AV1's Open, Royalty-Free Promise In Question As Dolby Sues Snapchat Over Codec (arstechnica.com) 44
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: AOMedia Video 1 (AV1) was invented by a group of technology companies to be an open, royalty-free alternative to other video codecs, like HEVC/H.265. But a lawsuit that Dolby Laboratories Inc. filed this week against Snap Inc. calls all that into question with claims of patent infringement. Numerous lawsuits are currently open in the US regarding the use of HEVC. Relevant patent holders, such as Nokia and InterDigital, have sued numerous hardware vendors and streaming service providers in pursuit of licensing fees for the use of patented technologies deemed essential to HEVC.
It's a touch rarer to see a lawsuit filed over the implementation of AV1. The Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia), whose members include Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Mozilla, and Netflix, says it developed AV1 "under a royalty-free patent policy (Alliance for Open Media Patent License 1.0)" and that the standard is "supported by high-quality reference implementations under a simple, permissive license (BSD 3-Clause Clear License)."
Yet, Dolby's lawsuit filed in the US District Court for the District of Delaware [PDF] alleges that AV1 leverages technologies that Dolby has patented and has not agreed to license for free and without receiving royalties. The filing reads: "[AOMedia] does not own all patents practiced by implementations of the AV1 codec. Rather, the AV1 specification was developed after many foundational video coding patents had already been filed, and AV1 incorporates technologies that are also present in HEVC. Those technologies are subject to existing third-party patent rights and associated licensing obligations." Dolby is seeking a jury trial, a declaration that Dolby isn't obligated to license the patents in questions under FRAND (fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory) licensing obligations, and for the court to enjoin Snap from further "infringement."
It's a touch rarer to see a lawsuit filed over the implementation of AV1. The Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia), whose members include Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Mozilla, and Netflix, says it developed AV1 "under a royalty-free patent policy (Alliance for Open Media Patent License 1.0)" and that the standard is "supported by high-quality reference implementations under a simple, permissive license (BSD 3-Clause Clear License)."
Yet, Dolby's lawsuit filed in the US District Court for the District of Delaware [PDF] alleges that AV1 leverages technologies that Dolby has patented and has not agreed to license for free and without receiving royalties. The filing reads: "[AOMedia] does not own all patents practiced by implementations of the AV1 codec. Rather, the AV1 specification was developed after many foundational video coding patents had already been filed, and AV1 incorporates technologies that are also present in HEVC. Those technologies are subject to existing third-party patent rights and associated licensing obligations." Dolby is seeking a jury trial, a declaration that Dolby isn't obligated to license the patents in questions under FRAND (fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory) licensing obligations, and for the court to enjoin Snap from further "infringement."
Why are lawsuits allowed against end users? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Why are lawsuits allowed against end users? (Score:4, Informative)
Unfortunately, from a legal point of view, AOMedia hasn't done anything against Dolby. It's simply created a video compression codec. It doesn't use the codec, it just publishes documentation on how to use it.
It's arguable, I guess, that by claiming their codec is royalty free without mentioning Dolby's patents, AOMedia may have caused harm to Snapchat. But that would mean Snap would sue AOMedia, not Dolby.
Does this suck? Yes. But unfortunately you can't just sue someone on the basis of "who's the bad guy", you have to prove they caused damage to you in some way. And in AV1's case, not only did AOMedia not harm Dolby, they actually helped them, by creating a new patent royalty stream for them. Sucks, huh?
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Re:Why are lawsuits allowed against end users? (Score:4, Insightful)
If you want change, maybe educate yourself on IP laws, then work to change these laws. Venting on slashdot won't do any good.
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Yep.
But also I'm guessing they are suing Snap because they consider them to be a much softer target than, say, Google, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, Samsung or Tencent (like they'd care lol) who would likely kerb stomp them into the next millennium without even noticing.
Big enough to matter, not big or experienced enough to put up a good fight. And also holy shit they've been having a terrible time of it on the NYSE! Halved in value this year (and 1/10 from the covid peak). I expect they are perceived as not lik
Re: Why are lawsuits allowed against end users? (Score:2)
Tencent? Chinese companies prefer VVC over AV1, and not just because it achieves better compression ratios. It was developed by an international standards body, not a group of America
companies, no matter how "open source" they claim the process to be, and subject to American export laws. Licensing and royalties are secondary after that.
