4 ms·

Nokia defies Google over VP8, refuses to license patents

10 points by yread 14y ago

laumars 14y ago
I really hate the direction Nokia are heading in.
- gillianseed 14y ago
  This is obviously 'plan b' in terms of preventing a royalty-free video codec from being standarised, as evidenced by Nokia not being interested in licencing the possibly infringed upon patents at all. In short they want to kill off vp8, or at the very least prevent it from becoming a HTML5/RTC standard. One would ask oneself what Nokia stands to gain, as it logically would make more sense for them to ask for a licence fee than to try to prevent VP8 from being used. Of course, knowing that Microsoft holds the reigns at Nokia through Elop it's not that much of a mystery. Also highlighted by Nokia lying in their statement: "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." The hypocrisy and outright lying is frightening. VP8 is not proprietary in any meaning of the word, while it's being developed pretty much solely by Google it's done so in fully open source fashion, through a public git repo. It's advantages is that it's geared towards real-time video and of course entirely royalty free, the latter being what rubs MPEGLA the wrong way. A court (or likely several as the patents are applied in several countries) will have to decide upon the validity of these patents. But of course the whole point of this is again to throw a patent cloud over VP8 in order to prevent it from being standarised as part of HTML5/VP8, these proceedings will take time during which h264 will likely have time to entrench itself as the HTML5 video option despite not being an official mandatory implementation. The stakes are high as the members of MPEGLA are expecting to cash in on royalties by cornering the video codec market, and obviously a roaylty free quality codec is an enormous threat to their continous royalty-based cash flow. I guess it should have have caused alarm when MPEGLA backed off VP8 like they did, I can ony assume they knew of this impending patent suit from Nokia. I really hope Google stays the course and fights Nokia, but of course then some other sock puppet patent holder will likely emerge. In short, I don't see a chance in hell anymore that we will be able to benefit from a royalty free web standard and all the potential that this holds. If Google backs off trying to standarise VP8 I'm certain MPEGLA cohorts will stop harassing them, unfortulately this means we will have an effective monopoly in the video codec market and that's bad for everyone but the MPEGLA members. And what can I say about Nokia, a company I once held in great regard, now a Microsoft subsidiary in all but writing, led by a major Microsoft shareholder, how sad.
  - recoiledsnake 14y ago
    Why should Nokia help Google for free to reduce its licensing costs on things like Youtube when Google has used its search profits to dump a free mobile OS into the market thus hurting Nokia's profits? The "not willing to license" stuff is just legal posturing, there's a right price for the licenses which it wants Google to cough up from it's $50B cash. This has nothing to do with Microsoft either.
    - rlanday 14y ago
      H.264 is royalty-free for free web broadcast, so I don’t think YouTube has to pay a per-video or per-user fee. Google probably has to pay a fee per encoder, but that seems like a relatively minor cost. They probably also have to pay a decoder fee for every copy of Chrome downloaded. If Microsoft’s pulling strings at Nokia, it’s probably because Google hypocritically tried to screw them over using Motorola’s H.264 patents: http://www.electronista.com/articles/13/03/22/one.patent.remains.to.be.heard.by.itc.in.this.battery.of.complaints/ http://www.electronista.com/articles/13/03/22/one.patent.rem... Does it really seem like Google’s acting in good faith here?
dgreensp 14y ago
The spin here is out of control. Google's "agenda" is to help a royalty-free video format exist, full stop. If you use H.264 on your website, you technically owe royalties to the MPEG-LA. Google doesn't think it should have to pay royalties just to deliver web video at all, and moreover, it doesn't think anyone should. Google has a lot of healthy idealism about the web which it enlists in ways that, of course, benefit Google too. There are probably people at Google whose full-time job is to take cool technology projects started by engineers and make them sound like profit-motivated corporate plays that will benefit shareholders. Google has stated they don't believe in software patents and think they should not exist. In the mean time, they are fighting for an unencumbered web.
- rlanday 14y ago
  How do you explain Google trying to use Motorola’s H.264 patents they have FRAND obligations on to screw over the other H.264 licensees? Is it any surprise that Nokia’s not happy about this? http://appleinsider.com/articles/12/02/07/google_to_continue_motorolas_frand_licensing_that_seeks_to_monopolize_h264_umts http://appleinsider.com/articles/12/02/07/google_to_continue... “Google is now in the process of finalizing its $12 billion acquisition of a profitless company that holds at least 17 H.264 patents, an acquisition that it expressly noted was done primarily to "protect the Android ecosystem," despite the fact that Motorola does not appear to have valuable defensive patents applicable to modern smartphones.” You state “If you use H.264 on your website, you technically owe royalties to the MPEG-LA.” This is incorrect, as long as you’re freely distributing the videos, so you’re also spinning the facts: http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/26/mpeg-la-makes-h-264-video-royalty-free-forever-as-long-as-its/ http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/26/mpeg-la-makes-h-264-video...

