[HN Gopher] Lenovo seeks to render Nokia's H.264 patents unenfor...
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Lenovo seeks to render Nokia's H.264 patents unenforceable
Author : sohkamyung
Score : 220 points
Date : 2020-12-10 07:20 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theregister.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theregister.com)
| zinekeller wrote:
| Someone should review what happened in _Microsoft v Motorola_
| here: if Nokia knowingly withheld information about patents they
| owned that will affect H.264 licensing _and_ Nokia is on the
| H.264 WG, then what will happen is that the patent is not
| invalidated but not enforced (effectively enforced royalty-free
| licensing) if a manufacturer wants to make a conforming H.264
| _decoder_ (as H.264, H.265, VP9 and AV1 is defined only for
| decoding and the main reason that encoders may vary in their
| quality and performance). For _encoding_ , any patent that is
| _not necessary to make a conforming H.264 stream_ (in other
| words, to enhance H.264 quality and performance) is negotiated
| outside of FRAND conditions (but in common H.264 practice is also
| available to licensing through MPEG LA). If the patents are
| solely used to enhance H.264 encoding quality or performance,
| then Lenovo doesn 't have any chance here (as these falls out of
| scope in the WG contract Nokia signed with ITU/ISO), but if the
| patents pertains to the decoding side (like _Microsoft v
| Motorola_ ), then Nokia will not be able to enforce the patents,
| at least for the H.264 standard.
|
| Edit: Personal opinion: this is H.265ing H.264 and I hate it.
|
| Edit edit: Lenovo is trying to pass some contested patents that
| was properly declared by Nokia before ITU/ISO as not properly
| declared: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25398403
|
| Final edit: I gave up reviewing Nokia's declarations after
| finding matches in the filing. Apparently, the so-called
| contested patents (at least those that I have checked) were
| called differently when Nokia submitted the declaration (Lenovo's
| legal reviewed the patent numbers but did not looked if they
| matched the filing number). I have looked at some contested
| patents and it seems that Nokia did declare them properly as far
| back as 2002, so I genuinely don't know what Lenovo is trying to
| claim here. Accordingly, I let others complete the review here.
| xoa wrote:
| One question that's been bugging more with regard to these older
| encumbered standards as we get into the 2020s: does anyone know
| if there has been an exhaustive search of when they go patent
| free? H.264 Version 1 was 2003, and Version 3 (which added the
| high profiles, so it's probably by far the most common by this
| point) was 2005. So worst-case scenario, we're 3-5 years from any
| possible patent being expired. But in most cases standards
| patents have priority dates at least a year or two before,
| because negotiations happen well before standard official
| finalization (first draft in this case was sometime in 1999 or
| 2000 IIRC) and patent holders who try to keep it a secret and
| apply at the last moment risk getting cut out or having someone
| else come up with it and neutralize them.
|
| I remember a lot of people were watching for when MP3 went patent
| free, and it'd be interesting if there was a site keeping track
| of when some of these other still commonly used standards did the
| same. Patents last relatively way too long in the tech world, but
| even here it's not forever.
| userbinator wrote:
| I believe H.261, MPEG-1, MPEG-2 (H.262), and possibly H.263
| patents have expired now. MPEG-4 (DivX and such) is going to be
| next to expire before H.264.
| est31 wrote:
| https://www.osnews.com/story/24954/us-patent-expiration-for-...
|
| > H.264 is a newer video codec. The standard first came out in
| 2003, but continues to evolve. An automatically generated
| patent expiration list is available at H.264 Patent List based
| on the MPEG-LA patent list. The last expiration is US 7826532
| on 29 nov 2027 ( note that 7835443 is divisional, but the
| automated program missed that). US 7826532 was first filed in
| 05 sep 2003 and has an impressive 1546 day extension. It will
| be a while before H.264 is patent free.
|
| The automatically generated list that this quote talks about
| also lists US 7835443, which expires in 2028...
| hedora wrote:
| Surely the publication of the standard 17 years ago
| constitutes public disclosure and/or prior work.
|
| Using extensions to increase the working lifespan of a patent
| to 25 years (as done here, apparently) really shouldn't be
| allowed.
|
| It's one thing if the work is under development during filing
| or something, but we're talking about an openly published
| standardized technology.
|
| Patent lifespan should be limited to the minimum of 17 years
| from filing (or maybe grant date), and 17 years from
| publication/commercialization.
| grishka wrote:
| Patent term should vary based on the field. In IT, let it
| be like 5 years. Maybe less. 20 feels like an eternity. And
| no extensions, ever. If you missed, well, congratulations,
| you failed, now someone else will implement it and make the
| world better anyway.
| silexia wrote:
| Patents are a nightmare for innovation and are used by bullies
| and criminals to crush improved operations. Patents are simply a
| money grab. No one should be able to own an idea... They can own
| their business and compete in the free market.
