More than half of the H.264 patents have expired [Archive]

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Spyros

3rd May 2023, 22:09

Just something I noticed on the official MPEG LA website.

The previous patent list (February 21, 2023 (https://web.archive.org/web/20230426143723/https://www.mpegla.com/wp-content/uploads/avc-att1.pdf)) listed 32 pages with unexpired patents and 23 pages with expired ones.

The latest patent list (May 1, 2023 (https://web.archive.org/web/20230503205906/https://www.mpegla.com/wp-content/uploads/avc-att1.pdf)) lists 24 pages with unexpired patents and 32 pages with expired ones.

Yes, I know, quick-and-dirty calculation. And that percentage doesn't change anything, all the patents (or almost all of them) must expire in order to use the codec freely. But that day is getting closer. :cool:

UPDATES:

August 1, 2023 (https://web.archive.org/web/20230907021043/https://www.via-la.com/wp-content/uploads/Final-August-1-2023-AVC-Attachment-1.pdf): 19 pages with unexpired patents, 37 pages with expired ones (post #46 (https://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1991662#post1991662))
November 1, 2023 (https://web.archive.org/web/20231124114858/https://www.via-la.com/wp-content/uploads/Final-November-1-2023-AVC-Attachment-1.pdf): 17 pages with unexpired patents, 40 pages with expired ones (post #60 (https://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1993227#post1993227))
February 1, 2024 (https://web.archive.org/web/20240503101957/https://www.via-la.com/wp-content/uploads/Final-February-1-2024-AVC-Attachment-1.pdf): 17 pages with unexpired patents, 41 pages with expired ones (post #77 (https://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1996897#post1996897))
May 1, 2024 (https://web.archive.org/web/20240503094239/https://www.via-la.com/wp-content/uploads/Final-May-1-2024-AVC-Attachment-1.pdf): 14 pages with unexpired patents, 45 pages with expired ones (post #99 (https://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=2001343#post2001343))

kurkosdr

6th August 2023, 14:59

Keep in mind that MPEG LA adds the patents essential to implementing the backwards-compatible extensions SVC (Scalable Video Coding) and MVC (Multiview Video Coding) to the list of patents, so the essential patents required to decode AVC video ignoring those extensions will expire sooner.

The best I have found is this list, but it's only for US patents:
https://www.osnews.com/story/24954/us-patent-expiration-for-mp3-mpeg-2-h264/

FranceBB

6th August 2023, 21:30

Nice. Given how widespread H.264 already is, it might make things even easier.
Perhaps H.264 is gonna stay with us for a little longer ehehehehehe

benwaggoner

8th August 2023, 20:09

Nice. Given how widespread H.264 already is, it might make things even easier.
Perhaps H.264 is gonna stay with us for a little longer ehehehehehe
H.264 is already a particularly long-lived codec, and will be around for some years to come.
I can imagine a streaming service viably dropping H.264 entirely in maybe 2-3 years. >90% of player devices support HEVC today, so it's really older long-tail things that don't. And H.264 will remain reliably compatible far into the future.

H.264 was really a revolution and revelation, the first to truly break out of the H.261 model with lots of fundamentally new approaches to encoding. Multiple reference frames! 4x4 intra blocks! In-loop deblocking! Arithmetic entropy encoding!

Its timing with the birth of the ripping/warez/torrent community was also fortuitous, as that lead to x264. Past professional encoders largely refined reference encoders, focused on PSNR, and started with a similar basic set of test clips. x265 had a whole different target audience and developer goals as an open source project. There were thousands of people across the world throwing all kinds of wildly variable content at it, tuning and testing and sharing results like crazy. Subjective quality was all that matters, with PSNR and SSIM afterthoughts at best. Animation was a first-class content category (a BIG blind spot in classic codec development). Crazy ideas like MBTree were tried. Bad ones got discarded quickly, and the good ones refined.

And real-world performance mattered; groups were competing to get the best quality at the smallest file size published before everyone else. Optimization and multithreading were pushed farther than anyone had before.

x264 kept raising the bar for H.264 encoders, and encoders in general. Anyone who wanted to sell a H.264 encoder had to compete with the free x264, so lots of bitstreams and code were analyzed, and techniques ported over or at least caused inspiration.

All of that meant that H.264 kept getting better, longer, than almost any other codec (MPEG-2 as the arguable exception). H.264 wound up being more efficient for important use cases than the people who made the standard ever predicted.

HEVC got a big boost from x264 as well, as MultiCoreWare licensed the source code and started x265 as a mash-up of the H.265 reference encoder and x264, and then went from there.

FranceBB

9th August 2023, 00:20

I can imagine a streaming service viably dropping H.264 entirely in maybe 2-3 years. >90% of player devices support HEVC today

I don't really think they will, unless they're gonna use something like AV1 as a backwards-compatibility option.
The issue being that H.265 is still struggling in browsers compared to H.264, so much so that unless the user has a GPU with its own hardware decoder, it won't be able to play it (and this is definitely not guaranteed).
Although lots of people watch those contents on either a smartphone (if they're on the go) or with their TV (if they're at home) where none of this is a problem, there are still some folks watching contents on a PC via the browser (especially if it's a laptop and they're, dunno, on a business trip or whatever). As much as it would be nice to have H.265 replace H.264 once and for all, I don't really see that happening. The only feasible replacement for H.264 would (probably) be AV1 as it has a totally free software decoding.

The "big boys" in terms of streaming services can innovate and afford to have multiple different encodes of the same content in different codecs to achieve the best quality and that's fine.
If we look at smaller, non global, country-specific services, however, they all use the same fatal combination: H.264 + AAC as the only thing that they're sure works everywhere.

- BBC iPlayer -> H.264 + AAC
- ITVX -> H.264 + AAC
- All 4 -> H.264 + AAC

The list goes on, but essentially they're all using the H.264 + AAC combo displaying SDR contents only when you watch them on a browser. For instance, even the BBC, which offers HDR HLG BT2020 contents via the iPlayer, doesn't really offer them via browser but rather only via the installed app on the devices they know they can support.

Blue_MiSfit

9th August 2023, 00:56

Google ships a software HEVC decoder in Chrome now (though without Widevine DRM support), so the browser argument against HEVC is winding down :)

Safari of course has full HEVC support. That leaves the small footprint of Firefox and others.

StainlessS

9th August 2023, 11:43

Safari of course has full HEVC support.
So far as I know, Safari version is same as IOS version (at least on iPad), and so HEVC support relies on IOS version,
but which version has the full support ?

EDIT:
Dont think my iPad 4 supports (IOS v10.3.3),
iPad mini 4 not sure, (recent updated to IOS v15.7.7 due to security bug:- https://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1989479#post1989479 )

Ritsuka

9th August 2023, 17:28

The A8 chip should support HEVC, A9 surely does.

benwaggoner

9th August 2023, 18:25

Google ships a software HEVC decoder in Chrome now (though without Widevine DRM support), so the browser argument against HEVC is winding down :)
Yeah, 18 months ago Chrome was the single biggest platform where HEVC couldn't be used. And it had AV1 support, so there was a better-than-H.264 alternative. Clearly that wasn't enough to justify broad adoption of AV1 for premium content that requires DRM. YouTube still remains the primary distributor of AV1 bitstreams.

Safari of course has full HEVC support. That leaves the small footprint of Firefox and others.
Edge is Chromium derived, and I believe supports HEVC correctly (again, finally) as well. So that's the top three browsers by usage. FireFox has dropped below 6% on Windows/Mac now.

Blue_MiSfit

9th August 2023, 19:49

Indeed, I just tested hardware accelerated HEVC in Edge with multi-key PlayReady. Yay!

Now... if only Google would get this hooked up on Chrome.

FranceBB

9th August 2023, 20:44

Google ships a software HEVC decoder in Chrome now (though without Widevine DRM support), so the browser argument against HEVC is winding down :)

Ah! I didn't know that!
Nice, very nice. About time.
So now it just needs DRM and the game is on. :)

By the way, I was trying to play with: https://reference.dashif.org/dash.js/nightly/samples/dash-if-reference-player/index.html
I used the following stream: https://dash.akamaized.net/dash264/TestCasesHEVC/1a/5/MultiRate.mpd
But all I could see was dark:

https://i.imgur.com/L8E1NT5.png

Google Chrome 116.0.5845.42 (Official Build) beta (64-bit)
Revision d6ccfdce8c8e575e0a33c92686a29707d0dd4e4f-refs/branch-heads/5845@{#571}

Are you guys sure it supports software decoding and it's not just hardware decoding using the GPU decoder?
Have you actually got it working with software decoding?

kurkosdr

12th August 2023, 13:06

Ritsuka

13th August 2023, 06:23

Do you have a link to where those "content fees" are defined?

excellentswordfight

13th August 2023, 09:58

Do you have a link to where those "content fees" are defined?
AFIK it was removed in 2018 (except for physical media e.g. Bluray).

Snap

13th August 2023, 18:55

AFIK it was removed in 2018 (except for physical media e.g. Bluray).

Yeah. I saved the page/link of an article covering it at the time:

http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/News/Online-Video-News/HEVC-Advance-Cuts-Content-Fees-on-Streaming-123828.aspx

kurkosdr

14th August 2023, 04:38

excellentswordfight

14th August 2023, 08:24

You are aware that HEVC Advance is only one of the several patent pools that you need to license patens from to implement HEVC, right? If one of the patent pools charges a "content fee" for streaming, then HEVC has a content fee for streaming
Im fully aware, but non of the other holders do that, I work at a broadcast/streaming company and I havnt heard anyone talk about this fee for years, and I can find multiple industry sources stating that there are no fees;

from harmonic:

"we estimate that HEVC still has large growth potential, especially as streaming fees are waived from patent pools."

https://www.harmonicinc.com/insights/blog/hevc-market-perspectives-broadcast-and-streaming

From Tom Vaughan (ex VP for MulticoreWare)

"Again, keep in mind that no one is asking for patent license fees for content distribution (streaming, etc.), except for UHD-Blu-ray disc (a small per-disc fee to HEVC advance). Only hardware device manufacturers need to license HEVC patents, and they are dealing with that issue and they continue to support HEVC in every device they make that supports video. For video services, HEVC is free."

https://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1864184#post1864184

So what are your sources for this? Cause it seems like you know something we dont.

Blue_MiSfit

14th August 2023, 18:54

It's FUD, IMO.

Yes it's possible that someone may declare and start demanding per-content royalties.

Do I think that will happen? Personally, no.

benwaggoner

15th August 2023, 01:58

H.264 was the only case of the patent pools pulling their heads out of their posteriors and deciding to not charge "content fees" for free-to-view web content. All the other ISO/ITU video formats have been failures on the web mainly because of the "content fee", with websites opting for literally anything else than the ISO/ITU formats. The only exception is some subscription services using H.265, and even then some subscription services have opted for AV1 instead.
I'm not aware of any premium services are using AV1 for even 10% of their streams, or for UHD and HDR at all. I could be wrong.

Content fees haven't wound up being a problem in practice, but the ambiguity until things have clarified sure have (MPEG-4 pt 2 in particular).

So, even if the problem of the decoder fees was solved for H.265 (which is a much bigger problem than it was for H.264 due to the stacking of multiple patent pool royalties), so that browsers can support H.265 reliably without dependence on the particular hardware configuration they run on, H.265 also has the problem of the "content fee".
I think the decoder fee has been solved for H.265. It is pretty well universal in mobile, TV, and attached devices. Web browsers were really the last big gap. Certainly HDR content can be done in just HEVC.

The only viable formats for the web are VP8, H.264, VP9, and AV1. VP9 and AV1 have a non-zero possibility of a successful patent assertion, so the only 100% safe choice is VP8 and H.264, and since H.264 is better than VP8 and also universally supported by hardware acceleration, it's gonna be with us for a long time. Also, any attempt to replace it is not worth the effort since it's going to be royalty-free before any attempt to replace it can succeed.
"Viable" in what sense? UGC HEVC is now viable on the web with Safari + Chrome + Edge, with HW decoder support broadly available.

I concur that as of August 2021, if you can only encode to one codec, H.264 is the obvious choice. But for more complex efforts where multi-codec is viable, <20% of clients would get H.264 instead of something better.

kurkosdr

15th August 2023, 14:13

I'm not aware of any premium services are using AV1 for even 10% of their streams, or for UHD and HDR at all.

Netflix streams AV1 if the device supports it

So what are your sources for this? Cause it seems like you know something we dont.
I read somewhere that MPEG LA used to charge content fees, but that may be outdated. Anyway, unless there is a reliable source for every patent pool (that they have waived content fees), I don't believe it, there are just too many patent pools and entities getting their beak wet from H.265, and every one has to agree for H.265 to be free of content fees.

I think the decoder fee has been solved for H.265. It is pretty well universal in mobile, TV, and attached devices. Web browsers were really the last big gap. Certainly HDR content can be done in just HEVC.
It hasn't been solved for browsers, since the business model of the entire industry revolves around giving away the browser for $0. Just because a company like Google begrudingly pays the H.264 royalties for Chrome (and Cisco for Firefox) doesn't mean they will do it again for HEVC. Chrome "solves" the issue by using HEVC hardware acceleration if supported by the system (and not decoding HEVC if not), which means that as a service provider you will have to also encode in H.264 or VP8. Which is why if you can't encode and store multiple formats (on top of encoding and storing multiple resolutions that you have to do anyway), H.264 and VP8 are your only viable formats. But if you can encode in multiple-formats, then every format can be said to be viable, even something like VVC+Dolby Vision can be said to be viable if there is an H.264 or VP8 stream to fall back to.

benwaggoner

16th August 2023, 18:17

Netflix streams AV1 if the device supports it
For HDR as well? If so, I wasn't aware! Do you have any links?

I read somewhere that MPEG LA used to charge content fees, but that may be outdated. Anyway, unless there is a reliable source for every patent pool (that they have waived content fees), I don't believe it, there are just too many patent pools and entities getting their beak wet from H.265, and every one has to agree for H.265 to be free of content fees.
MPEG-LA has had some commercial content fees before, but they've been reasonable. The bigger friction has been from ambiguity before the patent pool(s) have finalized and published details. This was more complex for HEVC which had three pools, not all of which published any license details and required an attorney and NDA to get the specifics.

