Nokia Officially Lists Patents Google's VP8 Allegedly Infringes 180
An anonymous reader writes "Google just settled video codec patent claims with MPEG LA and its VP8 format, which it wants to be elevated to an Internet standard, already faces the next round of patent infringement allegations. Nokia submitted an IPR declaration to the Internet Engineering Task Force listing 64 issued patents and 22 pending patent applications it believes are essential to VP8. To add insult to injury, Nokia's declaration to the IETF says NO to royalty-free licensing and also NO to FRAND (fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory) licensing. Nokia reserves the right to sue over VP8 and to seek sales bans without necessarily negotiating a license deal. Two of the 86 declared IPRs are already being asserted in Mannheim, Germany, where Nokia is suing HTC in numerous patent infringement cases. A first VP8-related trial took place on March 8 and the next one is scheduled for June 14. In related Nokia-Google patent news, the Finns are trying to obtain a U.S. import ban against HTC to force it to disable tethering (or, more likely, to pay up)."
I hope Nokia's lawyers wreaks havoc (Score:2, Insightful)
Maybe then, the US Congress will finally take notice and do something serious about patent reform.
Jesus! (Score:3, Insightful)
Enough of this shit. You want to know what hurts innovation? Shit like this. No one knows what petty (or even not petty) patents they're going to infringe upon if they try to make anything, so they just don't bother.
Re:Who is behind these Finns? (Score:4, Insightful)
Nokia is now, by all extents, a Microsoft proxy.
Re:I hope Nokia's lawyers wreaks havoc (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, the FUD strategy has been to never list the patents. If you actually do have patents there is no good reason not to list them. One of the big problems with software patents is exactly that they can be so broad that working around them is actually impossible.
Re:A change of business model for Nokia? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: Not possible! (Score:2, Insightful)
Google said that Google Wave is the future of email.
Yeah. Right.
"anonymous reader"... sure. (Score:5, Insightful)
Can someone please change the "anonymous reader writes" to "The paid shill Florian Mueller? Thanks.
Hey Florian! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Correct me if I'm wrong but... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think at this point, we can all look back on their history and realize that patents suck. Their concept was noble... protect the new inventor from having his invention stolen by a large corporation. But in practice, that happens anyway. Whomever has the most money for lawyers wins. The inventor of something is completely irrelevant at this point. Patents are nothing more than a legal artifice used by corporations to siphon money from one another. So lets just give it up, drop patent law and see how it goes. It can't be any worse than what we have now.
Nokia = Microsoft, VP8 = H264 knock-off (Score:1, Insightful)
Firstly, this is Microsoft vs Google, so why can't the summary be grown up enough to acknowledge this? Secondly, VP8 was originally a closed-source project, and the company behind this used the fact to illegally rip-off CODECs whose spec and mechanisms were published openly. When Google bought VP8, and made the specs and code-base available, it was immediately apparent that the CODEC was a VERY bad knock-off of MPEG4.
The payment Google made to MPEG LA was a direct admittance of this fact. There seems to be zero reason why Google should be able to offer VP8 at better terms than H264, unless Google always swallows at least the same cost that deploying H264 in similar circumstances would cost. This being so, and given that VP8 is a vastly worse CODEC than MPEG4 AVC, and AVC has a brilliant open-source video encoder called x264, and AVC is supported in hardware on every modern mobile computer, why on Earth would anyone wish to use VP8?
In an age of mobile computing, we don't need open-source solutions crippled by 'politics'. Instead, we need the best high efficiency computing solutions- solutions that respect the battery, not a bunch of junky useless abstraction layers that require watts to achieve what otherwise could be done with milliwatts. VP8 is a very poor solution that should be consigned to the dustbin of history (something Google seems to have little problem doing to so many of its other projects and purchases).
Real Patent Reform (Score:4, Insightful)
Wow! Back in 1999 after I purchased my first cellphone, one of the first things I did was to investigate how to connect it to my laptop to give me a mobile modem. Sure enough there was serial cable I could buy for it.
I don't care how early Nokia was to enter the mobile phone market. There is no way they should be able to patent any part this process. I'd rather have no patents at all than grant a 20 year monopoly to some company for tacking "on a mobile device" to some obvious idea like tethering.
We need real patent reform like:
* Eliminating Software patents
* Fix the "obviousness test" and throw out all the existing ones that fail to meet this standard.
* No patents granted to logical evolution of current technology like tethering
* Grant a theoretical patent (i.e. where invention has not yet been realized) for no more than 7 years
* Allow a patent extension/modification upon successful invention
* Mechanical and physics-technology patents should last no more than 15 years
Re:I hope Nokia's lawyers wreaks havoc (Score:1, Insightful)
VP8 was already designed to work around patent restricions
Anyone who follows codecs will know that VP8 is extremely similar to H.264 baseline [multimedia.cx], enough that patent infringement is an almost certainty. As much as we wish that wasn't true, it is. Their "work around" was to give identical technologies different names and put their fingers into their ears screaming "LA LA LA LA LA" denying any patent infringement. When they realized this wasn't going to work, Google finally licensed the patents from MPEG LA.