|
| This is how the worst corporations that we all hate stay alive...
| Patents. Look at Oracle for example.
| zinekeller wrote:
| I have found that at least one of the patents contested (U.S.
| Patent No. 6,879,268, formerly filed as 10/054,610) was indeed
| properly declared by Nokia back in 2002 [1].
|
| 1:
| https://www.itu.int/dms_pub/itu-t/oth/04/07/T040700053E0001P...
|
| Edit: I have found other contested patents that were properly
| declared but I already said quits and let the courts decide on
| this.
|
| Final edit: I gave up reviewing Nokia's declarations after
| finding matches in the filing. Apparently, the so-called
| contested patents (at least those that I have checked) were
| called differently when Nokia submitted the declaration (Lenovo's
| legal reviewed the patent numbers but did not looked if they
| matched the filing number). I have looked at some contested
| patents and it seems that Nokia did declare them properly as far
| back as 2002, so I genuinely don't know what Lenovo is trying to
| claim here. Accordingly, I let others complete the review here.
| xbar wrote:
| So, Lenovo, who was not party to the standard definition, is
| looking for a free ride on properly disclosed IP by claiming
| that the undisclosed IP makes the properly disclosed IP
| unenforceable.
|
| Suck it up and pay, Lenovo.
| [deleted]
| stefan_ wrote:
| Nokia is trying the ole Qualcomm strategy, refuse to license
| patents to chip makers, then try to extract x% of a finished car
| or a finished laptop from Daimler/Lenovo because somewhere in the
| $100/$1k product there is a dollar value chip that does H264
| decoding.
|
| That won't come to pass, of course.
| patentatt wrote:
| That type of damages (% of finished product) is not really a
| thing anymore, fwiw.
| nomercy400 wrote:
| So does it still work for qualcomm? If so, why wouldn't Nokia
| try the same?
| selectodude wrote:
| Qualcomm has slightly better standing since they make the
| modems. "Your phone isn't a phone without our IP" is a little
| easier to argue than "your phone isn't a phone without our
| video playback".
| latch wrote:
| How's this different than ARM?
|
| That something is cheap to manufacturer says a ton more about
| the huge advancements in semiconductors than it says about any
| value of what that chip does.
|
| It's fine to dislike patents, but I don't think this reasoning
| is sound.
| xoa wrote:
| > _How 's this different than ARM?_
|
| What!? ARM doesn't do any standards essential stuff, they
| just developed their own ISA. And they have a massive array
| of options, from their own ready to go cores all the way up
| to perpetual architecture licenses that someone can do
| whatever they want with (so long as it's conformant)
| indefinitely. How is that remotely similar to something like
| codec or wireless standards? ARM is about as polar opposite
| from "refuse to license to for chips, try to extract based on
| patents for the whole device" as it gets. Their entire
| business is based around licensing to chip makers with
| nothing to do with the rest of the device. And if they ever
| tried such a thing, well first of all it wouldn't affect
| their perpetual licensees at all, and second everyone would
| just move to RISC-V or whatever.
|
| Software patents are all wrong and should be eliminated
| _anyway_ , IP value there and development incensitves are
| covered more than sufficiently by copyright. But it's much
| worse in what are literally monopoly collusion cases in the
| good sense, aka "standards". Normally even having a patent
| doesn't give an entity any special privileges against anti-
| trust there, they have a monopoly on their own patent but
| they can't seek to force everyone to use it illegally.
| Standards though are of great value, and while being
| horizontal monopolies can be very important in preventing
| vertical monopolies. Plus they're key when dealing with hard
| and soft natural monopolies, such as utilization of EM
| spectrum or content formats.
|
| But the counter to that is supposed to be that while everyone
| in the pool gets a fair cut, they also give up their rights
| of discrimination or exclusivity. Anyone who doesn't do that
| for a SEP should have the book brought down on them hard.
| sqrt17 wrote:
| There's a difference between selling flowers in a shop and
| randomly going around and pointing your gun at people holding
| flowers and asking them to pay up. The alternative to buying
| flowers is just spending your money on other things, which is
| different to the alternatives you have in an armed robbery.
|
| Patent law gives patent owners a monopoly (i.e. the gun) over
| how an invention is used, but just like there's a difference
| between self-defense with a gun and using it for armed
| robbery, there should be - and increasingly is - regulation
| that forces patent owners to act as market participants
| offering something valuable rather than street thugs going
| for protection money.
|
| It's fine to dislike patents, just as it's fine to dislike
| anti-competitive or outright dishonest practices around
| patents. Either alone or both in combination are reasonable
| standpoints.
| TazeTSchnitzel wrote:
| Fun fact: there was an attempt by the MPEG working group to
| design a non-patent-encumbered internet video format.