10 points by yread 14y ago

laumars 14y ago

I really hate the direction Nokia are heading in.

gillianseed 14y ago
This is obviously 'plan b' in terms of preventing a royalty-free video codec from being standarised, as evidenced by Nokia not being interested in licencing the possibly infringed upon patents at all. In short they want to kill off vp8, or at the very least prevent it from becoming a HTML5/RTC standard. One would ask oneself what Nokia stands to gain, as it logically would make more sense for them to ask for a licence fee than to try to prevent VP8 from being used. Of course, knowing that Microsoft holds the reigns at Nokia through Elop it's not that much of a mystery. Also highlighted by Nokia lying in their statement: "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." The hypocrisy and outright lying is frightening. VP8 is not proprietary in any meaning of the word, while it's being developed pretty much solely by Google it's done so in fully open source fashion, through a public git repo. It's advantages is that it's geared towards real-time video and of course entirely royalty free, the latter being what rubs MPEGLA the wrong way. A court (or likely several as the patents are applied in several countries) will have to decide upon the validity of these patents. But of course the whole point of this is again to throw a patent cloud over VP8 in order to prevent it from being standarised as part of HTML5/VP8, these proceedings will take time during which h264 will likely have time to entrench itself as the HTML5 video option despite not being an official mandatory implementation. The stakes are high as the members of MPEGLA are expecting to cash in on royalties by cornering the video codec market, and obviously a roaylty free quality codec is an enormous threat to their continous royalty-based cash flow. I guess it should have have caused alarm when MPEGLA backed off VP8 like they did, I can ony assume they knew of this impending patent suit from Nokia. I really hope Google stays the course and fights Nokia, but of course then some other sock puppet patent holder will likely emerge. In short, I don't see a chance in hell anymore that we will be able to benefit from a royalty free web standard and all the potential that this holds. If Google backs off trying to standarise VP8 I'm certain MPEGLA cohorts will stop harassing them, unfortulately this means we will have an effective monopoly in the video codec market and that's bad for everyone but the MPEGLA members. And what can I say about Nokia, a company I once held in great regard, now a Microsoft subsidiary in all but writing, led by a major Microsoft shareholder, how sad.
- recoiledsnake 14y ago
  Why should Nokia help Google for free to reduce its licensing costs on things like Youtube when Google has used its search profits to dump a free mobile OS into the market thus hurting Nokia's profits? The "not willing to license" stuff is just legal posturing, there's a right price for the licenses which it wants Google to cough up from it's $50B cash. This has nothing to do with Microsoft either.
  - rlanday 14y ago
    H.264 is royalty-free for free web broadcast, so I don’t think YouTube has to pay a per-video or per-user fee. Google probably has to pay a fee per encoder, but that seems like a relatively minor cost. They probably also have to pay a decoder fee for every copy of Chrome downloaded. If Microsoft’s pulling strings at Nokia, it’s probably because Google hypocritically tried to screw them over using Motorola’s H.264 patents: http://www.electronista.com/articles/13/03/22/one.patent.remains.to.be.heard.by.itc.in.this.battery.of.complaints/ http://www.electronista.com/articles/13/03/22/one.patent.rem... Does it really seem like Google’s acting in good faith here?

dgreensp 14y ago

The spin here is out of control. Google's "agenda" is to help a royalty-free video format exist, full stop. If you use H.264 on your website, you technically owe royalties to the MPEG-LA. Google doesn't think it should have to pay royalties just to deliver web video at all, and moreover, it doesn't think anyone should. Google has a lot of healthy idealism about the web which it enlists in ways that, of course, benefit Google too. There are probably people at Google whose full-time job is to take cool technology projects started by engineers and make them sound like profit-motivated corporate plays that will benefit shareholders. Google has stated they don't believe in software patents and think they should not exist. In the mean time, they are fighting for an unencumbered web.

rlanday 14y ago
How do you explain Google trying to use Motorola’s H.264 patents they have FRAND obligations on to screw over the other H.264 licensees? Is it any surprise that Nokia’s not happy about this? http://appleinsider.com/articles/12/02/07/google_to_continue_motorolas_frand_licensing_that_seeks_to_monopolize_h264_umts http://appleinsider.com/articles/12/02/07/google_to_continue... “Google is now in the process of finalizing its $12 billion acquisition of a profitless company that holds at least 17 H.264 patents, an acquisition that it expressly noted was done primarily to "protect the Android ecosystem," despite the fact that Motorola does not appear to have valuable defensive patents applicable to modern smartphones.” You state “If you use H.264 on your website, you technically owe royalties to the MPEG-LA.” This is incorrect, as long as you’re freely distributing the videos, so you’re also spinning the facts: http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/26/mpeg-la-makes-h-264-video-royalty-free-forever-as-long-as-its/ http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/26/mpeg-la-makes-h-264-video...