It hasn't been solved for browsers, since the business model of the entire industry revolves around giving away the browser for $0. Just because a company like Google begrudingly pays the H.264 royalties for Chrome (and Cisco for Firefox) doesn't mean they will do it again for HEVC. Chrome "solves" the issue by using HEVC hardware acceleration if supported by the system (and not decoding HEVC if not), which means that as a service provider you will have to also encode in H.264 or VP8. Which is why if you can't encode and store multiple formats (on top of encoding and storing multiple resolutions that you have to do anyway), H.264 and VP8 are your only viable formats. But if you can encode in multiple-formats, then every format can be said to be viable, even something like VVC+Dolby Vision can be said to be viable if there is an H.264 or VP8 stream to fall back to.
It has been "solved" in the sense that HEVC decode hardware is now ubiquitous in most markets, and a free browser can pass a HEVC bitstream to a system-level SW or HW decoder (just like with AV1). There will be some edge cases without a HEVC decoder, of course, so full ubiquity still requires H.264 as a fallback.

For premium content requiring hardware DRM, just HEVC is more viable because the systems without HEVC HW decoders rarely have sufficiently protected HW DRM. Same with HDR, as the 10-bit requirement rules out most H.264 decoders in systems without HEVC decoders.

I am using HEVC as an illustrative example here, as the same market dynamics apply to AV1, AV2, VVC, and on into the future. I doubt we'll see any major content platform adopt a single codec solution other than H.264 in the next decade.

kurkosdr

18th August 2023, 15:47

For HDR as well? If so, I wasn't aware! Do you have any links?

They are considering AV1 HDR in the future, but not doing it at the moment:
https://www.audioholics.com/hdtv-formats/netflix-av1
Don't ask what's taking them so long, YouTube is doing it with AV1 and VP9.

MPEG-LA has had some commercial content fees before, but they've been reasonable. The bigger friction has been from ambiguity before the patent pool(s) have finalized and published details. This was more complex for HEVC which had three pools, not all of which published any license details and required an attorney and NDA to get the specifics.

Quite honestly, this is why I hate HEVC with a passion when it comes to free-to-view content: Nobody out there has a straight "yes" or "no" answer to the thorny issue of content fees. Which is why I think it's best to avoid it for free-to-view content.

At this point it makes you wonder whether investing in HDR H.264 encoders is indeed the best option. Resolutions above 1080p are unafforable for free-to-view content anyway, and the bitrate impact of HDR will be marginal.

rwill

18th August 2023, 16:43

Free-to-view sounds nice. YouTube made $29.2 billion revenue last year though... maybe they could afford content fees if they had to without having to close shop?

kurkosdr

18th August 2023, 18:38

Free-to-view sounds nice. YouTube made $29.2 billion revenue last year though... maybe they could afford content fees if they had to without having to close shop?

1) Free-to-view doesn't mean YouTube.

2) How much did YouTube made in profit? Because that's the excess they could theoretically spend in content fees. And how much do the HEVC patent pools want in content fees per video?

There is a reason websites serving free-to-view content (which make a razor-thin margin per each video) avoid formats with content fees like the plague, going all the way back to IGN serving Quicktime videos and later WMV (but not MPEG-2 or MPEG 4 Part 2), which was before YouTube was even a thing btw. Even MPEG-1 didn't became a thing for free-to-view videos until the last patent expired.

rwill

18th August 2023, 20:06

1) Free-to-view doesn't mean YouTube.

2) How much did YouTube made in profit? Because that's the excess they could theoretically spend in content fees. And how much do the HEVC patent pools want in content fees per video?

There is a reason websites serving free-to-view content (which make a razor-thin margin per each video) avoid formats with content fees like the plague, going all the way back to IGN serving Quicktime videos and later WMV (but not MPEG-2 or MPEG 4 Part 2), which was before YouTube was even a thing btw. Even MPEG-1 didn't became a thing for free-to-view videos until the last patent expired.

Can you give examples of free-to-view websites other than YouTube? Maybe some with a different business model?

It appears Alphabet does not tell how much YouTube made them in profit. But if Youtube can give some cents per video view to the content creator I think they can also afford paying a little for a highly efficient format. They have no need to do that of course because of AV1 and VP9 - which are well suited for the quality the user has come to expect from YouTube.

I think you are mistaken about MPEG-1, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 not being a thing on the web because of content fees. Its the formats videos were shared in when the videos were put up for download for offline viewing. I think websites looking to embed videos in the page, because of ad revenue, were using RealVideo, Quicktime, Flash or some Windows IE extension only because there was no other widely supported browser support. These used patented and/or proprietary codecs internally anyway. And there were no content fees back then, just a per unit license for hard- or software. The licensing business was also less fragmented.

benwaggoner

18th August 2023, 20:28

They are considering AV1 HDR in the future, but not doing it at the moment:
https://www.audioholics.com/hdtv-formats/netflix-av1
Don't ask what's taking them so long, YouTube is doing it with AV1 and VP9.
Netflix, as a premium content company, has a lot higher quality bar than YouTube. And while AV1 doesn't seem to have any fundamental deficit for HDR, encoding in PQ and Rec. 2020 requires a fair amount of retuning away from gamma and Rec. 709. For a simple example, there's the --hdr10-opt from x265.
AV1 also encodes more slowly than HEVC in general, and as HDR comes with UHD, those extra pixels can really slow down encoding. There's a big difference between taking 12 hours and 36 hours to encode a movie.

Quite honestly, this is why I hate HEVC with a passion when it comes to free-to-view content: Nobody out there has a straight "yes" or "no" answer to the thorny issue of content fees. Which is why I think it's best to avoid it for free-to-view content.
I believe all the stakeholders did clarify that free-to-view content doesn't have license fees as of a few years ago. Which was always true, but one of the licensing groups wouldn't tell anyone they wouldn't charge a content license expect under NDA. Which was infuriating.

At this point it makes you wonder whether investing in HDR H.264 encoders is indeed the best option. Resolutions above 1080p are unafforable for free-to-view content anyway, and the bitrate impact of HDR will be marginal.
HDR requires 10-bit, and there are a lot more 10-bit HEVC HW decoders out there than 10-bit H.264. And HDR is also most often UHD, where the compression efficiency improvements of HEVC are even bigger than at lower resolutions. Having a 32x32 max block size is really useful at higher resolutions versus a max of 8x8. H.264 UHD HDR would need to at least double bitrates, and with much less compatibility.

And, obviously, premium content HDR playback launched HEVC only over eight years now, and is still exclusively HEVC other than YouTube's user generated content.

kurkosdr

18th August 2023, 20:44

Can you give examples of free-to-view websites other than YouTube? Maybe some with a different business model?

X-rated sites are a big example, then there is Twitch, Microsoft Stream, IBM Video, plus the various YouTube alternatives (Rumble etc).

None of them uses H.265, it's H.264 and maybe VP9 and AV1.

It appears Alphabet does not tell how much YouTube made them in profit. But if Youtube can give some cents per video view to the content creator I think they can also afford paying a little for a highly efficient format. They have no need to do that of course because of AV1 and VP9 - which are well suited for the quality the user has come to expect from YouTube.

Correction: YouTube gives creators a cut of the ad revenue. You don't know whether what's left after the cut given to creators and after hosting expenses are taken into account is enough to pay for the content fee. I am always amazed by the insistence of H.265 fanboys to spend other people's money without knowing any of the numbers involved. I follow a more pragmatic approach which says that H.265 has been chosen by premium video providers but not free-to-view video providers and I trust that the economics work in either case.

My main gripe is the lack of an official baseline (mandatory format) for the html5 video tag, because I hate "open-ended" specs, but H.264 and VP8 have become the closest thing we have to a defacto baseline. I still hate the fact there is still no official baseline.

I think you are mistaken about MPEG-1, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 not being a thing on the web because of content fees. Its the formats videos were shared in when the videos were put up for download for offline viewing. I think websites looking to embed videos in the page, because of ad revenue, were using RealVideo, Quicktime, Flash or some Windows IE extension only because there was no other widely supported browser support. These used patented and/or proprietary codecs internally anyway. And there were no content fees back then, just a per unit license for hard- or software. The licensing business was also less fragmented.
I remember downloading a mov file from IGN, not streaming it. But I've never come across MPEG-2 or MPEG4 Part 2 in streaming or downloadable form unless talking about pirate releases.

benwaggoner

18th August 2023, 20:54

1) Free-to-view doesn't mean YouTube.
It dominates, but yeah, Facebook has a ton, and it is a very long tail down to self-hosted .mp4 files.

2) How much did YouTube made in profit? Because that's the excess they could theoretically spend in content fees. And how much do the HEVC patent pools want in content fees per video?
The bandwidth savings of using HEVC are also substantial, which needs to go into ROI calculations like that. A model where the most popular 1% of titles get HEVC would spread out extra storage and encoding costs and still offer savings for >50% of streams delivered.

There is a reason websites serving free-to-view content (which make a razor-thin margin per each video) avoid formats with content fees like the plague, going all the way back to IGN serving Quicktime videos and later WMV (but not MPEG-2 or MPEG 4 Part 2), which was before YouTube was even a thing btw. Even MPEG-1 didn't became a thing for free-to-view videos until the last patent expired.
MPEG-2 licensing was so streaming unfriendly, yeah. But it didn't matter, as the decoder and bitrate requirements of MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 weren't viable for streaming until much better alternatives became available (originally better decoder performance like Cinepak and Indeo, later better compression efficiency like WMV9, Sorenson Video 3, and RealVideo 8). MPEG-1 was $0 licensing. MPEG-2's would have been prohibitively expensive if it were technical viable for IP delivery. I evaluated using MPEG-1 for progressive download after QuickTime added a free MPEG-1 decoder, but it just didn't offer practical benefits. The MP2 audio alone really needed at least 128 Kbps to be minimally acceptable. MPEG-4 pt 2 + AAC was a lot better by then.

MPEG-4 pt 2's licensing wasn't so bad in the end, but the ambiguity of it more than offset the relatively meager compression efficiency advantages it offered. The friction from "I don't know what it would cost" is often much bigger than the actual costs themselves. I certainly did use it for free to play projects back in late 90's.

I think the biggest reason why free sites use H.264 + AAC is that it is a good-enough codec that is universally compatible, fast to encode, and has an excellent free encoder that works well with a very wide variety of content in x264. Since a H.264 fallback is required, any additional codec is an additional thing to encode and store, and requires the complexity of making sure the right codec goes to the right player.

At a big enough scale, multi-codec will easily pay for itself in bandwidth savings, but paying for bandwidth can be a lot easier and less risk than hiring staff to deal with all the extra complexity required.

Not that we couldn't do it. I worked on a lot of web sites in the 90's that did auto selection of RealVideo, QuickTime, or Windows Media based on what browser plugins were available. It was a huge pain to have more than a few dozen videos available, of course.

kurkosdr

18th August 2023, 20:59

kurkosdr

18th August 2023, 21:02

It dominates, but yeah, Facebook has a ton, and it is a very long tail down to self-hosted .mp4 files.

I have posted some examples above. I missed Facebook though.

kurkosdr

18th August 2023, 21:09

It
The bandwidth savings of using HEVC are also substantial, which needs to go into ROI calculations like that. A model where the most popular 1% of titles get HEVC would spread out extra storage and encoding costs and still offer savings for >50% of streams delivered.

If a vacuum where only H.265 exists, maybe, but YouTube and Twitch use VP9 in addition to H.264. And YouTube also uses AV1.

If H.265 made financial sense, they'd use that instead.

benwaggoner

18th August 2023, 21:23

Free-to-view sounds nice. YouTube made $29.2 billion revenue last year though... maybe they could afford content fees if they had to without having to close shop?
From a licensing cost and business perspective, it's important to distinguish between pure free-to-view version ad-funded content with in-stream commercials. Actual free content has always had no content licensing cost. That's not always been true for FAST content, which mimics the classic over the air broadcast experience and business model.

benwaggoner

18th August 2023, 21:31

If a vacuum where only H.265 exists, maybe, but YouTube and Twitch use VP9 in addition to H.264. And YouTube also uses AV1.

If H.265 made financial sense, they'd use that instead.
Google has long had a strong philosophical objection to codecs with software patents, and has done many things that have disadvantaged them in order to encourage use of "free" codecs like VPx and AV1. They absolutely could have saved a bunch of money (from bandwidth savings) and improved customer experience (with better quality) by using HEVC on popular videos. And could have delivered some significant CO2 emissions savings; the aggregate power consumption of all those VP8/9 software decodes when HW H.264 was available, and SW AV1 when HEVC was avilable has to be pretty substantial.

YouTube has been the primary user of V8, VP9, and AV1 to date, and building out the whole ecosystem for what's largely internal use wasn't done out of clear-eyed operating cost ROI optimization.

AV1 is certainly the most technical viable and competitive codec to come out of their On2 aquisiton, but even still we don't see much use of it by other companies in terms of % of streams delivered. Lots of companies have announced they're supporting VPx and AV1 while still largely delivering in other codecs.

kurkosdr

18th August 2023, 21:54

Google has long had a strong philosophical objection to codecs with software patents, and has done many things that have disadvantaged them in order to encourage use of "free" codecs like VPx and AV1. They absolutely could have saved a bunch of money (from bandwidth savings) and improved customer experience (with better quality) by using HEVC on popular videos. And could have delivered some significant CO2 emissions savings; the aggregate power consumption of all those VP8/9 software decodes when HW H.264 was available, and SW AV1 when HEVC was avilable has to be pretty substantial.

YouTube has been the primary user of V8, VP9, and AV1 to date, and building out the whole ecosystem for what's largely internal use wasn't done out of clear-eyed operating cost ROI optimization.

AV1 is certainly the most technical viable and competitive codec to come out of their On2 aquisiton, but even still we don't see much use of it by other companies in terms of % of streams delivered. Lots of companies have announced they're supporting VPx and AV1 while still largely delivering in other codecs.
Thing is, all the other free-to-view sites mentioned above have also steered clear of H.265 for some reason.