|
| It was killed late in the process by several companies making
| patent claims on the finished standard, without saying _which_
| patents were infringed, therefore making it impossible for the
| standard to be reworked.
| yboris wrote:
| I'm not doubting your story, I'm just curious how is that
| legally possible? I thought in the US you're innocent until
| proven guilty.
| patentatt wrote:
| It was just a vague threat that MPEG decided to heed, they
| could have decided to ignore it too.
| maxerickson wrote:
| It's very difficult to preemptively establish that something
| is not encumbered by a patent, which is what the group
| releasing the standard would have to do to make the standard
| adoptable.
|
| If someone successfully claims the standard infringes their
| patent after it is released, it failed to accomplish the
| goal.
| est31 wrote:
| First, that's a principle of the penal system, not the civil
| courts which would decide such matters. Second, this didn't
| involve any legal action at all, and was instead just as a
| threat, basically saying that if they went forward with the
| standard, they would sue companies that invested into the
| standard, but by that point the companies would be in a bad
| situation as they'd have invested tremendous resources into
| the codec.
|
| The moment you make any kind of non trivial program (say 20k
| lines and above) you almost guaranteed violate _some_ patent
| so they were probably even right with their claims.
| dancodes wrote:
| If your last statement is true, how come there are
| companies working on software every day and not getting
| sued constantly?
| adrr wrote:
| There's threats of lawsuits all the time. Run an
| e-commerce site and you'll get demand letters for cash
| from patent trolls.
| MobiusHorizons wrote:
| They are actually getting sued, maybe not constantly, but
| if you are a valuable target, often enough. It has just
| become the cost of doing business.
| ampdepolymerase wrote:
| They are. Quibi was under lawsuit by Elliot Management.
| zinekeller wrote:
| I'm pretty sure that patent contests are the fanfare of
| Europe (not EU or anything, Europe). Since ISO and the now-
| disbanded MPEG group is based in Europe... (If I remembered
| correctly the contesting group were mainly European and Asian
| companies. I forgot if Nokia opposed this.)
| varispeed wrote:
| Sadly patents are mostly used to protect a _discovery_ rather
| than _invention_. Who finds something first gets the cake and so
| on. For example when I was playing with digital synthesis, it
| felt natural for me to modulate the phase within the grain of
| sample and then I learned it has been patented by Casio. Then
| recently I read about so called TMT technology, where company
| essentially patented adding tolerance to components when
| simulating circuits... I mean d'oh? If you want to do realistic
| simulation, that's one of the things to take into account, but
| now that it is patented, good luck. This whole thing needs to be
| scrapped.
| patentatt wrote:
| Just because it 'felt natural' doesn't imply that it's a
| discovery rather than invention. Generally in IP the word
| discovery is in regard to a natural phenomenon, something found
| in nature. Natural laws are discovered, everything else is
| invented. So what you describe sounds like an invention rather
| than a discovery.
| ncmncm wrote:
| At least US has a carve-out for obviousness to people in the
| field. It has been chipped away at for a long time, so there
| might not be anything left of it.
| varispeed wrote:
| The TMT I was talking about has gone through fairly
| recently. Please take a look
| https://patents.google.com/patent/US20170060527A1/en It's
| crazy.
| jiggawatts wrote:
| What they are describing is literally a vanilla Monte
| Carlo simulation! It's the bread and butter of applied
| mathematicians in _thousands_ of fields.
|
| It reminds me of a patent for fire. Yes, fire. It was
| worded carefully to hide this, and it was approved.
| Something like: "A method by which a self-sustaining
| avalanche of thermal chemical reactions is initiated by
| an externally applied heat source."
|
| In other words: We lit it on fire with a match.
| varispeed wrote:
| I would disagree. For example phase is one of the parameters
| of the grain, so to modulate the phase how come it an
| invention, but to modulate a filter cut off is not? The same
| tolerance is inherent part of analogue component, as it is
| very difficult to achieve exact value of e.g. capacitance, so
| components are manufactured with different levels of
| tolerance, so if you simply acknowledge this fact of life in
| your simulation how is that an invention?
| dzdt wrote:
| The public interest is that interoperability standards should not
| require patented technology _at all_ to implement. The point of
| an interoperability standard is to allow a broad ecosystem with
| many producers and many consumers. Here many producers of videos,
| many producers of video-processing and video-displaying
| technology, many consumers of these videos and associated
| technology. The public interest is that the ecosystem should be
| vibrant, with easy access to new participants and low barriers to
| entry.
|
| So, in the public interest, go Lenovo! Especially considering the
| slime-ball tactics that Nokia apparently used here.
| tilt_error wrote:
| Indeed, give them the rubber boot!
