twelve VC-1 patent holders known till now

[bond]

As the MPEG LA recently announced till today there are 12 different companies known to be holding patents on the M$ video technology WMV9 (only video! not WMA9, WM9 DRM and the .WMV container!), which is currently transformed to an open standard, known as VC-1

Basically this means:
1) the licenses for VC-1 are not set till now and subject to further negotiations between the patent holders
2) therefore its not known till now for the industry how much using the VC-1 technology will cost (eg in HD-DVD or Bluray)
3) therefore all promises that VC-1 is cheaper than AVC by M$ were simply lies (but effective ones as M$ managed to get support for VC-1 in hollywood because of that and therefore VC-1 to be supported on HD-DVD aso too)
4) M$ will now have to pay licenses to the other 11 patent holders too for offering WMV9 and will not be able to hide itself behind a closed format as they did till now anymore
5) M$ will not be the only one who earns with VC-1 being used (actually they earn with AVC too, as they own 1 patent on AVC too)

some excerpts of an article about that topic:

"The MPEG LA has had 12 separate companies claiming that they have essential patents in the pool it is developing for the licensing of Microsoft’s video codec, dubbed VC-1 under the SMPTE standard (Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers)."
"In a way the WMV9 codec that Microsoft uses will just be a particular implementation of the VC 1 standard. Other companies will be able to license the technology and make their own versions"
"Since Microsoft has never acknowledged any other technology suppliers in its literature on WMV9, it is unlikely that it is currently paying royalties on its current distribution. "
"the other 11 companies ... are sure to be bristling at the thought that their Intellectual Property has been “given away” by Microsoft for years now without them realizing it."
"So not only could Microsoft find itself with only a small part of the license fees, but this could be further diluted if other companies join the patent pool later."

read the whole story yourself here (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/01/24/ms_codec_patents/)

[Nic]

A good while back now I had a discussion with Larry Horn from the MPEG-LA and we both talked about what would happen if the technologies inside WMV where to be known publically.....strange how things come to pass :) Thanks for the news bond.

-Nic

[Neo Neko]

Lying is one of Microsoft's favorite tactics. The guall it takes to knowingly violate the pattents of others and at the same time threaten others who may or may not violate your holy IP. But if there was anything Microsoft ever had alot of besides bad karma and cash that is guall.

Till this time I though Microsoft had negotiated terms for usage of the technology. I gave them to much credit. It's amazing how Microsoft can continually sink to new lows. If Microsoft was playing skint with WM9/VC1 what do they owe for MSMPEG4/WM7&8? Unfortunatly what will happen now is that they will most likely forget Microsoft's violations and license the technology since the format is going to be supported. When what should be done is that they should take the hypocrites to court. Oh well.

[temporance]

This sounds like a tidbit of info that the geeks over at slashdot would love. Anyone know how to post there?

[Wilbert]

This sounds like a tidbit of info that the geeks over at slashdot would love. Anyone know how to post there?
You have to subscribe and then you can post. To submit a story you have to submit a story (at the left hand side under story) :) But i never did that ...

[plonk420]

MS isn't lying; *ANYTHING* can be obfuscated under NDA :D

[Andrey]

Interesting news.
May be VC-1 will be of no practice use in HD-DVD then...

[temporance]

Any updates? This is a very interesting story -- it's not too far-fetched to assert that this could spell the end of WMV.

Any one of the twelve patent holders could refuse to license their patents to M$. Or they could license to M$ at such a high price that WMV becomes an expensive technology. Since it's likely that most of the 12 are proponents of MPEG, they don't exactly have motivation to be helpful to M$ and, collectively, they have a great deal of power.

[bond]

- i think there is a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes (license negotiations)
- i think most vc-1 patents will also apply for avc (vc-1 is a copied avc basically i think)
- i think the vc-1 patent holders will realise that there is a lot of extra cash to be made if vc-1 gets succesful (eg in hd-dvd, they could cash in with both avc and vc-1 licenses, paid by the manufacturers, in fact by the enduser). if they destroy vc-1 this will not be possible
- why should they not license vc-1 to m$? m$ did the job for them already in spreading the technology. there is lot of money to be made from wmv9 for them too (its not m$ vs. the rest anymore. now its m$ and eleven other big companies vs. ...)
- to sum it up there are two possiblities imho:
1) you are a patent holder for both avc and vc-1: conclusion you want both to be successfull, to cash in with both (eg hd-dvd, bluray)
2) you only own vc-1 patents: well of course you want vc-1 to be sucessful
- vc-1 is technically weaker than avc, this could mean
1) you want to attract groups that dont have a lot of money/dont care for quality, and give them low vc-1 licenses (cause otherwise they would use mpeg-2 or mpeg-4 maybe)
2) you dont care about 1) and ask for about the same licenses than for avc (to cash in the maximum with hd-dvd, bluray aso), but loose the money from the 1) people
imho it doesnt make sense to destroy vc-1 by asking for higher licenses than for avc

[iapir]

Companies often patent things to protect their own business, not just to license it. Sometimes they don't even want to license it. So it's not as easy as it could seem. But in the end, money helps and MS has a lot ! It all depends if MS really want to spend that money on this or not.

