Free Software Camps Wading Into VP8 Patent Fight 113
An anonymous reader writes "As reported by Slashdot, Nokia recently notified the IETF that its RFC 6386 video codec (aka VP8, released by Google under a BSD license with a waiver of that company's patent rights) infringed several dozen of its patents; furthermore, Nokia was not inclined to license them under FRAND (fair, reasonable, and non-discriminating) terms. While the list provided by Nokia looks intimidating, Pamela Jones at Groklaw discovered that many appeared to be duplicates except for the country of filing; and even within a single country (e.g. the U.S.), some appeared to be overlapping. In other words, there may be far fewer distinct patented issues than what appears on Nokia's IETF form. Thom Holwerda at OSNews also weighed in, recalling another case where sweeping patent claims by Qualcomm and Huawei against the Opus open source audio codec proved to be groundless FUD. The familiar name Florian Mueller pops up again in Holwerda's article."
Florian Mueller (Score:5, Informative)
At least when I see that name, I can ignore the quotes and comments as being nothing more than a paid shill spouting BS.
Nokia research spending (Score:5, Informative)
Over the last few decades, Nokia has spent more money in R&D than almost any other company in the world.
They do spend quite a lot but they're not top of the heap even just in technology companies. IBM [google.com], and Microsoft [google.com] both spend considerably more on research.
Nokia has spent roughly $4-5 billion [google.com] per year but it's been dropping steadily from about $5B in 2009 down to about $3.7B last year. A very substantial sum to be sure but not out of line with other large tech companies and they've been forced to spend steadily less due to their financial position. Kind of amazing that they can't seem to develop a hit phone when they spend 5X what Apple does on R&D. Makes you wonder what the heck they are doing.
Two types of duplicates (Score:2, Informative)
Of course does the list contain duplicates. Patents are usually limited to specific jurisdictions. Patents granted by the US patent office are only valid in the US. That is why companies file the same patent in many jurisdictions.
That's absolutely correct. However, there's another type of "duplicate" that Groklaw mentions, which is a continuation application:
But even in the US-only context, you see the same title more than once. Those are continuations. What's that? It's where the really elaborate machinations live, and the submarine patents. It's how you argue with the USPTO when it doesn't approve your patent application or if it does how you keep adding to what you already got approved from the USPTO, something you can do over and over to time indefinite... Sigh. In other words, that's where you try to get more than you had in the beginning, maybe as you see what others are inventing so you can sue them. Blech. I so hate patent law.
Well, of course PJ hates patent law, since her understanding of it is so flawed. In reality, continuation applications are new applications, tied to the parent, that are typically filed to claim an invention in a slightly different way, to fix errors in the claims, or to address other unclaimed aspects of the invention. For example:
1) You claim A+B+C+D+E. The patent office determines it's patentable because even though A+B+C is known, no one has ever done D+E and it's not obvious to do so. So, in a continuation, you claim just D+E, leaving out the unpatentable cruft;
2) You claim A+B+C+D+E, but without realizing it, you accidentally said that A is ~B. Whoops. Pay the filing costs all over again, and fix the error;
3) Your patent application describes A+B+C+D+E but also F+G+H+J. You did this to save drafting and filing costs by bundling it all into one giant application, but you didn't have enough money to pursue both inventions initially. Now, a few years later, you file a continuation claiming F+G+H+J so that you can pursue it.
PJ's complaints, however, are incorrect: these aren't submarine patents, since continuations are published almost immediately. You also can't add anything to what the parent application contained. Change anything beyond a misspelled word, and the application is rejected as containing new matter. And finally, you can't do it for time indefinite, since the continuations all expire on the same date as the parent. If you file an application on Jan 1, 2010, any patents issuing from it or the continuations expire on Jan 1, 2030. So, while you can keep filing continuations right up until Dec 31, 2029, they all expire on that final day, so you really aren't extending any rights temporally.
For someone who writes a lot about patents and talks to a lot of professors and patent lawyers, PJ sure misses some fundamental details.
Re:Is VP8 still relavant? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:It's about locking out or controlling productio (Score:4, Informative)
Sigh.
If you sell individual videos more than 12 minutes long, you play MPEG-LA a royalty of of 2% or $0.02 per sale, whichever is less.
If you run a paid subscription service, and you have more than 100,000 subscribers, you pay MPEG-LA a royalty between $0.10 and $0.25 per subscriber per year.
If you broadcast your shows on TV, you pay either a one time fee of $2500 for each encoder, or between $0.005 and $0.01 per viewer per year.
If you make your videos available for free (even if they are ad supported) you pay no royalty.
If you sell videos less than 12 minutes long you pay no royalty.
If you run a subscription service with less than 100,000 subscribers you pay no royalty.
If that "prevents you from becoming a producer", you might want to rethink your business model.
(Source: the AVC/H.264 terms. [mpegla.com])
Nokia is dead to me (Score:5, Informative)
And I say that as a booster who was happy with an n810 and the Qt work just a few years ago. Sorry about that cancer you got, Nokia (or was it MS?), but it's changed you and it's fatal.
Re:Two types of duplicates (Score:3, Informative)
While I don't know law that well, submarine patents are a well-known concept. From your description, they seem impossible. So from your perspective, what are submarine patents, and how do they differ from continuations?
Submarine patents were a huge problem. Prior to 1995, (a) patent applications were not published until they were issuing, and (b) patents lived for 17 years from issue. So what you could do, if you were an evil sneaky bastard, would be to file an application in, say, 1970, and drag your heels on prosecuting it, asking for various examination delays and extensions. Say it issued in 1980 and published then (to expire in 1997)... You file a continuation application just before it issues, and again drag your heels. Maybe now it issues in 1985 and pops up, expiring now in 2002. And again, you file a continuation, and drag your heels further. And maybe the new one issues in 1990... twenty years after you first filed, and not expiring for another 17 years.
So, basically, a submarine patent is a continuation patent on old technology that only recently has issued and published (popping up to the surface). They're tough to invalidate, since the priority date is so long ago, and you need prior art that pre-dates that original filing date, but they can last for so long that everyone believes the technology is public domain and its in widespread use.
But this got fixed in the TRIPS treaty back in 1995. All patent applications publish after 18 months, with a few minor exceptions, and last for up to 20 years from the filing date, no more.
It also got fixed in a second way - courts started applying the laches doctrine, which says that if you intentionally delay getting your patent so as to sucker people in to infringing it, then you lose the ability to enforce it.
Technically, there are still a few submarine patents out there with pre-1995 priorities, but they're disappearing.
Re:Of course duplicates... (Score:2, Informative)
I can see it now. Some mediocre Google engineers are looking through the H.264 spec and trying to copy it as best they can. They struggle with this for a few months
Uh, VP8 actually came from a company called On2 which Google acquired in 2010. Since you don't know anything about the codec's history, I'm not going to take your opinions on the technical merits seriously either.
Re:Nokia is dead to me (Score:0, Informative)
Nice strawman you're attacking.
(A) patent infringement is not theft.
(B) Nokia's patents are redundant, mutually overlapping, and practically garbage. And will be invalidated in short order by a deluge of prior art reports.
(C) "Good" and "bad" are inappropriate. However, calling out Nokia as a patent troll in the employ of Microsoft is always appropriate.
So, seriously, Florian, when did you get this sockpuppet account?