| btown wrote:
| At the very least there should be a global irrevocable license
| to implement the standard exactly. I imagine this could still
| allow the patent holder strong rights if any other party were
| to deviate or iterate on the standard. But it's insane to me
| that standardization bodies don't insist on this.
| beervirus wrote:
| There's a whole body of law that's grown up around compulsory
| licensing for standard-essential patents.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_and_non-
| discriminat...
|
| The issue here is that Nokia allegedly has patents that are
| infringed by the standard, and _didn 't disclose them_ to the
| standards body.
| eikenberry wrote:
| IMO patents (the idea) are not the problem, they are a
| reasonable system for funding the work. The problem is that
| while patents (the implementation) are about money they don't
| apply to money, they apply to the freedom to utilize the
| patented work.
|
| Patents should not limit freedom, they should funnel some of
| the money made from the patented work back to the people who
| did the work. If money isn't involved the patent shouldn't come
| up. IE. if you aren't making money from a patent you should be
| free to use it as you want. To put it another way, we shouldn't
| put arbitrary restrictions on freedom in exchange for money.
| [deleted]
| rayiner wrote:
| These standards aren't just "plug C is 0.25 inches wide." They
| are intimately tied to the compression technology itself.
| Developing new standards involves developing new compression
| technology, building and testing reference implementations,
| iterating, etc. All that costs money to develop. _That will get
| paid for one way or the other._ What way that happens affects
| the public interest analysis.
|
| Look what happened with web standards. Developing and testing
| new web standards requires building reference implementations
| in browsers. Browsers are expensive to develop, so the
| standards are controlled by a handful of companies like Google
| and Apple. But the standards are free to implement. Is that
| better for the public? Maybe, but the public interest analysis
| is more complex than "free to implement."
|
| There is no such thing as "free." R&D will be monetized somehow
| --the question is how. Different monetization approaches have
| different and non-obvious impacts on the public interest.
| Consider for example the shift away from paying for software to
| giving it away "free." You used to pay Symbian $5-10 bucks per
| phone for an OS. Android you can get for free. But Symbian
| didn't build an advertising platform into the core of each
| phone. Monetization matters.
| damnyou wrote:
| I'd be more sympathetic if the money were mostly going to the
| engineers and researchers who did the work, not a bunch of
| corporate fat cats.
| ineedasername wrote:
| It takes more than engineers to make a standard. The
| organizational infrastructure, investment in those
| engineers, associated risks if the investment doesn't bear
| fruit, engagement with the capital markets necessary to
| provide the financial infrastructure to keep the blood flow
| of money pumping... There's a heck of a lot more going to
| make any moderate R&D project happen. Why is the engineer
| more important than the many people required to make the
| organization function in a way that makes the engineer's
| work possible in the first place?
|
| Maybe people at the top get too much of the compensation,
| but what about the network technicians and IT departments
| that provided a functional work environment? What about
| building maintenance? What is harder, the research
| involved, or learning & navigating knowledge of the legal
| and financial mechanisms necessary for large complex
| organizations with a thousand interlinking pieces to other
| organizations? Who should get more compensation when the
| absence of any one component, not just the researchers,
| might have caused failure?
|
| I want to be clear though: I'm not defending astronomical
| compensation of the very few at the top. I'm saying that if
| there's inequity here, it doesn't begin or end with the
| engineers and researchers. Its victims are the sum total of
| all the people, all of the functions, without which the
| system fails.
| rayiner wrote:
| My point has nothing to do with sympathy. I'm talking about
| the impact _on the public_ of monetizing R &D one way
| versus another.
|
| Additionally, the companies pay the salaries of engineers
| and researchers who did the work. If your point is that
| engineers and researchers don't get paid enough for the
| value they create, you're talking about a completely
| distinct issue that has more to do with the structure of
| corporations generally.
| phkahler wrote:
| >> There is no such thing as "free." R&D will be monetized
| somehow--the question is how.
|
| There is such a thing as free. People who write Free software
| are doing R&D without any plans for monetization.
|
| Codecs are software. Software has about zero manufacturing or
| distribution cost. Development does take effort. Very much
| effort for modern CODECs, but it's one thing to cover
| development costs and another to collect rent from - err
| monetize - a "standard".
| sz4kerto wrote:
| I'm not sure that FLOSS developers have no plans to
| monetize. First, many of those devs offer paid support. Or
| their employability gets better. Etc. If people could not
| get any reward whatsoever out of FLOSS, it would be a much
| less active space.
| rayiner wrote:
| Even with the Linux kernel, almost all development (over
| 90%) is done by people paid to work on Linux:
| https://thenewstack.io/contributes-linux-kernel/
| nitrogen wrote:
| This serves as evidence that 90% of all codec development
| could be done by people paid to work on the codec, and
| yet still available permissively and for free.
| rayiner wrote:
| Sure. You can also make web browsers for free. But how do
| those companies make their money, and what are the public
| interest implications of that?