[bond]

Originally posted by iapir
It all depends if MS really want to spend that money on this or not.very interesting point!
m$ could come up with a wmv10, thats a closed format again, and not backwards compliant to vc-1
this would
- give them a lot of marketing: "new format" aso
- might allow them to avoid vc-1 licenses (but it would get harder)
- allow them to go their proprieatary way again (only m$ tools (wmp) can create/decode the new "ultrapowerful" wmv10 streams aso...)
- allow them to enhance their format to keep up with avc (used by apple soon) qualitywise

of course it would hurt their efforts of bringing wmv9 to standalone player a little bit (but of course they will/could still offer wmv9 tools)

[temporance]

I guess the point I forgot is that if M$ owns even just one essential patent in AVC, then we could have a stalemate. M$ can throw the spanner into AVC with one essential patent just the same as any one of the 12 patent holders could rain on M$'s parade.

What this will do is make people think twice about using VC-1. There is already a lot of anti-Microsoft sentiment in the broadcast and telecoms world and, to some extent, amongst CE manufacturers.

Why would anyone now use VC-1?

[keel]

Originally posted by temporance
Why would anyone now use VC-1?
Because Microsoft might pay you lots and lots of money to do so!

[MfA]

Patents are neither valid nor applicable till a court of law says they are, till that point it is all conjecture.

[temporance]

Damn powerful conjecture, where corporates are concerned!

[Shinigami-Sama]

finaly m$ gets a bite in the ass too
just like it;s been doing to other poor patent holders :)
ah sweet vengance
although it might do nothing other than inconvinace them it;s funny :)
it's going to be interesting to watch m$ squirm :)
-edit- wow typos...

[Neo Neko]

Originally posted by MfA
Patents are neither valid nor applicable till a court of law says they are, till that point it is all conjecture.

The new power of pattents has no real bearing on whether or not they are valid. The new power of pattents is the threat of them. (Think 1980s, WMD, the Cold War, and an almost equaly misguided republican president) They may be bogus. But do you have what it takes to prove it? Also remember that WMV9 is nothing more than a less capable AVC work alike. How much do you want to bet that the 11 or 12 companies claiming pattents on VC-1 have the exact same pattents licensed to AVC. And that being the case do you find it reasonable to believe that the MPEG-LA would waste alot of time negotiating to use or re-license bogus pattents? Remember the less people there are in the pot the more each person gets. Also remember that many MPEG-LA members/contributors have rather large pattent portfolios themselves and could in all likelyhood mitigate the threat of most bogus pattents by threataning to enforce their pattents. And since he left work at the largest pattent holder in the world Ransom Love has turned Microsoft in to the second largest pattent holder. He has them trying to pattent the most basic and pattently obvious stuff. (Oh and for those of you that don't know IBM is the worlds largest pattent holder) About the only group that could likely sucsessfuly play the pattent card against Microsoft is IBM.

No Microsoft's ambitions have made it necessary to expose a small portion of the rampant hypocracy there. No one would have ever known had Microsoft not felt it necessary to expose this to further their ambitions. No these pattent holders are not sharks circling wounded prey. Rather they are parasites looking to attach themselves to the cash flow. They aren't looking to block Microsoft. Nor could they. They are just taking advantage of an opportunity. They know Microsoft's products are inferior. But they also know that Microsoft can market highly inferior products over massively superior ones using their monopoly (or if you preffer monopoly like) powers. Nothing big will come of this. No vengance. No justice. Just business and hypocracy as usual. Unfortunatly all we can do is to learn something from this ourselvs and always carry it with us so that we can teach others. That will be the only mechanism for change. Untill then it will be business as usual and Microsoft will starve off superior technology like AVC as it has a hundred other superior technologies and softwares before. It is by now and old storry that those who have not learned from, are still suffering from repeating.

[bond]

Originally posted by MfA
Patents are neither valid nor applicable till a court of law says they are, till that point it is all conjecture. actually the patents claimed for vc-1 surely already exist...

and you are wrong: a patent is not valid only when a court says so. what if noone questions that the patent claims are valid? than they are valid even without a court, right? ;)