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Tencent?
They are on the steering committee.
no matter how "open source" they claim the process to be, and subject to American export laws.
What? A process isn't open source, code is. There are open source implementations of AV1 (or 2) and H.265 (and 6). Anything can be subject to American export laws, whether or not it makes sense, but America can't enforce that outside America (or even inside some of the time).
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Unfortunately, from a legal point of view, AOMedia hasn't done anything against Dolby. It's simply created a video compression codec. It doesn't use the codec, it just publishes documentation on how to use it.
From a patent law point of view, it is illegal to create something that violates a patent, not just to use it. Patent law kicks in when you create, offer for sale, sell, import, or otherwise distribute a patented invention.
IMO, one of the biggest flaws in patent law is that it covers the use of inventions in all cases except for patent exhaustion (sale of an already-licensed product). With the exception of pure process patents, IMO, that should not be a violation, as a user has no realistic way of knowing
Re:Why are lawsuits allowed against end users? (Score:5, Informative)
From the legal doc, it appears that Dolby is suing snap for not signing a licensing agreement for other codecs it is using, and not primarily AV1.
IANAL and I only flipped through the case, but the claims are about specific patents that dolby thinks are used in codecs that snapchat is using on their site alongside AV1, which are covered by some large license pool Dolby is a member of, which snapchat refused to sign, despite being "invited" several times over. Perhaps there is a side to the case where methods covered by the referenced patents are claimed to be used in AV1 as well, but I didn't get to it, it is 91 pages long.
Hopefully, if there are such claims, the consortium behind AV1 will step in and defend it against that part of the claims. For the rest it is very likely the job of snapchat to show it doesn't need a license.
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changes from a corrupt legal system, don't hold you breath, these evil people own the legal industry, justice for sale is no justice at all, this is what corruption and classism looks like, welcome to economic slavery
just remember we we're sold down the river by those in power who aren't ethical, this isn't a democracy,, there is no rule of law and no free market, no free enterprise, all lies meant to keep us enslaved while our entitled upper class enjoys a free ride at our expense
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and they're about to own the entirety of big media.
CNN will likely be acquired within the next month
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they already own the media, just like they own our governments
Re: Why are lawsuits allowed against end users? (Score:2)
why is the plantiff allowed to wait years knowing they have been in violation all along. Money, wait until the coffers are full to sue for maximum potential payout.
Should be like real estate law similar to adverse possession. Not that Snap gets the right but it's grandfathered into allowed if they can prove the other company allowed use by not doing anything about it.
Re: Why are lawsuits allowed against end users? (Score:2)
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Imagine your little startup patents something and is egregious copied by a large, rich company. If the startup doesn't immediately have the funds to sue, the other company just gets to use the tech without the patent with no consequences. Seems unfair.
Dolby is not a startup. It was founded in 1965.
Also, the doctrine of Laches says you cannot unreasonably delay filing a lawsuit. Waiting ten years from the first release of the specification is clearly unreasonable. Waiting eight years from the first finished implementation is clearly unreasonable.
The bigger problem for Dolby is that patent law won't let you recover damages at all for damages more than six years ago, and the standard has been available for eight. So unless somehow this is some wacky pat
Re: Why are lawsuits allowed against end users? (Score:2)
Dolby has been a patent troll for decades. Theyâ(TM)ve had more lawyers than engineers for years. I worked for a company that was effectively killed off by their changes to third party access to AC-3 DirectShow decoders nearly 25 years ago.
Dolby is run by fuckwads (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Dolby is run by fuckwads (Score:5, Informative)
They don't make technology, they're just a fanciful patent troll, all they make is threats. Fuck Dolby and anyone that pays them anything
Errr no, they very much do make technology. Quite a bit of it actually. Lots of what is marketed under Dolby Vision and Dolby Audio was developed by themselves and they spend a quarter of a billion dollar every year on R&D. Heck even the noise cancelling ability in video conferencing software along with music detection was largely developed by Dolby.