Now that Chrome passes H.265 to hardware decoders (to the detriment of application consistency across different hardware configurations), you'd expect all those other free-to-view sites to switch to H.265 if H.265 makes so much financial sense over H.264 or VP9, but they don't.

Again, this goes back to H.265-everywhere fanboys willing to spend other people's money to gloss over their beloved format's licensing issues (instead of admitting the format makes financial sense in some markets but not in others).

rwill

18th August 2023, 21:57

I just noticed no one mentioned EVC Baseline yet, sad.

kurkosdr

18th August 2023, 22:05

I just noticed no one mentioned EVC Baseline yet, sad.
It's a dead format, too little too late compared to VP9.

excellentswordfight

19th August 2023, 09:21

I believe all the stakeholders did clarify that free-to-view content doesn't have license fees as of a few years ago. Which was always true, but one of the licensing groups wouldn't tell anyone they wouldn't charge a content license expect under NDA. Which was infuriating..
I assume you are refering to Velos, and it should be noted that they have ended their license pool for hevc, some of the members have now joined Access Advance (former hevc advance), it now looks like this:https://images.fonearena.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Access_Advance_HEVC_Patent_Sharp-1024x735.jpg

And regarding costs for av1, i agree with you there, the encoding requerments shoudlnt be overlooked. For example, just look at the aws MediaConvert pricing for av1, its A LOT more expensive to encode cause of the processing requerments.

benwaggoner

21st August 2023, 19:46

Thing is, all the other free-to-view sites mentioned above have also steered clear of H.265 for some reason.
Presumably because the technical complexity of supporting multiple codecs didn't make sense for them. The audience size has to be pretty decent before the economies of scale that make multi-codec pay for itself in reduced bandwidth outweigh the complexity and storage costs of having multiple codecs.

[Now that Chrome passes H.265 to hardware decoders (to the detriment of application consistency across different hardware configurations), you'd expect all those other free-to-view sites to switch to H.265 if H.265 makes so much financial sense over H.264 or VP9, but they don't.
Can you give some examples of these companies? I'm not sure of who you are thinking of and so can't really speculate.

Again, this goes back to H.265-everywhere fanboys willing to spend other people's money to gloss over their beloved format's licensing issues (instead of admitting the format makes financial sense in some markets but not in others).
I think we're exactly talking about how it makes sense in some markets but not others.

The original question was when a service could viably have no H.264 encodes at all. And I think it could be viable in a few years, but not today for anyone aiming for broad reach. A mobile-only service could viably have been all HEVC and xHE-AAC for several years now, due to the rapid replacement rate of those devices. There are still old pre-HEVC Smart TVs and streaming devices still in use due to their longer replacement cycles, although that's a small and shrinking share of the market.

A related question is when would it be viable to have only HDR content. which will probably take a few years beyond when H.264 could be deprecated.

H.264 has had an amazingly long run for a codec, a testament to the very innovative original design and the huge amount of optimization its encoders have seen over nearly 20 years. The broad early support for High Profile made a big difference. Baseline Profile and VC-1 were pretty competitive for a few years, but once there was High with both 4x4 and 8x8 blocks, B-frames, and CABAC, it was the king of the heap for years. It took its own next generation, HEVC, to have a broadly viable and superior replacement. HEVC is of course built out from H.264, which allowed existing H.264 encoders to make compliant bitstreams with relatively minor modifications, and refine from there.

If H.264 High10 decoders had become standard like High decoders were, H.264 could have had longer legs with decent 1080p HDR support and the efficiency improvements of 10-bit. But that was not to be. In any case, UHD really required HEVC, as it could deliver 4x the pixels in similar bitrates to H.264 High 1080p for content without too much grain.

kurkosdr

22nd August 2023, 12:31

Can you give some examples of these companies? I'm not sure of who you are thinking of and so can't really speculate.

Copying and pasting from above:
- Facebook
- Twitch
- Various X-rated sites
- Microsoft Stream
- IBM Video
- various YouTube alternatives (Rumble etc)

All of them H.264-only, except Twitch which uses H.264 and VP9. None of them uses HEVC.

Again, if HEVC made financial sense for free-to-view web video, one of those services would be using it.

rwill

22nd August 2023, 12:40

HEVC in Browser support is still fresh, give it some time. HEVC is already well established in OTT Streaming and Broadcast.

Blue_MiSfit

22nd August 2023, 18:34

benwaggoner

22nd August 2023, 19:12

Copying and pasting from above:
- Facebook
- Twitch
- Various X-rated sites
- Microsoft Stream
- IBM Video
- various YouTube alternatives (Rumble etc)

All of them H.264-only, except Twitch which uses H.264 and VP9. None of them uses HEVC.
Facebook also has big Feels about Patents. They've really backed away from their AV1 goals, however. I can't speak about Twitch in detail as they are a partner company. I don't have much experience with the other providers/markets. It doesn't sound like content sees would apply in those cases, and companies like Microsoft and IBM have extensive patent cross-licensing portfolios which should reduce or eliminate encoder/decdoer fees.

Real world, it gets down to the potential benefits of reduced bandwidth costs versus the extra storage costs of having multiple codecs and the complexity of encoding and managing a multi codec service. Plus if a service is live and not being hugely profitable, the instinct is to leave it as it is rather than make a big capital investment in long-term operational cost savings. And HEVC in browsers is relatively new and kinda came out of the blue. Services could be working on multi-codec but not have launched yet.

Also, a lot of services you've mentioned aren't really monetizing quality, and so reducing bitrate, even with a quality hit, is a much easier knob to control storage and bandwidth costs.

And if a service didn't archive the source, but just kept distribution encodes, reencoding a mediocre H.264 into HEVC doesn't offer nearly the same benefits as encoding fresh from the source. This has been pretty common to save on storage costs.

Real-time HEVC encoding takes a few times more compute/pixel, and would require hardware upgrades if a service is using low-power fixed function H.264 encoders. We're not seeing much live AV1 for similar reasons (although it is several times slower yet than HEVC). The extra capital and/or operational costs per channel may not pencil out for low-viewership streams. And, at least, would require a new budget cycle.

Again, if HEVC made financial sense for free-to-view web video, one of those services would be using it.
There are lots of ways it may not have made sense for a given free-to-view service, as above. Sometimes it doesn't make sense as the leadership of a service may not be even thinking in these directions. It's a complex thing to model! And capital investments have a much higher bar these days with VC funding trying up and interest rates so high.

kurkosdr

22nd August 2023, 20:00

Facebook also has big Feels about Patents.
Please try to get this into your skull: it's not about "feels", it's about financial realities. I personally lol'ed hard at the graph on the previous page: 2 patent pools, 8 unaffiliated entities. Nice. Unless you have a reliable source from all 10 entities pledging there won't be "content fees", jumping into HEVC carries the huge risk that one or those 10 entities will come to collect content fees years after you've spent time and electricity encoding your content to HEVC. Now, if you are a pay-to-view service, those fees can be rolled into the cost the customer pays to view the video, but free-to-view services serving tons of video to anyone who asks and making tight margins per video from ads don't have that option.

and companies like Microsoft and IBM have extensive patent cross-licensing portfolios which should reduce or eliminate encoder/decdoer fees.
Irrelevant, unless they have patent cross-licensing portfolios with every patent holder in HEVC. The patent holders they do not have patent cross-licensing portfolios with can always come to collect content fees.

Real world, it gets down to the potential benefits of reduced bandwidth costs versus the extra storage costs of having multiple codecs and the complexity of encoding and managing a multi codec service. Plus if a service is live and not being hugely profitable, the instinct is to leave it as it is rather than make a big capital investment in long-term operational cost savings. And HEVC in browsers is relatively new and kinda came out of the blue. Services could be working on multi-codec but not have launched yet.

Also, a lot of services you've mentioned aren't really monetizing quality, and so reducing bitrate, even with a quality hit, is a much easier knob to control storage and bandwidth costs.
Reality is, any free-to-view service choosing to use some more modern format alongside H.264 has gone to VP9. So there is a desire to use formats more modern than H.264 by some of those services, just not HEVC. If there was some kind of desire to use HEVC by some free-to-view service, we would have heard it by now. Pay-to-view services have already done it.

kurkosdr

22nd August 2023, 20:10

A service I worked on called Movies Anywhere uses HEVC wherever possible. This is a free service dealing with premium Hollywood content. It was free because it was tied to the digital rights you get when you buy a title on disc or at a streaming service.

We had no HEVC licensing costs, and were comfortable taking the risk. We delivered, 4K, with HDR, Dolby Vision, Atmos, etc.

Then it's not a free service, it's part of the package the customer buys when buying the disc of streaming service in question, which means it's actually a bundled service. This means any potential content fee (I guess that's what you mean when you say "risk") can be bundled into the purchase price (the margins the Hollywood studio makes per disc or subscriber likely allow it).

benwaggoner

22nd August 2023, 23:07

Please try to get this into your skull: it's not about "feels", it's about financial realities. I personally lol'ed hard at the graph on the previous page: 2 patent pools, 8 unaffiliated entities. Nice. Unless you have a reliable source from all 10 entities pledging there won't be "content fees", jumping into HEVC carries the huge risk that one or those 10 entities will come to collect content fees years after you've spent time and electricity encoding your content to HEVC. Now, if you are a pay-to-view service, those fees can be rolled into the cost the customer pays to view the video, but free-to-view services serving tons of video to anyone who asks and making tight margins per video from ads don't have that option.
You may feel there is a problem in theory, but lots of companies have adopted HEVC without any problems in practice. I concur that getting a clear straight answer from all participants is way more complicated than it should ever have been. But unless you have some examples of someone actually having to pay content licenses for free-to-play content, this is largely conjecture.

Irrelevant, unless they have patent cross-licensing portfolios with every patent holder in HEVC. The patent holders they do not have patent cross-licensing portfolios with can always come to collect content fees.
In practice, the patent cross-licensing can have a big effect on these concerns, as it allows a whole lot of patents that could apply be ruled out. IANAL, but this seems to be the general case. There's no patent issue without a patent holder wiling to sue.

Reality is, any free-to-view service choosing to use some more modern format alongside H.264 has gone to VP9. So there is a desire to use formats more modern than H.264 by some of those services, just not HEVC. If there was some kind of desire to use HEVC by some free-to-view service, we would have heard it by now. Pay-to-view services have already done it.
That's like saying premium content must have a big reason not to adopt VVC as no one has yet. Market timing is a big factor here. Bear in mind that VP9 has been broadly playable in web browsers for seven years now, while HEVC has been broadly supported for just shy of a year.

VP9 also got a lot of very optimistic promises made about bitrate savings over H.264 that never really paid off, largely due to x264, but also because of some poor design decisions that forced a lot of serialization for encoding and decoding. The VP9 toolchain was fine for YouTube splitting up lots of single-threaded chunks across lots of instances, but not for a lot of core x264 scenarios.

Spyros

18th September 2023, 06:40

benwaggoner

26th September 2023, 20:32

There's a few pages worth that are expiring this or next month as well. Dolby really dominates the remaining ones.

kurkosdr

27th September 2023, 15:29

Small update, a newer patent list is available (August 1, 2023 (https://web.archive.org/web/20230907021043/https://www.via-la.com/wp-content/uploads/Final-August-1-2023-AVC-Attachment-1.pdf)).

I didn't notice earlier, because the website changed (from mpegla.com to via-la.com).

19 pages with unexpired patents, 37 pages with expired ones.
In the US, the last patent for the first version of the H.264 standard will expire on 29 nov 2027:
https://scratchpad.fandom.com/wiki/MPEG_patent_lists#H.264_patents
So it's not worth holding your breath (when it comes to US patents).

I am interested how many EU patents remain active after 17 August 2004 (the date the first version of the H.264 standard was published), since the EU doesn't have a habit of granting multi-year patent extensions willy-nilly like the US does. For example, MPEG4 ASP is still patented in the US (and in Brazil, due to an one-time extension given to some patents in that country) but is royalty-free everywhere else.

MPEG LA updates their patents lists every 3 months btw.

Avclover

4th October 2023, 23:24

In the US, the last patent for the first version of the H.264 standard will expire on 29 nov 2027

It seems the current VIA LA patent list features at least one early US patent that expires only at the end of 2030:
US9356620B2 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US9356620B2/).

It is also worth noting that the ubiquitous high profile was introduced only after version 1 of AVC.

kurkosdr

5th October 2023, 18:15

It seems the current VIA LA patent list features at least one early US patent that expires only at the end of 2030:
US9356620B2 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US9356620B2/).

It is also worth noting that the ubiquitous high profile was introduced only after version 1 of AVC.

VIA LA's patent list includes extensions such as SVC and MVC which are technically part of the AVC standard but are not essential to implement (both SVC and MVC are backwards-compatible extensions).
https://www.via-la.com/licensing-2/avc-h-264/

You are correct about the High Profile though: The High profile was added on 1st March 2005, so that's the patent priority date to look for, I guess.

benwaggoner

5th October 2023, 20:06

VIA LA's patent list includes extensions such as SVC and MVC which are technically part of the AVC standard but are not essential to implement (both SVC and MVC are backwards-compatible extensions).
https://www.via-la.com/licensing-2/avc-h-264/

You are correct about the High Profile though: The High profile was added on 1st March 2005, so that's the patent priority date to look for, I guess.
Since High mainly added 8x8 blocks, which were the pre-H.264 standard, I wonder if there are all that many essential patents for it. How to choose between and single 4x4 versus 8x8, perhaps?

rwill

6th October 2023, 07:21

VIA LA's patent list includes extensions such as SVC and MVC which are technically part of the AVC standard but are not essential to implement (both SVC and MVC are backwards-compatible extensions).

You write that MVC is backwards compatible. I have a question. If I write 128 as Profile IDC into a SPS to signal MVC Stereo High Profile, how is this backwards compatible to Profile IDC = 100 which is High Profile? If a Decoder knows nothing about Profile IDC = 128 or 132 and the corresponding change in syntax, would it not flat our fail to decode?

