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I'm not convinced Nokia will lose. Even if Nokia lose and no-one else comes forward the Google licence is non-redistributable anyway so for many purposes is no

I'm not convinced Nokia will lose. Even if Nokia lose and no-one else comes forward the Google licence is non-redistributable anyway so for many purposes is no better than the AVC one. Freedom, zero cost, quality, low legal risk. Choose two.

shmerl 13y ago
Anything can happen, but On2 was diligent in evaluating public patents related to video. So it looks like Nokia is spoofing things up. Time will tell of course. One of the benefits of the IETF process is the requirement to disclose all the patents, so they can be evaluated and refuted if possible. I'm sure WebM project is busy with reviewing this. Freedom, zero cost, quality, low legal risk. Where did you find freedom and zero cost there? Low legal risk is a myth in the land of patent minefields. the Google license is non-redistributable anyway Again wrong. VPx content as well as encoders and decoders are redistributable under the current license which is fully open source compatible.
- josephlord 13y ago
  >> Freedom, zero cost, quality, low legal risk. > Where did you find freedom and zero cost there? Low legal risk is a myth in the land of patent minefields. I made it up, couldn't narrow it down to three. MPEG1 is low risk, free and Free now. AVC is low risk now it has been a juicy target for long enough to draw out trolls and it is high quality. VP8 is high quality and zero cost. The license that Google has from the MPEG-LA doesn't seem to allow for those who accept the license to sub license. If this is incorrect please send a reference. You seem to be of the view that the pool contents are either invalid or non-essential. Until I see a detailed study of them that indicates this with claim by claim explanations I will assume that at least some may be valid. Now Google has taken the license it is highly unlikely they will challenge the pool patents (and they may be contractually obliged not to). This means there is no big player likely to fight the patents and make the status clearly open source compatible.
  - shmerl 13y ago
    Ah, I see, I thought you meant all 3 as related to H.264. > The license that Google has from the MPEG-LA doesn't seem to allow for those who accept the license to sub license. The license is a FUD reduction tool. You can simply ignore it in the context of the open source license of the codec itself - it's not part of that license at all. > You seem to be of the view that the pool contents are either invalid or non-essential. Until I see a detailed study of them that indicates this with claim by claim explanations I will assume that at least some may be valid. Now Google has taken the license it is highly unlikely they will challenge the pool patents (and they may be contractually obliged not to). This means there is no big player likely to fight the patents and make the status clearly open source compatible. I'm not sure what you are talking about - patents that MPEG-LA supposedly has against VP8, or the patents that Nokia presented against it? If the former, those contents can as well be simply non existent and their potential existence used as a tool to spread FUD. Until anything is publicly presented (like Nokia did), there is no reason to pay attention to that "pool". Note that Google didn't license any patents that are known to be affecting VP8. Nothing like that. They just licensed "something", so that MPEG-LA would stop making statements like "what a good codec you have here, a pity if something would happen to it if and when we find some patents against it". I.e. Google bribed them to stop spreading FUD. In no way does it demonstrate that MPEG-LA has any actual patents against VP8. If the later - the list is published, and now in the process of being reviewed / refuted. Let's see how that works out.
    - josephlord 13y ago
      I listed four features and suggested that only two were available from each of the current codecs. You are also free to use open source AVC implementations and ignore that MPEG-LA license too. Depending on who you are and what you are doing with AVC the probability of action by a patent holder could be very low. I meant the patents under the MPEG-LA from the eleven companies (some of whom I would take seriously) and including at least two of the biggest Android manufacturers rather than Google's enemies: CIF Licensing LLC France Telecom Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft zur Foerderung der angewandten Forschung e.V. Fujitsu Limited Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V. LG Electronics Inc. Mitsubishi Electric Corporation MPEG LA, LLC NTT DOCOMO, INC. Panasonic Corporation Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. Siemens Corporation You are right that the patent list does not seem to be published which is unfortunate. If the patents in the AVC pool owned by these companies were checked against VP8 by someone credible and preferably independent it would give quite a good degree of assurance about them. Do note though that Google claimed to have bought On2's patents and they too only seem to be offered under the same non-FOSS compatible licence as the MPEG-KA ones. As for the Nokia patents I don't think that they would have been brought to courts if Nokia didn't think victory was a realistic outcome. However the drop out rate for claims is very high in all the patent disputes although it seems very hard to predict at the start what will stand up and what will fall so it is entirely possible that they will fail. From my perspective this seems a bad sign for the consistency and predictability of patent law which needs major reform rather than proof that Nokia is claiming rights that IT doesn't believe it has.