Just because you don't see their products on the shelves at Best Buy doesn't mean they don't make those either. They produce reference monitors for colour grading Dolby Vision content, they have an entire line of cinema audio speakers, and they make the rest of the cinema audio stack as well as a first party product, including multichannel amplifiers and audio pre-processors for Atmos content - a codec they also developed from the ground up.
The fact they sit on a bunch of related patents is just the nature of any R&D development.
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Errr no, they very much do make technology. Quite a bit of it actually. Lots of what is marketed under Dolby Vision and Dolby Audio was developed by themselves and they spend a quarter of a billion dollar every year on R&D. Heck even the noise cancelling ability in video conferencing software along with music detection was largely developed by Dolby.
I would still consider them patent trolls at this point. Legitimate patent holders use patents immediately or hold them to use defensively. They do not sit on patents for an entire decade, waiting for the patented technology to be ingrained in the industry, and then use them to earn income. The patent having been created in-house rather than acquired doesn't change the fact that the behavior is fundamentally similar.
Just because you don't see their products on the shelves at Best Buy doesn't mean they don't make those either. They produce reference monitors for colour grading Dolby Vision content, they have an entire line of cinema audio speakers, and they make the rest of the cinema audio stack as well as a first party product, including multichannel amplifiers and audio pre-processors for Atmos content - a codec they also developed from the ground up.
Dolby Atmos was 2012. Dolby Vision was 2014. How are they not basically a non-practicin
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Your no true Scotsman fallacy is showing you don't even know what a Scotsman looks like. Virtually 100% of patent holders sit on all their patents for the entire duration of the patent.
waiting for the patented technology to be ingrained in the industry
Dolby actively used their patents and actively defended them. They created that technology and marketed it heavily. They didn't sit around and wait. Just because they make most of their money from licensing doesn't make them a patent troll any more than every university in the world is suddenly a patent troll by your definiti
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Your no true Scotsman fallacy is showing you don't even know what a Scotsman looks like. Virtually 100% of patent holders sit on all their patents for the entire duration of the patent.
That's because virtually 100% of patent holders use their patents defensively.
waiting for the patented technology to be ingrained in the industry
Dolby actively used their patents and actively defended them. They created that technology and marketed it heavily. They didn't sit around and wait. Just because they make most of their money from licensing doesn't make them a patent troll any more than every university in the world is suddenly a patent troll by your definition.
You missed the part where they knowingly allowed a patent to become part of a published open standard and ignored it for an entire decade, *then* started going after violations.
Oh, actually, it's worse than that. Dolby acquired these patents from General Electric two years ago [ipfray.com]. So in this matter, they quite literally ARE patent trolls. They did nothing to create this technology, but rather bought the patents to enrich themselve
We just gotta wait unit 2034.... (Score:1)
Patents only last for 20yrs so I believe HEVC will be royalty free in 2034.
And obviously all other similar codecs (AV1) will be safe in 2034.
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For some reason the patent clock rarely starts the moment a technology is known. MPEG-1 was published in 1991, but patents on, for example, MPEG Audio Layer III didn't expire until 2012 in Europe, and 2017(!) in the United States, 21 and 26 years after the standard was released. While there's been some patent reform since then, it's still the case that a standard can be published in the middle of patent applications, and the 20 years doesn't start until the application is approved, which can be years after
Re: We just gotta wait unit 2034.... (Score:2)
Itâ(TM)s not that simple. There are still AVC patents in force in multiple places for several years more.
Thought so (Score:2)
Re: Thought so (Score:2)
Truly you have a dizzying intellect!
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It's also possible that Dolby is twisting logic into a pretzel in order to make this claim. It wouldn't be the first far-fetched theory of infringement to go through court.
Re:Thought so (Score:4, Interesting)
It is not actually that hard. And it exists. The Ogg codecs are it. But because they are FOSS, large parts of the industry is irrationally scared of them.
As to AV1, it may not infringe in any way. But it is a commercial target because of the backers behind it and they can get endless litigation and maybe even a settlement even if it is perfectly fine, just from sabotaging its use via a broken legal system.
Re:Thought so (Score:5, Interesting)
It is not actually that hard. And it exists. The Ogg codecs are it. But because they are FOSS, large parts of the industry is irrationally scared of them.