Since High mainly added 8x8 blocks, which were the pre-H.264 standard, I wonder if there are all that many essential patents for it. How to choose between and single 4x4 versus 8x8, perhaps?

That would be news to me that the very specific 8x8 Transform of AVC was a standard pre-H.264.

Avclover

6th October 2023, 20:54

VIA LA's patent list includes extensions such as SVC and MVC which are technically part of the AVC standard but are not essential to implement (both SVC and MVC are backwards-compatible extensions).

While that's true, the specific patent originated in 2002, got a ridiculous term extension and is not related to SVC or MVC.

Since High mainly added 8x8 blocks, which were the pre-H.264 standard, I wonder if there are all that many essential patents for it. How to choose between and single 4x4 versus 8x8, perhaps?

High profile also introduced quantization scaling matrices and separate C_B and C_R QP control to the specification.

benwaggoner

6th October 2023, 22:41

High profile also introduced quantization scaling matrices and separate C_B and C_R QP control to the specification.
Oh, right!

Not all encoders and bitstreams use those tools, but some certainly do, or at least can.

Avclover

6th October 2023, 23:05

I guess the amount of decoders with support is what counts from a licensing perspective.

kurkosdr

9th October 2023, 18:26

You write that MVC is backwards compatible. I have a question. If I write 128 as Profile IDC into a SPS to signal MVC Stereo High Profile, how is this backwards compatible to Profile IDC = 100 which is High Profile? If a Decoder knows nothing about Profile IDC = 128 or 132 and the corresponding change in syntax, would it not flat our fail to decode?
There is a simple answer to that: You won't do that, you will instead do what Blu-ray 3D wants, because it's the only use of MVC that matters (and fortunately it is backwards compatible with High profile).

And even if you don't care about Blu-ray 3D playback (say you are making MVC in MP4), then you will do whatever it takes to to not break High Profile anyway. I am sure there are multiple ways to produce a stream that's technically compliant with the latest version of the H.264/AVC standard but breaks the first High profile decoders, but don't do that if you want to get the benefits of the huge H.264/AVC installed base out there. That's true even if we are not talking about hardware players but software players. No real-world H.264/AVC stream out there breaks High Profile, not ones anyone would care about anyway.

So, as a person writing a software player, implementing the first version of the H.264/AVC standard that includes the High profile achieves compatibility with practically all real-world H.264/AVC streams out there.

benwaggoner

9th October 2023, 18:42

There is a simple answer to that: You won't do that, you will do what Blu-ray 3D wants, because that's the only use of MVC that matters (and is backwards compatible with High profile).
Except 3D Blu-ray is H.264, and Apple specifies using MV-HEVC. There will need to be some work to get it working for HEVC, >1080p, and for HDR. It's all pretty obvious how to do it, and the HC reference encoder includes MV-HEVC support.
So, implementing the first version of High Profile achieves compatibility with practically all real-world H.264/AVC streams.
Yeah. Thank goodness the days of "subset of Main and Baseline + B-frames" defacto subsets are behind us.

kurkosdr

9th October 2023, 19:17

Except 3D Blu-ray is H.264, and Apple specifies using MV-HEVC. There will need to be some work to get it working for HEVC, >1080p, and for HDR. It's all pretty obvious how to do it, and the HC reference encoder includes MV-HEVC support.

MV-HEVC has nothing to do with H.264/AVC, so it doesn't belong in this thread.

oibaf

31st October 2023, 14:28

kurkosdr

1st November 2023, 17:07

It's been 3 months since August 1, 2023, so MPEG LA pushed a new list:
https://www.via-la.com/wp-content/uploads/Final-November-1-2023-AVC-Attachment-1.pdf

----

BTW, in that list unexpired patents are:
US: 540
CN: 132
JP: 129
KR: 97
GB: 95
DE: 92
FR: 91
IT: 68
NL: 67
ES: 65
BR: 57
CA: 31

There is also an interesting analysis here: https://scratchpad.fandom.com/wiki/MPEG_patent_lists#H.264_patents : sometimes they differ in their expiration dates.
I may try and make a csv list or spreadsheet of the MPEG LA document sometime so I can feed it to Google Patents, but if you already have one, can you post it? Basically trying to come up with a "isn't royalty-free before" date for every country (only taking into account patents with a priority date from before March 1, 2005)

oibaf

1st November 2023, 19:49

It's been 3 months since August 1, 2023, so MPEG LA pushed a new list:
https://www.via-la.com/wp-content/uploads/Final-November-1-2023-AVC-Attachment-1.pdf

----

I may try and make a csv list or spreadsheet of the MPEG LA document sometime so I can feed it to Google Patents, but if you already have one, can you post it? Basically trying to come up with a "isn't royalty-free before" date for every country (only taking into account patents with a priority date from before March 1, 2005)

Now 17 pages with active patents, 40 with expired patents.

Updated active patents on November 2023 list:
US: 480
CN: 119
JP: 111
KR: 72
GB: 58
BR: 57
DE: 55
FR: 55
IT: 52
ES: 52
NL: 47
PL: 47
PT: 44
SE: 44
TR: 44
BE: 43
CH: 43
CZ: 42
HU: 41
DK: 40
EE: 40
HK: 40
LI: 40
MX: 39
AT: 38
SK: 35
FI: 34
AU: 32
IE: 31
LU: 29
RO: 29
NO: 25
RU: 21
VN: 21
IN: 17
CA: 16
SI: 15
MC: 12

A total of 72 patents will expire in the next 3 months.

I don't have a better list, to get these numbers I just did this:

opened the PDF with pdfarranger, cut all the pages leaving only the pages with active patents and saved as a new PDF
opened the resulting PDF with Firefox, its search function gives the number of occurrences

kurkosdr

1st November 2023, 19:53

Now 18 pages with active patents, 39 with expired patents.

Updated active patents on November 2023 list:
US: 480
CN: 119
JP: 111
KR: 72
GB: 58
BR: 57
DE: 55
FR: 55
IT: 52
ES: 52
NL: 47
CA: 16

A total of 72 patents will expire in the next 3 months.

I don't have a better list, to get these numbers I just did this:

opened the PDF with pdfarranger, cut all the pages leaving only the pages with active patents and saved as a new PDF
opened the resulting PDF with Firefox, its search function gives the number of occurrences

Huh? It's actually 17 pages, with page #17 being only partially filled.

oibaf

1st November 2023, 20:23

Huh? It's actually 17 pages, with page #17 being only partially filled.

Indeed, fixed, thanks. Also added other countries.

oibaf

1st November 2023, 21:00

I may try and make a csv list or spreadsheet of the MPEG LA document sometime so I can feed it to Google Patents, but if you already have one, can you post it? Basically trying to come up with a "isn't royalty-free before" date for every country (only taking into account patents with a priority date from before March 1, 2005)

Some other useful resources here:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Have_the_patents_for_MPEG-4_Visual_expired_yet%3F
https://www.uspto.gov/patents/laws/patent-term-calculator

kurkosdr

2nd November 2023, 16:37

Some other useful resources here:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Have_the_patents_for_MPEG-4_Visual_expired_yet%3F
The person who wrote this doesn't know what they are talking about, confusing date-of-priority with date-of-filing, and when I tried correcting them on the discussion page (https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Have_the_patents_for_MPEG-4_Visual_expired_yet%3F#About_the_Dolby_patent_(US_7,395,211)), they went off on an unrelated rant about random nonsense.

Just to be clear: When looking for prior art, you should search for prior art from before the date-of-priority, not the date-of-filing.

I would say to take that person's advice with vast amounts of salt, but nope, their advice is complete BS, so don't take it at all. Wait a couple of weeks until the last US patent has expired.

Also, all this is irrelevant to H.264/AVC. Back to H.264/AVC.

oibaf

2nd November 2023, 18:18

The person who wrote this doesn't know what they are talking about, confusing date-of-priority with date-of-filing, and when I tried correcting them on the discussion page (https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Have_the_patents_for_MPEG-4_Visual_expired_yet%3F#About_the_Dolby_patent_(US_7,395,211)), they went off on an unrelated rant about random nonsense.

Just to be clear: When looking for prior art, you should search for prior art from before the date-of-priority, not the date-of-filing.

I would say to take that person's advice with vast amounts of salt, but nope, their advice is complete BS, so don't take it at all. Wait a couple of weeks until the last US patent has expired.

Also, all this is irrelevant to H.264/AVC. Back to H.264/AVC.

US 7,395,211 is only for watermarking anyway, so it is not usually used, for example with xvid, correct? The patent says: TECHNICAL FIELD The present invention relates to steganography in the context of audio or video signals. More particularly, the invention relates to modifying the encoder and / or decoder operation of an audio or video perceptual coding system according to supplemental information so that supplemental information can be detectable at the output of the decoder . Such supplemental information is often referred to as a "watermark". Watermarking is an aspect of steganography.

EDIT: starting in january 2023 Fedora (owned by Red Hat / IBM) added xvid to the distro, so I suppose they know it could be freely distributed?

kurkosdr

2nd November 2023, 22:03

US 7,395,211 is only for watermarking anyway, so it is not usually used, for example with xvid, correct? The patent says:

EDIT: starting in january 2023 Fedora (owned by Red Hat / IBM) added xvid to the distro, so I suppose they know it could be freely distributed?
MPEG LA has an "essentiality overview" for their patents, and they list this patent as being essential to section "Grayscale shape decoding" of the specification:
https://www.mpegla.com/wp-content/uploads/M4VCrossRef.pdf

Just because the title of the patent says something about watermarking, it doesn't mean the ideas it describes aren't essential to some part of the MPEG4 ASP specification. What matters is the claims in the patent (and how they apply to the MPEG4 ASP spec).

If the Fedora people think they don't implement that part of the spec, fine, but the spec is still patented in the US.

BTW I have found a recent version of the spec if you want to look at the relevant section:
http://wikil.lwwhome.cn:28080/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/ISO_IEC_14496-2_2004.pdf

oibaf

3rd November 2023, 10:48

kurkosdr

3rd November 2023, 14:53

The page at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Have_the_patents_for_MPEG-4_Visual_expired_yet%3F says: "The Dolby patent (7,395,211) that was added to the pool in April 2021...". If that's true that let me think MPEG LA searched for a patent still pending, but that had a priority before publishing the MPEG4 Part 2 standard (so that it cannot be invalidated by the prior art of the standard, or not deemed essential for it) and added it to the pool in 2021 just for having another year of fees in the US.

While this doesn't matter a lot now (the patent is expiring in some days, and also this is H.264 thread), it let me suppose they may have done the same for H.264 patent pool. US9356620B2 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US9356620B2/en) is indeed another suspect for H.264 (added to the pool recently, expiration date farer than other in pool even if it was filed before the standard).
Thing is, they did find a part of the MPEG4 ASP specification to stick their patent on, and the date-of-priority checks out, which means someone competent needs to do an investigation to find out it is not essential before it can be declared non-essential. There is an organization called "unified patents" that does that (https://www.unifiedpatents.com/insights?tag=SEP), but they only deal with newer standards. If no such investigation is done, there is a chance that the patent is indeed essential and then you are in for a world of hurt if you haven't paid the royalties.

The difficulty is to find if they really apply to the standards on not. About 7,395,211 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7395211B2/en) it really looks like it is a way to add watermark that can be inserted into the encoder and recovered by the decoder, something not really usually needed by a standard decoder, but that you can take into account for some needs.
Again, the title on the patent is irrelevant. What matters is the claims. If for example MPEG4 ASP uses a method for overlaying something on top of something else that's similar to the claims described in the watermarking patent, then the patent is essential for MPEG4 ASP.

My point is: Stop assuming a patent in the pool is not essential because of the title of the patent or the date it was added to the pool or some other irrelevant factor. What you need is to have someone competent do an investigation regarding its essentiality.

oibaf

3rd November 2023, 15:38

My point is: Stop assuming a patent in the pool is not essential because of the title of the patent or the date it was added to the pool or some other irrelevant factor. What you need is to have someone competent do an investigation regarding its essentiality.

100% agree for the investigation.
However, it is something that can be only done by someone with enough knowledge of the codecs and the patents law (https://www.unifiedpatents.com/ is interesting, thanks for the suggestion).
In the meantime we can just argue and document about what we find suspect.

hajj_3

12th November 2023, 11:10

hajj_3

12th November 2023, 12:58

p.s here is the october 2023 h265 patent landscape, still many companies not in a patent pool:

https://accessadvance.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/2023Q4-HEVC-Patent-Diagram-10-01-23.jpg

kurkosdr

14th November 2023, 21:53

p.s here is the october 2023 h265 patent landscape, still many companies not in a patent pool:

(image)
For the second time, HEVC/H.265 is irrelevant to this thread.

kurkosdr

14th November 2023, 23:10

nokia has filed lots of lawsuits against Amazon and HP in various countries about video codec patents and streaming patents: https://www.nokia.com/blog/nokia-seeks-compensation-for-amazons-use-of-our-patented-multimedia-inventions/

nokia vs amazon u.s lawsuit document: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/67928543/1/nokia-technologies-oy-v-amazoncom-inc/
nokia vs hp u.s lawsuit document: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/67928650/1/nokia-technologies-oy-v-hp-inc/

patents nokia is suing hp over and their expiry dates as nokia listed in the court filing:

US7,532,808 - 2025-12-11 -h264
US8,204,134 - 2028-01-21 -h264
US7,724,818 - 2026-05-03 -h264+h265
US10,536,714 - 2032-11-01 -h265
US11,805,267 - 2032-01-06 -h265
US8,077,991 - 2030-10-12 -h265
US8,050,321 - 2027-05-19 -h264+h265
US6,950,469 - expired on 2023-08-06 -h264
US7,280,599 - expired on 2022-05-14 -h264
US8,036,273 - expired on 2021-09-17 -h264

patents nokia is suing amazon over, nokia did not list the expiration dates in this lawsuit therefore i am getting them off google patents:

US7,532,808 - 2025-12-11? -h264
US8,050,321 - 2027-05-19? -h264+h265?
US7,724,818 - 2026-05-03? -h264+h265?
US6,950,469 - expired 2023-08-06?
US7,280,599 - expired 2022-05-14?
US8,036,273 - expired 2021-09-17?
US6,856,701 - expired 2021-11-27?
US9,800,891 - expired 2021-01-19?
US6,968,005 - expired 2023-01-19?
US8,144,764 - 2024-10-15? -h264
US8,175,148 - 2026-12-03? -h264+h265?
US8,077,991 - 2030-10-12? -h265
US9,571,833 - 2034-10-13? -h265
US11,805,267 - 2032-01-06? -h265
US9,390,137 - 2033-08-01?

nokia is not a part of the via-la licensing for H264 (formerly known as mpeg-la) therefore none of these patents are listed in the via-la licensing list of H264 patents. I haven't checked for other codecs.