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| You're making more of a criticism of advertising as a
| business model than of free software.
|
| AV1 is supported by Google, sure, but also companies like
| Netflix and Apple. If Google's business model for YouTube was
| to charge a subscription fee to everyone like Netflix,
| wouldn't they still have the same incentive to develop AV1?
|
| This is really _commoditize your complement_. Which works
| regardless of the revenue source in the primary market.
|
| https://www.gwern.net/Complement
| rayiner wrote:
| > You're making more of a criticism of advertising as a
| business model than of free software.
|
| I'm saying that if your business model is free software, it
| needs to be monetized some other way. Advertising is one
| way, which has become common. How that happens needs to be
| part of the public interest analysis.
| axiolite wrote:
| > if your business model is free software, it needs to be
| monetized some other way
|
| Mutual self-interest is a good, solid business model.
| JPEG was developed long ago by a bunch of companies who
| needed a good, standard image format. Now AV1 is being
| developed by a bunch of companies who want to use less
| bandwidth for the video and will save truckloads of money
| not paying patent license fees. Not to mention
| standarization, economies of scale, and interoperability
| benefits. A company simply not having to pay the fees for
| something proprietary can be all the funding needed to
| support a free software version.
|
| Free software development generally only needs about
| 1/10th as much monetization to begin with. You may get to
| start with the works of other people; others using your
| work builds the user base quickly without paying to
| advertise and sell your product; you'll get a lot of free
| testing/debugging/code feedback; etc.
| ddingus wrote:
| Well, fully funding developers is one option.
|
| Rather than monetize the software, fund its creators.
| They, along with everyone else, get great use value out
| of the software and they are empowered to live, live, do,
| play, and generally be.
| chaosharmonic wrote:
| Valve is a great example of this. Aside from just
| shipping Proton as a single layer to manage the various
| compatibility libraries involved with playing Windows
| games on Linux, they've also hired multiple developers
| that were already working on projects like DXVK and Zink
| because of how their platform benefits from the
| underlying enhancements to Vulkan.
| rayiner wrote:
| Who pays? And where do those entities make the money?
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| > _looks at HDMI_ [a]
|
| But you're absolutely correct. Something like H.264 which is
| used by _practically everything_ shouldn't cost money to just
| look at the standard.
|
| [a]: I think it's like a US$10k "membership fee" just to have
| the privilege of looking at the standard
| cornstalks wrote:
| H.264 is publicly available for free from ITU's website:
| https://www.itu.int/rec/T-REC-H.264
|
| It's annoying because multiple standards bodies all publish
| the same spec, which is why H.264 is also called "MPEG-4 Part
| 10" because the spec is part of the MPEG-4 spec published in
| ISO/IEC 14496 (part 10 for AVC). The ISO specs aren't free (a
| couple hundred USD for the AVC spec), which is the most
| annoying part.
|
| You can get the H.263/H.264/H.265 specs for free form ITU,
| which covers a lot of the details you need for writing an
| encoder/decoder. Unfortunately sometimes you need the ISO
| specs for other things related to these codecs (e.g., ISO
| BMFF stuff).
|
| (edit: I'm a dork and originally misread the comment as
| saying it was $10k for the H.264 spec, when parent meant the
| HDMI spec; I removed parts of my comment that were related to
| that misreading).
| willglynn wrote:
| ISO/IEC 14496-10 is actually one of the free standards:
|
| https://standards.iso.org/ittf/PubliclyAvailableStandards/
|
| Presumably this is because H.264 is public. Your complaint
| is well founded, though: if you've built an AVC codec using
| public documents you may be frustrated to learn that
| ISO/IEC 14496-14 (describing the MP4 file format) and
| ISO/IEC 14496-15 (describing the AVC elementary stream and
| how to encode it as an MP4) are not public.
|
| It's also worth noting that ISO _removes_ public standards.
| You may find references to public standards, like the link
| at
| https://ffmpeg.org/doxygen/2.7/webmdashenc_8c_source.html -
| but neither the linked ISO/IEC 23009-1:2014 nor any other
| version of the MPEG-DASH standard is available to the
| public at this time. Pay up!
| userbinator wrote:
| You can of course find a lot of those paid standards in
| the usual places... ;-)
|
| IMHO the generally lax attitude towards IP is one of the
| reasons responsible for China's strong technological
| growth.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| > Something like H.264 which is used by practically
| everything shouldn't cost money to just look at the standard.
|
| While I generally agree, it sounds a bit like "if you're
| successful, you're not allowed to earn money". It's a piece
| of work, still, and the creators should be allowed to earn
| money with it.
|
| I'd personally prefer if all standards are free, since
| especially with an obscure one you're SOL when it's locked
| behind a paywall; with H.264, you can probably find a way
| around. But its hard to combine that with intellectual
| property. Limiting the patent timeframe to five or ten years
| might be a good middle ground.