As to AV1, it may not infringe in any way. But it is a commercial target because of the backers behind it and they can get endless litigation and maybe even a settlement even if it is perfectly fine, just from sabotaging its use via a broken legal system.
Ogg is used by large parts of the industry: It is used by the most popular streaming service, Spotify [free-codecs.com]. Not only is the Spotify client widely used on PCs, TVs, and all kinds of streaming boxes etc - a lot of audio equipment also has Spotify connect [spotify.com]. All of these devices support Ogg.
As for why not everyone is using it - mp3 had the inertia, and AAC is better than Ogg for the same bandwidth. For mobile devices, that matters. These days, free lossless codecs (FLAC mostly, some ALAC) are taking the spotlight - alongside proprietary spatial audio format, like Dolby Atmos.
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Once storage became cheap and bandwidth was no longer an issue (in the home), I just ripped all of my content to use FLAC and called it a day. I've stored all the original media somewhere safe where it won't get damaged. For commercial content and devices to replay that content using other encoding methods, I'll let those folks duke it out with Dolby. Wake me up when it's over.
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and AAC is better than Ogg for the same bandwidth
Is it? When I followed such things that was the case for a while, but the encoders started getting better. Heck the MP3 encoders got so good they were surprisingly close. I thought all of the codecs of that later gen ended up basically on a par.
Anyway didn't Opus wipe the floor with all of them being better in every combo of bitrate and latency than the competition?
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To the best of my recollection, Opus is absolutely better than AAC, according to the blind tests done by hydrogenaudio, among others. Vorbis was very slightly worse than AAC, but much like all benchmarking, sometimes it did better, sometimes worse.
HE-AAC, the "High Efficiency" branch, has proven to provide higher quality than Vorbis at low bitrates (ie. 48-56 kbit, IIRC). That said, I don't know exactly how Opus fits into comparisons with HE-AAC. I seem to recall Opus is better than HE-AAC in the general ca
Only 8 years late (Score:4, Interesting)
One has to question why Dolby would wait 8 years before making a peep. Yeah, AV1 was released in March 28th, 2018 which was exact 8 years ago, and this is the first time they have ever made any claim about it. What about Snapchat? The complaint states that Snapchat has used AV1 for video streaming "since at least November 24, 2023" [exparte.com] but it appears that they have been using the "dav1d" AV1 decoder all the way back in Mar 21, 2019 [github.com] which wasn't long after it was announced. [slashdot.org]
Their extreme delay should be enough to dismiss this case but I know it's not.
As far as I can tell, it see like Dolby was trying to wait until AV1 started getting hardware implementations in order to make alterations maximally harmful, in order to either extract the largest settlement or maximally disrupt the competition to HVEC. Either way, it seem like Dolby is acting in bad faith.
In response to Alain Williams comment, "How long before a patent troll magics up some patent relating to AV1 ?" [slashdot.org] It seems the answer is 7 years and 5 months.
Patenting well known concepts and data structures (Score:2)
Now where have I seen the diagram on pg9 before?
"The '193 Patent employs the unconventional solution of providing a flag that indicates both merging and skip mode are to be used. This allows for more efficient coding of merge and skip information"
"For example, the encoder can now indicate that a block is being merged and uses skip mode by using a single flag."
Which flag enables ethical behavior within the legal profession?
"Wavefront parallel processing" allowed parallel processing of rows of chunks in "wave
DMCA? (Score:2)
Did Dolby break any countermeasures of Snap's copyrighted code in what would appear to be a significant reverse-engineering effort to make this determination?
Or do they only have a suspicion?
This scenario reminds me of the SCO lawsuits when the progress of technology made that company obsolete.
How much more video tech is still patentable? (Score:2)
Fundamental (Score:3)
There should not be software patents because they are all worthless. These companies deserve to suffer as they did nothing for patent reform.
Prior art from expired patents (Score:2)
This is old technology, but was used extensively in JPEG and JPEG2000. All these patents are and have been long expired. There is no novel approach in U.S. Patent No. 10,855,990. More specifically, all the claims they're making in terms of the specific violations of this patent were covered in ITU-13818-2. Though ITU-https://www.itu.int/rec/T-REC-H.263-200501-I/en hammers the last nails in the coffin. I have read and reviewed the claim and the patent and the technologies presented