The more interesting (though not entirely surprising) bit from this news is that MPEG LA might not actually own all the patents required for H.264 to work.
Re:A change of business model for Nokia? (Score:5, Insightful)
Renaming the invisible product doesn't make it any less of a bullshit argument.
Re:I hope Nokia's lawyers wreaks havoc (Score:4, Insightful)
This is still a FUD-filled article.
If you look at the list, the 86 patents turn out to be just a few basic concepts, with each patent obtained in multiple jurisdictions.
It appears Florian Muller is preparing to resume his old SCO role as Microsoft-sponsored pundit.
Re:I hope Nokia's lawyers wreaks havoc (Score:5, Insightful)
patent infringement is an almost certainty.
I'm not a lawyer, but I think I am "anyone who follows codecs" and I'm not as sure of this as you are.
A lot of patents are very narrow. Many of the famous software patents, like One-Click, are disturbingly broad, but many of the patents related to video compression are narrow. The VP8 strategy, as I understand it, was to study the patents and make sure that everything in VP8 was just different enough that it doesn't infringe.
This means that VP8 is an inferior codec compared to H.264; some of the patented techniques really are better. However, it should be a "good enough" codec for most purposes.
Their "work around" was to give identical technologies different names and put their fingers into their ears screaming "LA LA LA LA LA" denying any patent infringement.
-1, flamebait.
When they realized this wasn't going to work, Google finally licensed the patents from MPEG LA.
I don't purport to have a secret pipeline into Google management and be able to tell what they were thinking. Do you have such a secret pipeline?
An equally workable summary is: Google had an opportunity to throw a few dollars at MPEG-LA and end the FUD forever, and they did so. Even if Google was convinced they could win on the merits in court, it was worth something to just make the problems vanish.
Note that Google specifically has not agreed that there was any patent infringement:
Source: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2030241/google-licenses-video-codec-from-mpeg-la-to-bolster-vp8.html [pcworld.com]
P.S. I am somewhat bemused by your tone. It seems you are eager to see VP8 get shackled by patents... why is that? Are you so certain that Google is a bad actor here that you just want to see Google get punished? Or do you hate freedom, or what exactly?
Please for one moment stipulate that VP8 contains technologies that are just enough different from the patents that they don't infringe... would you still have a problem with VP8 in that case?
MPEG-LA has claimed that it is impossible to make a video codec without infringing patents, because all the fundamental technologies are patented... is this, in your opinion, a good situation?
I'm personally cheering for Google in all this. They spent over $100 million to buy On2, just so they could set VP8 free. As far as I can tell, they did this for two reasons:
Re:I hope Nokia's lawyers wreaks havoc (Score:2, Insightful)
Sad but apparently true. Microsoftie Steven Elop took over the reins at Nokia a couple of years ago, abandoned their Linux plans and other OSs, and declared that the company would stake its future on Windows Phone. Which Nokia now makes, not that it's a big hit. So the struggling company will happily swim in Microsoft's spit as it hopes to rely on them for a lifeline.
It won't work in the long term either. Microsoft has no strategic partners, only strategic victims.
Re:A change of business model for Nokia? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Correct me if I'm wrong but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Methinks both the eric conspiracy and jcdr are correct in their assertions. Nokia of late, under Elop is has both business models in use at the moment: selling phones to the developing world *and* patent trolling.
This btw is the same guy that sold the Nokia headquarters building, while agreeing to lease it back long-term.
He closed several factories in Europe, sending production (and build-quality) to Asia.
He's has and is paid many millions, although he's only been with the company just a few years. Coincidentally he came from Microsoft with millions of MS shares in the bank. He's Ballmer's Tool.
This shouts for collective action! (Score:1, Insightful)
"Nokia's declaration to the IETF says NO to royalty-free licensing and also NO to FRAND (fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory) licensing"
Good, NOKIA; just as you like. Shoot yourself into the foot or sign your own death-knell. From here on you are a NO-NO company, and I suggest to everybody in my circles to make a large stroll around any Nokia product and I will do so myself.
This calls for collective punishment.
DIE, NOKIA; DIE!
Submarine patents -- disgusting! (Score:5, Insightful)
Country:US:Filing date:19.01.2001, Filing number:09/766035, Pub.number:20010017944, Grant number:NA
It's disgusting they have patents filed in 2001 that are still pending that means they have will have a monopoly on that particular invention until abotu 2030, due to a loophole in the patent law that states that if the patent takes longer than 2 years to grant .. the time until the actual grant date doesn't count. This allows companies to extract royalties for 30 to even 40 years, especially if they had other patents that were granted for a particular type of technology.
The US Patent Office is to blame for this mess!!!