From Nokia's announcement, it looks like their patents cover more than video compression: "video compression, content delivery, content recommendation and aspects related to hardware."

Things like content delivery, content recommendation and "aspects related to hardware" (whatever that means) are not essential for implementing an H.264 encoder or decoder. For example, MPEG LA used to have a separate patent tool for MPEG-DASH (https://www.mpegla.com/wp-content/uploads/DASHAtt1.pdf) (a content-delivery/streaming standard) because MPEG-DASH is not essential for H.264 so those patents couldn't go into the H.264 patent pool.

Let's start with how many of those patents tagged as H.264 (H.265 is irrelevant to this thread) have a date-of-priority from before 1st March 2005, because for patents with a date-of-priority after 1st March 2005 the spec and reference encoder and decoder from ISO and ITU will count as prior art. Not to say that those that patents that have a date-of-priority from before 1st March 2005 are necessarily essential (see previous paragraph).

Does anyone know of a website that shows the date-of-priority? Google Patents used to before they removed the feature.

oibaf

15th November 2023, 11:35

Does anyone know of a website that shows the date-of-priority? Google Patents used to before they removed the feature.

Maybe: on Google Patents look under Worldwide applications and click on the older date patents, then look at their older date inside them.

Example: https://patents.google.com/patent/US7835443/ has filing date of 2008-09-26, but under Worldwide applications there is 2003 year with a KR patent with a filing date of 2003-03-03.
So 2003-03-03 can be the priority date?

oibaf

27th November 2023, 11:55

Let's start with how many of those patents tagged as H.264 (H.265 is irrelevant to this thread) have a date-of-priority from before 1st March 2005, because for patents with a date-of-priority after 1st March 2005 the spec and reference encoder and decoder from ISO and ITU will count as prior art. Not to say that those that patents that have a date-of-priority from before 1st March 2005 are necessarily essential (see previous paragraph).

Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Video_Coding says:

Version 1 (Edition 1): (May 30, 2003) First approved version of H.264/AVC containing Baseline, Main, and Extended profiles.[11]
Version 2 (Edition 1.1): (May 7, 2004) Corrigendum containing various minor corrections.[12]
Version 3 (Edition 2): (March 1, 2005) Major addition containing the first amendment, establishing the Fidelity Range Extensions (FRExt). This version added the High, High 10, High 4:2:2, and High 4:4:4 profiles.[13] After a few years, the High profile became the most commonly used profile of the standard.

But then it also says:
First published 17 August 2004

Since the first version of the standard was completed in May 2003 (20 years ago) and the most commonly used profile (the High profile) was completed in June 2004 (19 years ago)...

Do you know what all these dates refer?
Maybe High profile was already defined in 2004, but the official standard paper was published on March 1, 2005?
Or there is something wrong there?
It would be nice if someone add some references in Wikipedia page about these dates.

oibaf

2nd February 2024, 10:58

FranceBB

2nd February 2024, 14:33

The good news is that in the next 3 months 556 patents should expire (which is about 24% of remaining active patents)

Very nice.
My only fear is that MPEG-LA will try to kill H.264 once a large enough number of patents expires (which would really be a shame).
I hope I'm wrong, but this is what Dolby did when the AC3 patents expired as they pushed for E-AC3 and now AC4...

benwaggoner

3rd February 2024, 01:22

Very nice.
My only fear is that MPEG-LA will try to kill H.264 once a large enough number of patents expires (which would really be a shame).
I hope I'm wrong, but this is what Dolby did when the AC3 patents expired as they pushed for E-AC3 and now AC4...
MPEG-LA doesn't provide any tools, standards, etcetera. Once all relevant patents have expired, they'll presumably shut down teh licensing program because there would be nothing to license. But the H.264 ecosystem would keep on trucking, just without patents or licensing to worry about.

FranceBB

3rd February 2024, 12:52

Once all relevant patents have expired, they'll presumably shut down the licensing program because there would be nothing to license.

Gotcha, so everything will keep going.
Looks like H.264 is gonna stay with us for a very long time then. :)

kurkosdr

4th February 2024, 04:32

Very nice.
My only fear is that MPEG-LA will try to kill H.264 once a large enough number of patents expires (which would really be a shame).
MPEG-LA doesn't provide any tools, standards, etcetera. Once all relevant patents have expired, they'll presumably shut down teh licensing program because there would be nothing to license. But the H.264 ecosystem would keep on trucking, just without patents or licensing to worry about.

One risk is that, as patents expire, the companies with still-active patents each go their own merry way so they can milk as much of their old patents as possible. This could make H.264 more costly to license.

This is why I am interested in seeing how many patents with a priority date before 1st March 2005 remain active after that date (or realistically, after the end of 2025 to account for minor extensions). In the meantime, H.264 is just too ubiquitous to die in the next 2 years.

Very nice. this is what Dolby did when the AC3 patents expired as they pushed for E-AC3 and now AC4...
Personally, I am not necessarily annoyed by the Dolby formats themselves but the lack of a stereo AAC secondary stream when a Dolby audio format is being broadcast. For example, there was an attempt in France to have the UHD terrestrial channels be AC4-only with no secondary stream whatsoever, and I was like "Are those broadcasters (and the governments that oversee them) completely out of their minds? Or completely in the pocket of Dolby?" AC4 is not supported by many TVs and is mostly unsupported on PCs. Fortunately, all those few broadcasters here in Europe that had gone AC4-only have since realised their mistake and have added E-AC3 secondary streams alongside the AC4, so that's a headache avoided, at least here in Europe (don't know how things are in the US).

About E-AC3, I understand the need for it, since the move to H.265 for FullHD content is making the bitrate inefficiency of AC3 more apparent (especially when accompanied by an AAC secondary stream as it should), but E-AC3 can still be a headache when on its own (though not of AC4 proportions obviously). Speaking of which, do we have a list of E-AC3 patents? Some countries (like France) use E-AC3 exclusively even for H.264 broadcasts, so it's almost on topic.

oibaf

4th February 2024, 11:14

E-AC3 patent thread: https://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=184389
Here there is a link to another hydrogenaudio forum thread.

kurkosdr

4th February 2024, 23:03

E-AC3 patent thread: https://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=184389
Here there is a link to another hydrogenaudio forum thread.
Oops, forgot about that.

kurkosdr

5th February 2024, 19:59

There is a new February 2024 update (https://www.via-la.com/wp-content/uploads/Final-February-1-2024-AVC-Attachment-1.pdf).

In the previous November 2023 update (https://www.via-la.com/wp-content/uploads/Final-November-1-2023-AVC-Attachment-1.pdf) there were 17 pages of patents, in the newer one there are still 17 pages with a higher number of patents.

In details, here is the total number of patents:

2023-11 list: 2263
2024-02 list: 2335

It looks like since the latest update 72 patents expired, and 144 new patents were added.

The good news is that in the next 3 months 556 patents should expire (which is about 24% of remaining active patents).

I am attaching the ordered lists, if you are interested.
Since your attachments are "pending approval", can you post the two lists on some external site like pastebin?

I want to see how many of those 144 new patents are from before 1st March 2005 (at least the application date).

It seems weird some entity would have a patent essential to the High Profile and would not collect royalties on it for 18+ years.

oibaf

6th February 2024, 10:32

Since your attachments are "pending approval", can you post the two lists on some external site like pastebin?

2023-11 active patents list (https://pastebin.com/raw/cAJHy7WH)
2024-02 active patents list (https://pastebin.com/raw/RybqdxGW)

I want to see how many of those 144 new patents are from before 1st March 2005 (at least the application date).

It seems weird some entity would have a patent essential to the High Profile and would not collect royalties on it for 18+ years.

I suspects they are mostly newer patents for recent H.264 extensions, mostly unused. Anyway, let us know! ;)

kurkosdr

6th February 2024, 21:20

2023-11 active patents list (https://pastebin.com/raw/cAJHy7WH)
2024-02 active patents list (https://pastebin.com/raw/RybqdxGW)

I suspects they are mostly newer patents for recent H.264 extensions, mostly unused. Anyway, let us know! ;)
Thanks!

I cleaned up the February 2024 list from the "exp" strings (and removed the expiring patents from the November 2023 list, since they have already expired):
Nov 2023: https://pastebin.com/raw/WaN3xweH
Feb 2024: https://pastebin.com/raw/X0HvJ70b

So, now we can do a:
diff --side-by-side --suppress-common-lines nov2023.txt feb2024.txt

And we get the list of 144 new patents:
https://pastebin.com/raw/iNeDqFwK

But wait, there is more, MPEG LA likes to list the EP patents for every country they apply to, which means that a single EP patent creates 24 entries. Same for the EA and AP patents, which create 8 and 18 entries respectively. So, if we clean up a bit further, we get "only" 51 new patents:
https://pastebin.com/raw/AD5ih8vf
(note: I have added the 5 "international" patents at the top of the text)

This is a low enough number that I can run them all through Google Patents manually, 17 a day will do it (I really want to see how many of them have application dates from before 1 March 2005).

Also, ideally we'd have a way to provide automated submissions to Google Patents (so I can run the full Feb 2024 list through Google Patents to extract application date and expected expiration for each), but I can't guarantee I will attempt something like that.

@oibaf
Also, how do you convert from PDF to text (and remove noise such as page numbers and company names)?

kurkosdr

6th February 2024, 21:26

Also, one WTF I have already noticed, the last US patent (numerically) on the list is US 11,871,015 has an application date of 2022-09-21, which is weird because the last version of the AVC/H.264 standard according to Wikipedia and VIA-LA's own website is 2021-08-22. Shouldn't the standard itself count as prior art? At this point, I think they are just adding random non-essential stuff (for example encoding optimization methods) to pad the number of patents in the pool.

Avclover

7th February 2024, 08:58

US 11,871,015 is based on the same priority document than the rest of this patent family which predates the standard. Data in Google patents is often flawed or incomplete but it's clearly stated on the cover sheet of the actual patent. Nothing shady afaict.

oibaf

7th February 2024, 10:25

Also, how do you convert from PDF to text (and remove noise such as page numbers and company names)?

Well... given it looks you are using some unix version it's as simple as typing on the CLI what you already asked ;):
pdftotext file.pdf

You can also first cut the first pages with active patents (17, for the last 2 reports) using pdfarranger before that.

Then, you can just use some trick like this:
grep [0-9] file.txt | sort | uniq > file-cleaned.txt
and then manually check the resulting file to remove spurious lines (or improve the above command).

To get the unique EP patent from the "multiple European patents" you can do something like:
grep EP file-cleaned.txt | grep -v Exp | cut -d'(' -f2 | cut -d')' -f1 | sort | uniq

Always check the resulting file, because the original PDF file have some typos that may break something.

oibaf

29th February 2024, 14:41

This is a low enough number that I can run them all through Google Patents manually, 17 a day will do it (I really want to see how many of them have application dates from before 1 March 2005).

Also, ideally we'd have a way to provide automated submissions to Google Patents (so I can run the full Feb 2024 list through Google Patents to extract application date and expected expiration for each), but I can't guarantee I will attempt something like that.

Any news? :)

oibaf

7th April 2024, 19:50

BTW, it looks like there are only two patents still active in EU (https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Have_the_patents_for_H.264_MPEG-4_AVC_expired_yet%3F#European_patents), expiring in less than 10 months:

2025-01-26: EP 1709801 (https://patents.google.com/patent/EP1709801B1/de) (Panasonic Holdings Corporation)
2025-01-26: EP 2384002 (https://patents.google.com/patent/EP2384002B1/de) (Panasonic Holdings Corporation)

Do someone known if they are really needed for the common used High Profile? (or if they are needed for something else)

hajj_3

7th April 2024, 20:26

BTW, it looks like there are only two patents still active in EU (https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Have_the_patents_for_H.264_MPEG-4_AVC_expired_yet%3F#European_patents),

nokia has some patents too.

hajj_3

14th April 2024, 12:30

an updated list of h265 patent pools:

https://accessadvance.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/2024Q2-HEVC-Patent-Diagram-04-01-24-2048x1536.jpg

oibaf

28th April 2024, 18:03

hajj_3

29th April 2024, 15:00

Do you have any references?

nokia is suing hp and amazon over h264 patents:

https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/67928650/nokia-technologies-oy-v-hp-inc/
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/67928543/nokia-technologies-oy-v-amazoncom-inc/

oibaf

29th April 2024, 15:17

nokia is suing hp and amazon over h264 patents:

https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/67928650/nokia-technologies-oy-v-hp-inc/
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/67928543/nokia-technologies-oy-v-amazoncom-inc/

"District Court, D. Delaware"

I cannot see the patents, but it just looks like U.S. related, or is there any other detail related to EU patents?

hajj_3

29th April 2024, 20:58

"District Court, D. Delaware"

I cannot see the patents, but it just looks like U.S. related, or is there any other detail related to EU patents?

https://www.nokia.com/blog/nokia-seeks-compensation-for-amazons-use-of-our-patented-multimedia-inventions/

kurkosdr

30th April 2024, 00:47

Any news? :)
Life got in the way, but anyway, someone has made a much better list.

nokia has some patents too.
No, they don't, not necessarily.

As I've explained to you on the previous page, Nokia says their patents cover "video compression, content delivery, content recommendation and aspects related to hardware".

We only care about video compression, not the other three, and even then only essential ones. So, unless Nokia comes forward and clarifies which patents relate to video compression and which of those they consider to be essential, they cannot be assumed to have asserted a single patent against H.264.