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| That is a very valid argument. I think the big problem (for
| me at least) is that these patents are (essentially) on
| _math_ , just "done on a computer". Sure, it's math that
| would be impractical to do by hand, but it's still just
| math.
|
| That's the rub for me.
| newswasboring wrote:
| You don't think mathematical ideas should be patentable?
| xoa wrote:
| > _While I generally agree, it sounds a bit like "if you're
| successful, you're not allowed to earn money"._
|
| No, it's "if you're successful by _NORMALLY ILLEGAL
| COLLUSION_ , than the ways in which you're allowed to earn
| money may be restricted." That's what "encumbered
| standards" are at the end of the day, explicitly
| established horizontal monopolies. Those mathematics
| patents covering H.264 wouldn't be worth remotely the same
| if there were a hundred different video formats going
| around of which only 1 or 2 used them. Or if everyone had
| just stuck with MPEG-2. Of course, the world would also
| overall be worse off in those cases too, with an even
| higher risk of vertical monopolies, wasted
| hardware/bandwidth, etc. So it makes sense to have a middle
| ground, to allow "standards" to grow the total pie non-
| linearly larger than it would have been otherwise. But at
| the same time that needs to be combined with much more
| stringent controls to avoid all the normal obvious risks of
| monopolies.
|
| Actors like Nokia and Qualcomm have been trying to have
| their cake and eat it too. They like the enormous monopoly
| lock-in value the standards give their patents, but then
| they _also_ want to treat them like normal individual
| patents they can cut deals around. That 's not how it
| should work. The reward for a Standards Essential Patent
| should be a reliable, fair fixed cut of a very, very big
| and dependable pie for the life of the patents/pool.
| Companies have the choice to go it alone if they'd like
| instead and _not_ join the standard, which can then seek to
| work around them (or if that 's impossible, disband and
| give up and at least not form any monopoly there). But if
| they have patents in a standard, they should face more
| restrictions due to the extra monopoly. It should be one or
| the other, not both.
| derf_ wrote:
| The reward is that if you are successful, you get to
| interoperate with other people. That is the value that is
| unlocked, and it is a pretty huge value.
|
| The problem with patents and standards is that people are
| trying to charge for _that_ value (the value of the network
| effects), and not the value of the technology. The big
| ideas of video compression are mostly more than 30 years
| old now, but the new patents are mostly on slight tweaks or
| additions (or things like header flags and other nonsense).
| No one would pay money for them _except_ for the fact that
| they are part of the standard.
| iso1631 wrote:
| SDI is just so much better than HDMI though, single cable
| which you can make yourself, really cheaply, to be 36cm, or
| 3m97, or 28m14, or whatever.
|
| What does HDMI offer than SDI doesn't?
| snops wrote:
| The DDC interface, which is an I2C bus that allows for
| bidirectional communications to read EDID data, so you know
| what you are plugging into. Hot plug detection via the HPD
| line, so you can tell if you are plugged in or not.
| Embedded 5V power, very useful for conversion dongles,
| ethernet, probably more things I forget. HDMI has a lot of
| pins, which makes DIY cables difficult, however they are
| useful.
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| You're not wrong, but the biggest thing is wider support.
| I've only seen SDI available on expensive camera gear (but
| I don't look that hard), but HDMI is _ubiquitous_. It's sad
| DisplayPort didn't end up winning instead, but I guess TV
| manufacturers are members, so they'd put it in the TVs.
| DisplayPort still has a stupid "membership fee" but at
| least it's royalty free.
| selectodude wrote:
| SDI doesn't have the built in encryption so you'll never
| see it on something that supports playback.
| kaszanka wrote:
| DRM really does ruin everything, eh?
| room500 wrote:
| AV1 is an open codec that I hope will be the industry standard
| soon. It already has the support of the ecosystem (apple,
| google, qualcomm, netflix, etc). Unfortunately, it just takes a
| while to build that momentum
|
| So there is light at the end of the tunnel
| Caspy7 wrote:
| Confused why you listed Qualcomm as I don't believe they have
| anything to do with AV1.
| bildung wrote:
| Indeed they don't appear on the member list:
| http://aomedia.org/membership/members/
|
| ARM is listed as a founding member, though.
| tpush wrote:
| > (apple, google, qualcomm, netflix, etc).
|
| Has Apple made _any_ investment into AV1 at all? Meanwhile
| they actively use and deploy h.265 encoders /decoders &
| content.
| baybal2 wrote:
| > (apple, google, qualcomm, netflix, etc).
|
| And out them, only Apple, and Qcom are hardware makers, and
| both have dropped the ball on AV1.
|
| Qcom _removed_ AV1 from latest snapdragon, and Apple haven 't
| put it into M1 despite being one of first in the AV1 crowd.
