable. Legal or not, the whole idea of "ownership" of this kind is deeply disturbing to me. The new generation of entrepreneurs have to contend with an environment that was far more litigious than it was in the dawn of personal computing, and often the very same players who benefited early on by lack of trolls, are now some of the biggest. The only glimmer of light for me is that by the time my son is old enough to make his way in the world, most of this crap will have expired.