Spyros

3rd May 2024, 11:04

After three months, a new patent list is available: May 1, 2024 (https://web.archive.org/web/20240503094239/https://www.via-la.com/wp-content/uploads/Final-May-1-2024-AVC-Attachment-1.pdf)

14 pages with unexpired patents, 45 pages with expired ones (compared to 17 pages with unexpired patents, 41 pages with expired ones in February).
Sorry, I don't have the patience to analyze them methodically, feel free to do so if you want. :D

The next three months seem uneventful, with only 20 patents expiring in that period.

(Btw, I'll update the first post to show the gradual progress of patents expiring)

benwaggoner

6th May 2024, 22:34

https://www.nokia.com/blog/nokia-seeks-compensation-for-amazons-use-of-our-patented-multimedia-inventions/
Unified Patents has list of patents in litigation by company: https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/ptab/caselist?patent_owners=Nokia+Technologies+OY

Which helpfully lists the patents in question with links.

oibaf

13th May 2024, 09:56

Unified Patents has list of patents in litigation by company: https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/ptab/caselist?patent_owners=Nokia+Technologies+OY

Which helpfully lists the patents in question with links.

Thanks.

I can see only US patents there, so the original assertion "it looks like there are only two patents still active in EU" still apply.

Spyros

2nd August 2024, 10:33

FranceBB

3rd August 2024, 19:15

Really? 20 years already? I forgot it was 2004. Time flies...

oibaf

3rd August 2024, 19:39

New patent list (https://web.archive.org/web/20240802092610/https://www.via-la.com/wp-content/uploads/Final-August-1-2024-AVC-Attachment-1.pdf), but almost no changes at all, same number of pages with expired and unexpired patents. And unfortunately, only 6 patents will expire in the next 3 months.

Oh, well. Let's hope November's list will be more exciting. After all, it will be 20 years next spring since the introduction of the High profiles.

There are also a bunch of patents added. Here is the diff against previous list:

+AU 2023214310
+AU 2023214311
+AU 2023214313
+AU 2023214314
+AU 2023214315
+AU 2023285711
+CA 3,187,271
-CN 100531396 - Exp. Jul 21, 2024
-CN 110024407B
+CN 110024407
+CN 114979647
+CN 114979648
+CN 114979650
+CN 115037918
+CN 115037919
+CN 115037939
+CN 115150619
+CN 115150630
+CN 116668696
+CN 117478882
+DE (EP 2,630,800)
+GB (EP 2,630,800)
+HK 40089890
+HK 40089891
+HK 40090142
+ID P000092070
+IL 305702
+IN 532324
+IN 532329
+IN 532335
+IN 532499
+IN 541566
+IN 541570
+IN 541691
+IN 541693
-JP 4,241,559
-JP 4,361,435 - Exp. Jul 23, 2024
+JP 4,241,559 - Exp. Sep 27, 2024
-JP 4,643,447 - Exp. Jul 22, 2024
+KH /GP/00082 SG
-KR 10-0908422 - Exp. Jul 22, 2024
+KR 2,655,945
+KR 2,656,330
+KR 2,672,149
-KR 612,849 - Exp. Jul 13, 2024
-MX 393,311
+MX 393311
-MX 411,624
+MX 411618
+MX 411624
+MX 413083
-MY 145597 - Exp. May 13, 2024
+NG F/P/2022/156
+NG F/P/2022/159
+SG 10202400240V
-TH 35577 - Exp. May 11, 2024
-TW I258992 - Exp. Jul 22, 2024
+TW I850969
+US 10,038,916
+US 11,962,804
+US 11,973,980
+US 11,979,588
+US 11,979,589
+US 11,985,349
+US 11,991,339
+US 12,003,741
+US 12,015,793
+US 12,028,555
+US 12,034,972
-US 7,162,094 - Exp. May 20, 2024
-US 7,209,520
-US 7,227,901 - Exp. May 30, 2024
-US 7,239,662 - Exp. May 18, 2024
+US 7,209,520 - Exp. Sep 2, 2024
-US 7,639,742
+US 7,639,742 - Exp. Oct 19, 2024
-US 7,664,180
-US 7,664,182 - Exp. Jul 12, 2024
+US 7,664,180 - Exp. Oct 11, 2024
-US 7,839,931
+US 7,839,931 - Exp. Sep 26, 2024
-US 8,036,276 - Exp. Jul 24, 2024
-US 8,107,533 - Exp. Jun 16, 2024
-US 8,204,117
+US 8,204,117 - Exp. Oct 29, 2024
-US 8,213,517 - Exp. Jun 16, 2024
-US 8,243,808 - Exp. Jun 21, 2024
-US 8,243,809 - Exp. Jun 8, 2024
-US 8,660,185 - Exp. Jul 21, 2024
-US 9,124,862 - Exp. May 26, 2024
-US 9,374,590 - Exp. May 10, 2024
+US 9,774,882

filler56789

4th August 2024, 06:48

Really? 20 years already? I forgot it was 2004. Time flies...

Yes, and the older we get, the faster time flies -_-
I still remember I occasionaly played around with Ateme's encavc.exe beta :-|

benwaggoner

8th August 2024, 21:21

There are also a bunch of patents added. Here is the diff against previous list:
Wow, asserting new (old) patents at such a late date is surprising.

kurkosdr

14th August 2024, 19:58

There are also a bunch of patents added. Here is the diff against previous list:
[...diff here...]

You forgot to filter for "Exp.", so some of the "added" patents in your list are duplicates of existing ones:

-JP 4,241,559
+JP 4,241,559 - Exp. Sep 27, 2024
-US 7,209,520
+US 7,209,520 - Exp. Sep 2, 2024
-US 7,639,742
+US 7,639,742 - Exp. Oct 19, 2024
-US 7,664,180
+US 7,664,180 - Exp. Oct 11, 2024
-US 7,839,931
+US 7,839,931 - Exp. Sep 26, 2024
-US 8,204,117
+US 8,204,117 - Exp. Oct 29, 2024

Here a list of only the added ones:

+AU 2023214310
+AU 2023214311
+AU 2023214313
+AU 2023214314
+AU 2023214315
+AU 2023285711
+CA 3,187,271
+CN 110024407
+CN 114979647
+CN 114979648
+CN 114979650
+CN 115037918
+CN 115037919
+CN 115037939
+CN 115150619
+CN 115150630
+CN 116668696
+CN 117478882
+DE (EP 2,630,800)
+GB (EP 2,630,800)
+HK 40089890
+HK 40089891
+HK 40090142
+ID P000092070
+IL 305702
+IN 532324
+IN 532329
+IN 532335
+IN 532499
+IN 541566
+IN 541570
+IN 541691
+IN 541693
+KH /GP/00082 SG
+KR 2,655,945
+KR 2,656,330
+KR 2,672,149
+MX 393311
+MX 411618
+MX 411624
+MX 413083
+NG F/P/2022/156
+NG F/P/2022/159
+SG 10202400240V
+TW I850969
+US 10,038,916
+US 11,962,804
+US 11,973,980
+US 11,979,588
+US 11,979,589
+US 11,985,349
+US 11,991,339
+US 12,003,741
+US 12,015,793
+US 12,028,555
+US 12,034,972
+US 9,774,882

kurkosdr

14th August 2024, 20:38

Wow, asserting new (old) patents at such a late date is surprising.
I had a quick look at the US patents added, the oldest one is from 2010 and the second oldest is from 2017, so they are old but not that old.

Which is the issue with VIA-LA's patent list: it includes patents for things such as MVC, SVC and even 360-degree video that are rarely used or never used (and the ones that are used, they are used without breaking compatibility with High Profile).

This is why counting pages in VIA-LA's patent list is useless btw (other than being a fun past-time): if a new version of AVC/H.264 comes out tomorrow and it happens to include yet another addition to the AVC/H.264 standard, you can bet another couple of pages of patents will be added to VIA-LA's patent list, but this won't affect the patent status of the High Profile.

This is why I've begged this person (https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Have_the_patents_for_H.264_MPEG-4_AVC_expired_yet%3F) to add lists for all countries (not just US, EU countries, and Canada) in the linked page which focuses solely on the High Profile.

benwaggoner

15th August 2024, 21:01

This is why I've begged this person (https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Have_the_patents_for_H.264_MPEG-4_AVC_expired_yet%3F) to add lists for all countries (not just US, EU countries, and Canada) in the linked page which focuses solely on the High Profile.
Most of the patents wouldn't specify a profile or anything, though, and the patent lists don't indicate what methods they believe apply to any given application.

Even a court filing stating infringement can be impossibly vague about what specific infringement is being claimed versus what is not.

kurkosdr

15th August 2024, 22:08

Most of the patents wouldn't specify a profile or anything, though, and the patent lists don't indicate what methods they believe apply to any given application.

Even a court filing stating infringement can be impossibly vague about what specific infringement is being claimed versus what is not.
Patents don't specify a profile because they describe inventions (or at least they are supposed to describe inventions), and an invention can be essential to more than one profiles (or more than one standards in fact).

However, the reference encoder and decoder for the High Profile (that ISO and ITU published back then) count as prior act for High Profile, so patents with a priority date after the reference encoder and decoder release date can't be essential to High Profile, because you can't patent an invention that has already been invented and have a valid patent.

hajj_3

27th August 2024, 08:11

nokia is suing hp and amazon over h264 patents:

https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/67928650/nokia-technologies-oy-v-hp-inc/
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/67928543/nokia-technologies-oy-v-amazoncom-inc/

amazon is now suing nokia for violating it's amazon web services networking patents: https://www.theregister.com/2024/07/31/amazon_nokia_lawsuit/

The article suggests that amazon know it is violating nokia's h264 patents and that the lawsuit is to pressure nokia to licence them for a fair cost.

benwaggoner

27th August 2024, 22:36

amazon is now suing nokia for violating it's amazon web services networking patents: https://www.theregister.com/2024/07/31/amazon_nokia_lawsuit/

The article suggests that amazon know it is violating nokia's h264 patents and that the lawsuit is to pressure nokia to licence them for a fair cost.
I don't have any inside information on this at all: 100% personal opinion. I hadn't heard of Nokia being sued until this post.

But big picture, it is standard practice for tech companies to bank "defensive" patents which don't get enforced on companies who act in good faith, but do get deployed against those trying to enforce patents in bad faith. Big innovative companies really prefer to stay out of patent litigation as much as possible, as it is expensive and distracting. So there's a lot of mutual assured destruction, and thus big patent cross-licensing deals between companies so they don't have to worry about getting sued by other big companies. Oracle v. Google was a very expensive and highly distracting multi-year slog that didn't really result in an interesting outcome.

It gets tricky when formerly big companies like Nokia that retain big patent portfolios but not much other business let their cross-licensing deals expire and increasingly focus their business on rent taking of their portfolios.

I've gone dozens of patents to my name, and I don't think a single one has been involved in any litigation.

ksec

31st August 2024, 03:41

So by 2025, AVC High Profiles would be patent free across most if not all parts of the world apart from US? I mean that is enough ground for some work to be done.

We could start breaking some compatibility and include large block size, ( similar to EVC ) and make a truly decent baseline patent free video codec which could be somewhere in between HEVC and VVC in terms of compression ratio at the expense higher encoding and decoding complexity.

hajj_3

31st August 2024, 06:13

rwill

31st August 2024, 08:37

kurkosdr

31st August 2024, 22:38

So by 2025, AVC High Profiles would be patent free across most if not all parts of the world apart from US? I mean that is enough ground for some work to be done.
Most? Yes. All? No. There are countries that are even worse than the US when it comes to patents. Two examples come to mind: Brazil has a law according to which patents that take more than 10 years to be approved (and were filed within a certain timeframe) have their expiration date moved to 10 years after approval, which results in a patent duration of more than 20 years (it's the reason there are still-active (https://www.via-la.com/wp-content/uploads/Final-July-1-2024-MPEG-4-Visual-Attachment-1.pdf) Brazilian patents in VIA-LA's MPEG-4 Part 2 pool). Another example is Malaysia which was still clearing its backlog of pre-TRIPS patents as of September 2020 (and might still be doing it), so there are still-active (https://www.via-la.com/wp-content/uploads/Final-July-1-2024-MPEG-2-Attachment-1.pdf) Malaysian patents in VIA-LA's MPEG-2 pool, one of which won't expire until September 2035.

Of course, not much software or hardware is distributed from those countries so most people won't care, but people importing software or hardware into those countries have to care, and it shows how much region-specific royalty-free is.

ksec

1st September 2024, 06:42

Well, lets assume the patents of H.264 have run out. As soon as one extends this H.264 with additional features he leaves the safe path and enters the patent minefield again.

Well it isn't so much about new features, but limitation of those existing features in place could now be massively extended because of computational power increase.

Avclover

2nd September 2024, 08:16

Well it isn't so much about new features, but limitation of those existing features in place could now be massively extended because of computational power increase.

Unsurprisingly, removing these limitations is also what makes HEVC and VVC superior and consequently covered by patents with a even later expiration date.

kurkosdr

2nd September 2024, 19:13

why bother? h.264 is cheap to licence.
It's not cheap to license if the end product is expected to cost $0 (not unless you are as rich as Google anyway). Browsers are a good example of this (since the public expects them to cost $0): One of the reasons Chrome won the browser wars over Firefox was that Chrome came with a bundled software H.264 decoder, which meant that H.264 in HTML5 video was guaranteed to work. Remember that those were the days Windows XP and Windows Vista reined supreme, and they didn't ship with an H.264 system codec (also, it wasn't certain back then that your GPU drivers would ship with an H.264 system codec, for example, I had a laptop with a Mobility Radeon X1600 that featured assisted DXVA acceleration but the drivers didn't come with an H.264 system decoder). And yes, I know Mozilla could've spent some of the money that Google gives them to pay for the H.264 patent royalties, but considering Google could always not renew that deal, I don't blame Mozilla for not wanting to assume an inflexible expense when the income to pay for it wasn't guaranteed.