|
| The momentum is lost, and thus is the war. H265 is already a
| new de-facto standard by the virtue of it getting first to
| the hardware, while AV1 crowd was apparently arguing over
| whose logo design would AV1 bear, and exact legalese wording.
| ezoe wrote:
| Only the brave and rich companies can use H.265 now,
| because of the patent. There are two major patent holders
| and there are some companies not belonging to either of
| them. Using H.265 to anything other than experiment and
| research in my country(as the patent law stated these for
| the exception of patent use) has a risk we cannot take.
|
| I guess rest of us, honest patent-abiding citizen and low
| profit buziness have to wait until the middle of 2030s to
| use H.265 safely.
| loufe wrote:
| Both the new AMD and NVidia graphics cards and the intel
| CPUs support hardware decoding of AV1. I wouldn't count it
| out just yet. x265 has been released for many, many years
| and yet it's not fully adopted by a long shot.
| Transitioning to new technologies takes time and a step
| back doesn't proclude a step forward again, in the case of
| Qcom.
|
| Especially considering AV1 is free, more efficient than
| x265, and pushed forward by powerful actors.
| selectodude wrote:
| Hardware decoding is nothing more than a nice to have on
| desktops. On mobile, it's mandatory. HEVC is the only
| format you can be assured will work there.
| izacus wrote:
| And AVC. And VP9.
| grishka wrote:
| VP9 (and VP8) are only hardware accelerated on Android.
| On iOS, you only have AVC and HEVC.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| Nope. AV1 has demand due to the companies behind it. I'm
| 95% confident it'll start happening within the next couple
| of years.
|
| There's so much engineering knowledge that has to be built
| up behind how to make these things fast in hardware since
| the overlap with other mpeg codes is smaller. There's also
| a market timing issue. AV1 will be more battery intensive
| so the consumer demand for AV1 has to make sense (right now
| the content ecosystem isn't there). That means Google and
| Netflix have to transcode their entire libraries. That
| doesn't happen often and I wouldn't be surprised if there
| was some investigation into how to do that more cheaply as
| the current encoders are unusably slow at the moment (ie
| they may need to put video encoder hardware in their clouds
| which I don't think I've heard of these companies ever
| doing, making the undertaking even more expensive)
| oblio wrote:
| > And out them, only Apple, and Qcom are hardware makers,
| and both have dropped the ball on AV1.
|
| Dropped the ball implies that they made a mistake. Are you
| sure it wasn't premeditated?
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| "Drop the ball" also just means an announcement. In
| colloquial usage, it has a negative connotation, so it's
| usage here to mean "announce removal" makes sense.
| oblio wrote:
| I'm a bit confused.
|
| My point was that "drop the ball" means that they made a
| mistake. I don't think they did, it was intentional and
| I'd say even malicious.
|
| Why do you think that this was not the case?
| dindresto wrote:
| I find it funny how people try to declare H265 a winner
| when it will most likely never land in Chrome or Firefox.
| Safari has its user base, especially on mobile, sure. But
| it will never gain any momentum on the web until Chrome
| supports it. Which will never happen, as Google fully
| stands behind AV1.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _...it will never gain any momentum on the web until
| Chrome supports it. Which will never happen..._
|
| That's what everyone said about Chrome and H.264, too. As
| it stands, Chrome has supported H.264 for over a decade.
|
| https://caniuse.com/mpeg4
|
| Happily, Google's ability to simply declare new standards
| only goes so far.
| Caspy7 wrote:
| Qualcomm is no supporter of AV1 so they shouldn't have been
| included in that list. That being said, there's plenty of
| other hardware makers and licensors in the Alliance.
| Caspy7 wrote:
| > Apple haven't put it into M1 despite being one of first
| in the AV1 crowd.
|
| Except they weren't. They just paid more money to be
| considered a "founding" members - assuming that's where you
| got the idea.
|
| You seem to muse as though AV1 were on the same development
| track as H265 but delayed. This also doesn't reflect
| reality. It started well after and had a relatively quick
| turnaround (as far as codec development goes).
| ummonk wrote:
| Right I remember for a long time early in the development
| efforts for AV1 Apple was conspicuously absent.
| cogman10 wrote:
| H265 is an older standard than AV1. It's closest relative
| is VP9.
|
| The reason H265 has momentum now is because it's been
| around for longer. AV1 already has a higher efficiency than
| H265.
|
| The standard that is competing with AV1 is VVC or H.266. As
| it stands, AV1 has much more momentum than H.266.
| hajile wrote:
| > Qcom removed AV1 from latest snapdragon
|
| From what I can tell, they haven't had AV1 support in any
| chip yet. They said it didn't make the cut this time which
| probably means they just haven't finished and verified yet.