shmerl 13y ago

Anything can happen, but On2 was diligent in evaluating public patents related to video. So it looks like Nokia is spoofing things up. Time will tell of course. One of the benefits of the IETF process is the requirement to disclose all the patents, so they can be evaluated and refuted if possible. I'm sure WebM project is busy with reviewing this. Freedom, zero cost, quality, low legal risk. Where did you find freedom and zero cost there? Low legal risk is a myth in the land of patent minefields. the Google license is non-redistributable anyway Again wrong. VPx content as well as encoders and decoders are redistributable under the current license which is fully open source compatible.

josephlord 13y ago
>> Freedom, zero cost, quality, low legal risk. > Where did you find freedom and zero cost there? Low legal risk is a myth in the land of patent minefields. I made it up, couldn't narrow it down to three. MPEG1 is low risk, free and Free now. AVC is low risk now it has been a juicy target for long enough to draw out trolls and it is high quality. VP8 is high quality and zero cost. The license that Google has from the MPEG-LA doesn't seem to allow for those who accept the license to sub license. If this is incorrect please send a reference. You seem to be of the view that the pool contents are either invalid or non-essential. Until I see a detailed study of them that indicates this with claim by claim explanations I will assume that at least some may be valid. Now Google has taken the license it is highly unlikely they will challenge the pool patents (and they may be contractually obliged not to). This means there is no big player likely to fight the patents and make the status clearly open source compatible.
- shmerl 13y ago
  Ah, I see, I thought you meant all 3 as related to H.264. > The license that Google has from the MPEG-LA doesn't seem to allow for those who accept the license to sub license. The license is a FUD reduction tool. You can simply ignore it in the context of the open source license of the codec itself - it's not part of that license at all. > You seem to be of the view that the pool contents are either invalid or non-essential. Until I see a detailed study of them that indicates this with claim by claim explanations I will assume that at least some may be valid. Now Google has taken the license it is highly unlikely they will challenge the pool patents (and they may be contractually obliged not to). This means there is no big player likely to fight the patents and make the status clearly open source compatible. I'm not sure what you are talking about - patents that MPEG-LA supposedly has against VP8, or the patents that Nokia presented against it? If the former, those contents can as well be simply non existent and their potential existence used as a tool to spread FUD. Until anything is publicly presented (like Nokia did), there is no reason to pay attention to that "pool". Note that Google didn't license any patents that are known to be affecting VP8. Nothing like that. They just licensed "something", so that MPEG-LA would stop making statements like "what a good codec you have here, a pity if something would happen to it if and when we find some patents against it". I.e. Google bribed them to stop spreading FUD. In no way does it demonstrate that MPEG-LA has any actual patents against VP8. If the later - the list is published, and now in the process of being reviewed / refuted. Let's see how that works out.
  - josephlord 13y ago
    I listed four features and suggested that only two were available from each of the current codecs. You are also free to use open source AVC implementations and ignore that MPEG-LA license too. Depending on who you are and what you are doing with AVC the probability of action by a patent holder could be very low. I meant the patents under the MPEG-LA from the eleven companies (some of whom I would take seriously) and including at least two of the biggest Android manufacturers rather than Google's enemies: CIF Licensing LLC France Telecom Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft zur Foerderung der angewandten Forschung e.V. Fujitsu Limited Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V. LG Electronics Inc. Mitsubishi Electric Corporation MPEG LA, LLC NTT DOCOMO, INC. Panasonic Corporation Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. Siemens Corporation You are right that the patent list does not seem to be published which is unfortunate. If the patents in the AVC pool owned by these companies were checked against VP8 by someone credible and preferably independent it would give quite a good degree of assurance about them. Do note though that Google claimed to have bought On2's patents and they too only seem to be offered under the same non-FOSS compatible licence as the MPEG-KA ones. As for the Nokia patents I don't think that they would have been brought to courts if Nokia didn't think victory was a realistic outcome. However the drop out rate for claims is very high in all the patent disputes although it seems very hard to predict at the start what will stand up and what will fall so it is entirely possible that they will fail. From my perspective this seems a bad sign for the consistency and predictability of patent law which needs major reform rather than proof that Nokia is claiming rights that IT doesn't believe it has.