This shows how, when it comes to patent royalties, "cheap" can be widely variable. Are the H.264 patent royalties cheap for a $3000 laptop? Yes. For a $40 FTA receiver? Maybe. For products expected to cost $0? No.

When H.264 High Profile becomes royalty-free, the last remaining support gaps (for example Firefox on Desktop Linux or FreeBSD) will close and H.264 will become a true universal baseline for the HTML5 video tag (it's already there as far as Average Joes are concerned, but you know, universal means universal).

hajj_3

8th September 2024, 12:09

patent list was updated on September 3rd, not sure what changes there are: https://www.via-la.com/wp-content/uploads/August-1-2024-AVC-Attachment-1-Revised-September-3-2024.pdf

benwaggoner

9th September 2024, 16:54

Well, lets assume the patents of H.264 have run out. As soon as one extends this H.264 with additional features he leaves the safe path and enters the patent minefield again.
Also, lots of patents have been granted to EVC and AV1 for use with those codecs. The patents weren't released to the public domain, and potentially could be enforced when used outside of the technology free use was given to.

oibaf

10th September 2024, 11:16

patent list was updated on September 3rd, not sure what changes there are: https://www.via-la.com/wp-content/uploads/August-1-2024-AVC-Attachment-1-Revised-September-3-2024.pdf

These:
-CN 102256122 - Exp. Jun 26, 2023
-HK 1159919 - Exp. Jun 27, 2023
+HK 1159919 (removed as of September 3, 2024)
-MO J/002154 - Exp. Jun 26, 2023
+MO J/002154 (removed as of September 3, 2024)

kurkosdr

11th September 2024, 19:36

These:
-CN 102256122 - Exp. Jun 26, 2023
-HK 1159919 - Exp. Jun 27, 2023
+HK 1159919 (removed as of September 3, 2024)
-MO J/002154 - Exp. Jun 26, 2023
+MO J/002154 (removed as of September 3, 2024)
I never understood, why remove expired patents from a patent pool?

It's not the first time it's happened, Samsung has removed some expired patents from the MPEG-4 Part 2 pool in the past:
http://web.archive.org/web/20190706184814/https://www.mpegla.com/wp-content/uploads/m4v-att1.pdf

oibaf

14th October 2024, 17:57

Here it is all remaining patents with a priority date <= 2005-03-01 and known expiration date (patents with unknown priority or expiration date are omitted) sorted by their expiration dates (on the first field; the second field is the priority date), according to Google Patents. The patent is clickable.

Part 1

2024-11-10 : 2002-04-23 : US 9,577,667 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US9577667/en)
2024-11-13 : 2000-07-07 : US 8,036,275 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8036275/en)
2024-11-26 : 2002-01-23 : US 7,421,138 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7421138/en)
2024-12-03 : 2004-01-30 : US 8,218,631 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8218631/en)
2024-12-04 : 2002-07-15 : US 7,292,636 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7292636/en)
2024-12-04 : 2004-01-30 : US 8,204,116 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8204116/en)
2024-12-13 : 2001-11-30 : US 7,379,499 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7379499/en)
2024-12-21 : 2002-01-09 : US 7,362,807 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7362807/en)
2024-12-24 : 2001-12-17 : US 7,116,830 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7116830/en)
2024-12-29 : 2002-01-22 : US 7,149,247 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7149247/en)
2025-01-04 : 2002-07-15 : US 9,001,891 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US9001891/en)
2025-01-16 : 2002-07-15 : US 8,989,264 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8989264/en)
2025-01-19 : 2004-01-20 : CN 200910167348.9 (https://patents.google.com/patent/CN101695132B/en)
2025-01-19 : 2004-01-20 : JP 4,705,921 (https://patents.google.com/patent/JP4705921/en)
2025-01-19 : 2004-01-20 : JP 5,249,363 (https://patents.google.com/patent/JP5249363/en)
2025-01-26 : 2001-11-06 : US 7,782,936 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7782936/en)
2025-01-26 : 2004-01-30 : CN 200580003035.X (https://patents.google.com/patent/CN100542262C/en)
2025-01-26 : 2004-01-30 : CN 200580003123.x (https://patents.google.com/patent/CN1910922B/en)
2025-01-26 : 2004-01-30 : EP 1,709,801 (https://patents.google.com/patent/EP1709801/en)
2025-01-26 : 2004-01-30 : EP 2,384,002 (https://patents.google.com/patent/EP2384002/en)
2025-01-26 : 2004-01-30 : JP 4,679,524 (https://patents.google.com/patent/JP4679524/en)
2025-01-26 : 2004-01-30 : JP 5,048,826 (https://patents.google.com/patent/JP5048826/en)
2025-01-26 : 2004-01-30 : JP 5,102,344 (https://patents.google.com/patent/JP5102344/en)
2025-01-26 : 2004-01-30 : US 8,194,734 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8194734/en)
2025-01-26 : 2004-01-30 : US 8,218,623 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8218623/en)
2025-01-26 : 2004-01-30 : US 8,477,838 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8477838/en)
2025-01-26 : 2004-01-30 : US Re. 46,500 (https://patents.google.com/patent/USRE46500/en)
2025-01-26 : 2004-01-30 : US Re. 48,401 (https://patents.google.com/patent/USRE48401/en)
2025-01-26 : 2004-01-30 : US Re. 49,787 (https://patents.google.com/patent/USRE49787/en)
2025-02-01 : 2001-12-17 : US 7,120,197 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7120197/en)
2025-02-18 : 2005-02-18 : JP 4,542,447 (https://patents.google.com/patent/JP4542447/en)
2025-02-19 : 2001-09-14 : US 8,798,173 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8798173/en)
2025-02-24 : 2004-10-15 : US 8,873,623 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8873623/en)
2025-02-24 : 2004-10-15 : US 8,873,624 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8873624/en)
2025-02-27 : 2003-03-03 : US 7,843,999 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7843999/en)
2025-02-28 : 2004-04-28 : US 8,923,387 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8923387/en)
2025-02-28 : 2004-04-28 : US 9,118,924 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US9118924/en)
2025-02-28 : 2004-04-28 : US 9,270,998 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US9270998/en)
2025-02-28 : 2004-04-28 : US 9,277,225 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US9277225/en)
2025-02-28 : 2004-04-28 : US 9,277,226 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US9277226/en)
2025-02-28 : 2004-04-28 : US 9,319,687 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US9319687/en)
2025-02-28 : 2004-04-28 : US 9,414,082 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US9414082/en)
2025-02-28 : 2004-04-28 : US 9,414,083 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US9414083/en)
2025-02-28 : 2004-04-28 : US 9,414,084 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US9414084/en)
2025-02-28 : 2004-04-28 : US 9,432,681 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US9432681/en)
2025-03-05 : 2002-05-02 : US 7,496,143 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7496143/en)
2025-03-13 : 2001-06-15 : US 7,620,110 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7620110/en)
2025-04-04 : 2002-07-24 : US 7,339,991 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7339991/en)
2025-04-06 : 2002-05-28 : US Re. 43,567 (https://patents.google.com/patent/USRE43567/en)
2025-04-07 : 2002-05-28 : US 7,386,048 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7386048/en)
2025-04-15 : 2000-10-18 : US 8,269,891 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8269891/en)
2025-04-20 : 2001-12-17 : US 7,266,149 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7266149/en)
2025-05-02 : 2004-05-07 : US 10,194,149 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US10194149/en)
2025-05-02 : 2004-05-07 : US 10,257,513 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US10257513/en)
2025-05-02 : 2004-05-07 : US 10,397,572 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US10397572/en)
2025-05-02 : 2004-05-07 : US 10,397,573 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US10397573/en)
2025-05-02 : 2004-05-07 : US 9,380,311 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US9380311/en)
2025-05-02 : 2004-05-07 : US 9,578,334 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US9578334/en)
2025-05-02 : 2004-05-07 : US 9,628,802 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US9628802/en)
2025-05-02 : 2004-05-07 : US 9,866,866 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US9866866/en)
2025-05-02 : 2004-05-07 : US 9,948,931 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US9948931/en)
2025-05-04 : 2002-05-01 : US 7,319,415 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7319415/en)
2025-05-04 : 2002-07-18 : US 8,467,621 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8467621/en)
2025-05-08 : 2004-05-07 : CN 100401780C (https://patents.google.com/patent/CN100401780C/en)
2025-05-11 : 2004-05-19 : US 10,110,900 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US10110900/en)
2025-05-11 : 2004-05-19 : US 10,499,058 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US10499058/en)
2025-05-11 : 2004-05-19 : US 10,728,554 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US10728554/en)
2025-05-11 : 2004-05-19 : US 10,951,893 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US10951893/en)
2025-05-11 : 2004-05-19 : US 8,548,047 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8548047/en)
2025-05-11 : 2004-05-19 : US 8,615,041 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8615041/en)
2025-05-11 : 2004-05-19 : US 9,113,165 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US9113165/en)
2025-05-11 : 2004-05-19 : US 9,924,172 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US9924172/en)
2025-05-16 : 2002-01-31 : US 7,561,623 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7561623/en)
2025-05-31 : 2003-03-31 : US Re. 43,062 (https://patents.google.com/patent/USRE43062/en)
2025-05-31 : 2003-03-31 : US Re. 45,983 (https://patents.google.com/patent/USRE45983/en)
2025-05-31 : 2003-03-31 : US Re. 48,953 (https://patents.google.com/patent/USRE48953/en)
2025-06-24 : 2002-04-23 : US 7,394,853 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7394853/en)
2025-06-29 : 2000-07-07 : US 8,184,719 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8184719/en)
2025-07-03 : 2000-07-07 : US 8,184,717 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8184717/en)
2025-07-12 : 2002-04-23 : US 7,822,283 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7822283/en)
2025-07-19 : 2002-07-11 : US 7,372,905 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7372905/en)
2025-07-20 : 2002-04-19 : US 7,248,740 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7248740/en)
2025-07-22 : 2002-08-08 : US 9,456,218 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US9456218/en)
2025-07-23 : 2003-10-01 : US 7,286,710 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7286710/en)
2025-08-09 : 2004-08-18 : JP 4,628,216 (https://patents.google.com/patent/JP4628216/en)
2025-08-09 : 2004-08-18 : JP 4,892,628 (https://patents.google.com/patent/JP4892628/en)
2025-08-10 : 2002-10-01 : US 7,864,838 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7864838/en)
2025-08-13 : 2001-06-15 : US 8,233,546 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8233546/en)
2025-08-16 : 2004-08-16 : CN 200580005148.3 (https://patents.google.com/patent/CN1922888B/en)
2025-08-16 : 2004-08-16 : JP 5,052,134 (https://patents.google.com/patent/JP5052134/en)
2025-08-16 : 2004-08-18 : US 8,111,747 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8111747/en)
2025-08-16 : 2004-08-18 : US 8,571,097 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8571097/en)
2025-08-16 : 2004-08-18 : US 8,670,482 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8670482/en)
2025-08-16 : 2004-08-18 : US 8,929,438 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8929438/en)
2025-08-16 : 2004-08-18 : US 9,077,988 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US9077988/en)
2025-08-16 : 2004-08-18 : US 9,154,794 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US9154794/en)
2025-08-16 : 2004-08-18 : US 9,445,106 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US9445106/en)
2025-08-16 : 2004-08-18 : US 9,456,211 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US9456211/en)
2025-08-16 : 2004-08-18 : US Re. 47,076 (https://patents.google.com/patent/USRE47076/en)
2025-08-20 : 2002-07-05 : US 7,280,700 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7280700/en)
2025-08-23 : 2001-06-15 : US 8,228,996 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8228996/en)
2025-08-27 : 2001-06-15 : US 8,243,827 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8243827/en)
2025-09-01 : 2001-06-15 : US 8,233,528 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8233528/en)
2025-09-03 : 2001-06-15 : US 8,243,799 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8243799/en)
2025-09-04 : 2001-06-15 : US 8,243,791 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8243791/en)
2025-09-13 : 2000-07-07 : US 8,184,718 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8184718/en)
2025-09-21 : 2004-10-15 : CN 200580035323.3 (https://patents.google.com/patent/CN101095357B/en)
2025-09-21 : 2004-10-15 : CN 201010193467.4 (https://patents.google.com/patent/CN101854550B/en)
2025-09-21 : 2004-10-15 : CN 201010245484.8 (https://patents.google.com/patent/CN101931810B/en)
2025-09-21 : 2004-10-15 : CN 201010245555.4 (https://patents.google.com/patent/CN101931811B/en)
2025-09-21 : 2004-10-15 : CN 201010245566.2 (https://patents.google.com/patent/CN101931812B/en)
2025-09-21 : 2004-10-15 : CN 201010245597.8 (https://patents.google.com/patent/CN101931813B/en)
2025-09-21 : 2004-10-15 : CN 201010245510.7 (https://patents.google.com/patent/CN101938651B/en)
2025-09-21 : 2004-10-15 : CN 201010245535.7 (https://patents.google.com/patent/CN101959066B/en)
2025-09-21 : 2004-10-15 : CN 201010245522.x (https://patents.google.com/patent/CN101980535B/en)
2025-09-21 : 2004-10-15 : CN 201110032577.7 (https://patents.google.com/patent/CN102055985B/en)
2025-09-21 : 2004-10-15 : CN 201110032594.0 (https://patents.google.com/patent/CN102055986B/en)
2025-09-21 : 2004-10-15 : CN 201110032620.X (https://patents.google.com/patent/CN102082952B/en)
2025-09-21 : 2004-10-15 : CN 201110032608.9 (https://patents.google.com/patent/CN102098514B/en)
2025-09-21 : 2004-10-15 : JP 5,122,288 (https://patents.google.com/patent/JP5122288/en)
2025-09-21 : 2004-10-15 : JP 5,470,280 (https://patents.google.com/patent/JP5470280/en)
2025-09-25 : 2001-06-15 : US 8,238,448 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8238448/en)
2025-09-29 : 2001-06-15 : US 8,249,165 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8249165/en)
2025-10-07 : 2004-02-27 : US 7,586,924 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7586924/en)
2025-10-09 : 2002-10-11 : US 7,346,216 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7346216/en)
2025-10-25 : 2001-06-15 : US 8,228,977 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8228977/en)
2025-10-25 : 2001-06-15 : US 8,229,005 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8229005/en)
2025-10-25 : 2001-11-27 : US 7,660,353 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7660353/en)
2025-10-25 : 2002-01-31 : US 8,208,749 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8208749/en)
2025-10-27 : 2002-05-03 : US 9,363,536 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US9363536/en)
2025-10-30 : 2001-06-15 : US 8,223,850 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8223850/en)
2025-10-31 : 2001-06-15 : US 8,228,978 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8228978/en)
2025-11-02 : 2002-11-22 : US 7,616,691 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7616691/en)
2025-11-03 : 2001-06-15 : US 8,243,795 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8243795/en)
2025-11-03 : 2004-05-19 : US 9,794,564 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US9794564/en)
2025-11-05 : 2001-06-15 : US 8,249,162 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8249162/en)
2025-11-06 : 2001-06-15 : US 8,238,422 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8238422/en)
2025-11-07 : 2001-06-15 : US 8,243,792 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8243792/en)
2025-11-07 : 2001-07-12 : US 10,297,008 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US10297008/en)
2025-11-08 : 2001-06-15 : US 8,238,417 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8238417/en)
2025-11-10 : 2001-06-15 : US 8,233,550 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8233550/en)
2025-11-10 : 2001-06-15 : US 8,243,786 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8243786/en)
2025-11-10 : 2001-06-15 : US 8,243,817 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8243817/en)
2025-11-10 : 2001-06-15 : US 8,243,828 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8243828/en)
2025-11-11 : 2001-06-15 : US 8,238,418 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8238418/en)
2025-11-11 : 2001-06-15 : US 8,243,829 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8243829/en)
2025-11-12 : 2001-06-15 : US 8,238,447 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8238447/en)
2025-11-12 : 2001-06-15 : US 8,243,819 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8243819/en)
2025-11-16 : 2001-06-15 : US 8,249,174 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8249174/en)
2025-11-17 : 2001-06-15 : US 8,249,148 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8249148/en)
2025-11-17 : 2002-07-18 : US 8,509,550 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8509550/en)
2025-11-18 : 2001-06-15 : US 8,249,172 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8249172/en)
2025-11-20 : 2001-06-15 : US 8,243,800 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8243800/en)
2025-11-22 : 2001-06-15 : US 8,243,830 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8243830/en)