| Likewise, I'd guess Apples engineering efforts are more
| focused on upcoming, larger designs so they can finish
| moving off x86. Once those ship, they can refocus (plus
| it's another reason to upgrade your machine).
|
| Rollout for most codecs is slow. I remember people saying
| no vp8/9 hardware decoders was deliberate too.
|
| In truth, streaming companies want to save billions in data
| and licensing costs. Modern mobile SoCs can decode in
| software reasonably well, but with worse battery life.
| Netflix isn't paying for that, so they aren't incentivized
| to care past the most atrocious battery hogging behavior
| (it's not like you'll be streaming their exclusives from
| elsewhere). This leaves Qualcomm to implement it or get
| worse performance reviews.
| baskire wrote:
| Disagree. Most large app devs directly care about battery
| life these days.
| ksec wrote:
| >In truth, streaming companies want to save _billions_ in
| data and licensing costs.
|
| They dont, the cost of transferring those bit are
| minimal. They are much more likely to be in the very low
| end of millions.
|
| Internet Content Distribution Licensing are Zero from all
| known HEVC licenses.
|
| Implantation of hardware codec takes time especially for
| VP8/9 and AV1 which tends to have changes _after_ their
| so called finalised version 1. Not something I remember
| happening with H.26x
|
| There are specific power budget requirement for hardware
| decoding in Mobile SoC. Unlike Desktop / Laptop GPU and
| iGPU where you can afford to have 2W to decode a video.
| beervirus wrote:
| >standards should not require patented technology _at all_ to
| implement
|
| Do we really want every standard to rely only on ideas that are
| so old that the patents have all expired? FRAND licensing seems
| like a far better solution.
| ksec wrote:
| Ignoring the Lenovo vs Nokia case here because it really has
| nothing to do with video patents other than two company having
| disagreement.
|
| >The public interest is that interoperability standards should
| not require _patented_ technology at all to implement.
|
| That is what EVC [1] Baseline Profile is. Basically bringing in
| all the tools from MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 / H.264 that have patnets
| expired or soon to be expired ( by the time finalised ). It is
| expected to be somewhat better than AVC High Profile but not as
| good as HEVC. ( Which I should remind everyone this claim seems
| too good to be true and requires 3rd party testing to verify )
|
| It is interesting because a lot of the original purposed tools
| for H.264 were deemed far too complex for hardware at the time
| and were not accepted into the standard. Now 20 years later
| those tools are being put into good use.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essential_Video_Coding
| staticautomatic wrote:
| It's not a very good system but in theory this is what RAND
| licensing schemes in standards bodies are for.
| hedora wrote:
| It sounds like some of the patents were granted after
| standardization was complete.
|
| That's incredibly sketchy. For all we know, they incorporate
| third party IP that Nokia derived from the standardization
| process.
|
| I imagine Nokia would be hard-pressed to prove this isn't the
| case.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| I understand the need for patents. But the length of patents is
| absurd. 20 years for each of, what is basically a single piece of
| a huge puzzle, is absurd. Especially in tech, where most of the
| things are obsolete way sooner.
| knuthsat wrote:
| I don't know if I remember this correctly but it sounded to me
| like these patents are just regurgitation of open source efforts.
| A bunch of algorithms just stolen from the open source codebases.
| seg_lol wrote:
| And bunch of them just alter constants and/or apply filters or
| convolutions at different steps. One reads this stuff and will
| continually ask them selves, "this is patentable?'
|
| It is if you are at the right place and the right time, which
| is shame and a sham because then the patent system rewards the
| corps with the deep pockets that s()it on standards bodies.
| zinekeller wrote:
| Is it really open-source though? As I looked at the patents,
| most were filed in the late '90s (don't ask me how the grant
| were delayed by ~5 years, I also don't know this). The main
| question is that the techniques discussed in the patents were
| prior art before 1999? Because chanting "open source" is not
| really helpful here unless there are code that exists then
| that matches the patents.
| toast0 wrote:
| 5 year delay before granting isn't terribly unusual based
| on my experience with the USPTO. It takes about a year for
| your patent to get to the examiner, then they might have
| comments or questions, which it takes some time to address,
| then it tskes some time to get back to the top of the
| examiner's queue. If they deny, and you appeal, it doesn't
| take too much to get to 5 years.
|
| Of course, there were some games you could play to delay
| almost forever, read about submarine patents, and US patent
| rules changed in mid 2000s for patents filed after that
| date, the patent exclusive use period starts when the
| patent is filed, not when it's issued. Any patents still
| pending from before that will have an exclusive use period
| starting on issuance, if issued.
| zoobab wrote:
| FFII is crowdfunding a lawsuit against the UPC, which will
| enforce software patents in Europe:
|
| https://ffii.org/bundestag-vote-for-unitary-software-patents...
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