oibaf

14th October 2024, 18:02

Part 2

2025-12-07 : 2002-01-22 : US 7,505,485 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7505485/en)
2025-12-11 : 2004-05-19 : US 9,294,771 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US9294771/en)
2025-12-13 : 2005-01-11 : CN 101099388 (https://patents.google.com/patent/CN101099388/en)
2025-12-13 : 2005-01-11 : EP 1,836,852 (https://patents.google.com/patent/EP1836852/en)
2025-12-15 : 2001-06-15 : US 8,238,449 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8238449/en)
2025-12-20 : 2005-01-12 : CN 101120591 (https://patents.google.com/patent/CN101120591/en)
2025-12-20 : 2005-01-12 : CN 102065295B (https://patents.google.com/patent/CN102065295B/en)
2025-12-20 : 2005-01-12 : EP 1,839,442 (https://patents.google.com/patent/EP1839442/en)
2025-12-20 : 2005-01-12 : JP 5,042,856 (https://patents.google.com/patent/JP5042856/en)
2025-12-21 : 2001-06-15 : US 8,238,430 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8238430/en)
2025-12-26 : 2002-07-02 : US 7,327,788 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7327788/en)
2025-12-27 : 2001-06-15 : US 8,233,533 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8233533/en)
2026-01-06 : 2001-06-15 : US 8,243,794 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8243794/en)
2026-01-11 : 2001-06-15 : US 8,249,173 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8249173/en)
2026-01-12 : 2004-01-30 : US 8,121,188 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8121188/en)
2026-01-16 : 2001-06-15 : US 8,243,793 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8243793/en)
2026-01-27 : 2001-06-15 : US 8,249,149 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8249149/en)
2026-02-01 : 2002-12-10 : US 7,324,593 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7324593/en)
2026-02-08 : 2002-10-04 : US 7,555,044 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7555044/en)
2026-02-12 : 2003-11-28 : US 7,400,681 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7400681/en)
2026-02-13 : 2002-04-19 : US 7,515,635 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7515635/en)
2026-03-06 : 2002-04-19 : US 7,940,845 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7940845/en)
2026-03-08 : 2002-11-20 : US 7,542,510 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7542510/en)
2026-03-29 : 2002-07-18 : US 8,565,544 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8565544/en)
2026-04-04 : 2002-04-26 : US 7,742,528 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7742528/en)
2026-04-22 : 2000-07-07 : US 8,406,310 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8406310/en)
2026-05-01 : 2004-10-15 : US 8,867,619 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8867619/en)
2026-05-02 : 2001-07-12 : US 10,504,205 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US10504205/en)
2026-05-02 : 2003-01-30 : US 9,036,715 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US9036715/en)
2026-05-07 : 2001-06-15 : US 7,706,451 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7706451/en)
2026-05-08 : 2004-01-30 : US 8,204,115 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8204115/en)
2026-05-12 : 2002-04-26 : US 7,778,331 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7778331/en)
2026-05-14 : 2001-06-15 : US 7,711,053 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7711053/en)
2026-05-14 : 2001-06-15 : US 7,711,054 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7711054/en)
2026-05-23 : 2002-04-26 : US 8,315,313 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8315313/en)
2026-05-26 : 2002-05-28 : US 8,228,986 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8228986/en)
2026-05-29 : 2004-01-30 : US 7,599,435 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7599435/en)
2026-05-30 : 2004-01-30 : US 8,218,630 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8218630/en)
2026-06-01 : 2003-12-04 : US 7,379,608 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7379608/en)
2026-06-02 : 2002-05-28 : US 8,233,538 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8233538/en)
2026-06-06 : 2001-09-12 : US 7,944,977 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7944977/en)
2026-06-06 : 2002-04-26 : US 10,477,270 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US10477270/en)
2026-06-25 : 2002-07-18 : US 8,472,738 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8472738/en)
2026-07-01 : 2002-07-15 : US 7,970,058 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7970058/en)
2026-07-04 : 2001-09-12 : US 7,961,793 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7961793/en)
2026-07-07 : 2002-05-28 : US 8,279,927 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8279927/en)
2026-07-11 : 2002-07-18 : US 8,467,620 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8467620/en)
2026-07-13 : 2002-07-18 : US 8,467,622 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8467622/en)
2026-07-19 : 2002-04-23 : US 8,155,200 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8155200/en)
2026-07-19 : 2002-04-23 : US 8,155,201 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8155201/en)
2026-07-22 : 2002-11-25 : US 8,009,731 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8009731/en)
2026-07-26 : 2002-04-23 : US 8,160,147 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8160147/en)
2026-07-28 : 2001-11-29 : US 8,254,468 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8254468/en)
2026-07-29 : 2003-05-15 : US 7,742,655 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7742655/en)
2026-08-03 : 2004-01-30 : US 7,630,435 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7630435/en)
2026-08-21 : 2004-01-30 : US 8,565,304 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8565304/en)
2026-08-27 : 2002-10-08 : US 7,916,959 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7916959/en)
2026-09-03 : 2002-04-19 : US 8,009,733 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8009733/en)
2026-09-06 : 2002-01-09 : US 8,290,047 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8290047/en)
2026-09-08 : 2002-07-15 : US 7,760,803 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7760803/en)
2026-09-10 : 2002-04-19 : US 8,184,697 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8184697/en)
2026-10-07 : 2001-11-29 : US 8,345,770 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8345770/en)
2026-10-08 : 2002-04-19 : US 8,204,112 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8204112/en)
2026-10-11 : 2002-04-23 : US 8,213,510 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8213510/en)
2026-10-13 : 2002-05-28 : US 8,331,450 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8331450/en)
2026-11-05 : 2002-04-19 : US 8,223,841 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8223841/en)
2026-11-15 : 2002-04-15 : US 8,265,403 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8265403/en)
2026-12-04 : 2002-07-11 : US 7,995,658 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7995658/en)
2026-12-08 : 2001-11-27 : US 7,769,087 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7769087/en)
2027-01-16 : 2002-05-02 : US 7,702,013 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7702013/en)
2027-01-29 : 2002-05-03 : US 8,265,148 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8265148/en)
2027-01-29 : 2002-10-03 : US 7,596,178 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7596178/en)
2027-03-08 : 2002-07-18 : US 8,548,264 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8548264/en)
2027-05-01 : 2002-01-09 : US Re. 46,924 (https://patents.google.com/patent/USRE46924/en)
2027-05-01 : 2002-01-09 : US Re. 48,035 (https://patents.google.com/patent/USRE48035/en)
2027-05-05 : 2003-03-03 : US 8,130,842 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8130842/en)
2027-05-07 : 2002-07-19 : US 8,379,722 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8379722/en)
2027-05-17 : 2002-07-18 : US 8,463,058 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8463058/en)
2027-06-09 : 2003-03-03 : US 8,149,919 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8149919/en)
2027-07-02 : 2002-06-03 : US 8,374,245 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8374245/en)
2027-08-08 : 2002-09-26 : US 7,760,950 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7760950/en)
2027-08-09 : 2002-05-03 : US 7,609,767 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7609767/en)
2027-09-09 : 2003-05-22 : US 7,684,489 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7684489/en)
2027-12-19 : 2002-11-01 : US 9,426,490 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US9426490/en)
2027-12-21 : 2002-11-25 : US 7,881,375 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7881375/en)
2028-04-03 : 2004-03-30 : US 8,150,206 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8150206/en)
2028-05-20 : 2003-04-10 : US 7,899,113 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7899113/en)
2028-07-16 : 2003-02-21 : US 8,081,678 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8081678/en)
2028-09-22 : 2005-01-12 : US 8,315,315 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8315315/en)
2028-11-04 : 2002-05-02 : US 9,362,949 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US9362949/en)
2028-11-07 : 2004-01-20 : US 7,912,122 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7912122/en)
2028-12-14 : 2004-01-30 : US 7,933,327 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7933327/en)
2029-02-22 : 2004-05-07 : US 7,894,530 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7894530/en)
2029-05-10 : 2005-01-11 : US 8,948,739 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8948739/en)
2029-07-31 : 2002-05-02 : US 9,450,608 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US9450608/en)
2029-08-04 : 2002-05-02 : US 9,490,837 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US9490837/en)
2029-08-22 : 2002-05-02 : US 9,490,838 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US9490838/en)
2029-11-04 : 2004-10-15 : US 8,218,628 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8218628/en)
2030-01-08 : 2004-08-18 : US 7,916,782 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7916782/en)
2030-04-04 : 2004-10-15 : US 8,873,622 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8873622/en)
2030-08-07 : 2002-04-23 : US 8,179,968 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8179968/en)
2030-11-26 : 2001-09-14 : US 9,356,620 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US9356620/en)
2031-05-22 : 2001-03-02 : US 8,374,237 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8374237/en)
2031-07-05 : 2002-01-09 : US 8,290,046 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8290046/en)

FranceBB

14th October 2024, 22:23

Looks like 2025 is gonna be a very big year for patents expiration. Still, it's a bit insane that some patents from 2002 are gonna be pushed over 2030 and into 2031...

hajj_3

23rd October 2024, 15:33

kurkosdr

24th October 2024, 11:27

oibaf

12th November 2024, 17:51

Still, it's a bit insane that some patents from 2002 are gonna be pushed over 2030 and into 2031...

I always wondered: how do they even get those extensions legally? Aren't post-TRIPS patents supposed to last 20 years after the filing date? I understand giving patents an extra year or so to cover for any USPTO delays, but 8 years is insane.

If you find out some of the listed patents may be wrong (wrong priority or expiration dates), please let me know, maybe I could fix the hacky script I used to get the data from Google Patents.

hajj_3

16th November 2024, 15:02

nokia has ended their lawsuit against HP. HP will licence nokia's patents: https://www.mobileworldlive.com/nokia/nokia-resolves-video-patent-case-with-hp/

kurkosdr

16th November 2024, 22:36

nokia has won an injunction against amazon in germany: https://ipfray.com/breaking-nokia-wins-germany-wide-standard-essential-patent-injunction-against-amazon-video-streaming-devices-like-fire-tv-stick/

here is the patent:EP2375749 (https://patents.google.com/patent/EP2375749B1/en?oq=EP2375749)
Article says that the patent is "standard essential" but doesn't specify which standard it is essential for. That's some quality reporting right there from a website that supposedly specializes in intellectual property disputes and debates :rolleyes:

The good news is that the patent has a priority date after the publication of the High Profile, and the fact it's cited by "Scalable Video Coding - Working Draft 3" indicates it's related to SVC, so it's not essential for decoding the High Profile in a basic manner (that is, like the reference decoder does it).

That said, do we have a list of the non-US patents Nokia is suing over?

hajj_3

3rd February 2025, 22:46

patent list was updated today, not sure what changes there are: https://www.via-la.com/wp-content/uploads/Final-February-1-2025-AVC-Attachment-1.pdf

kurkosdr

6th November 2025, 18:30

As an aside, it's been more than 3 months since VIA-LA last updated their patent lists for H.264 and VC-1:

https://via-la.com/licensing-programs/avc-h-264/#patent-list

https://via-la.com/licensing-programs/vc-1/#patent-list

Is this just them being slower than usual, or have they switched to a slower update cadence (it was every 3 months until now)? Who knows..

hajj_3

6th November 2025, 23:34

kurkosdr

8th November 2025, 01:05

they have updated their VC-1 patents now. They have redesigned their website too.
As an aside (to the as an aside above), these are the VC-1 news I was waiting for:
https://via-la.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Final-November-1-2025-VC-1-Attachment-1.pdf
With the exception of the US and Brazil, VC-1 will become royalty-free by the end of the year, making it a royalty-free option for Blu-ray discs not to be sold in the US and Brazil (that is, if you are willing to throw some more bitrate at it compared to H.264, since VC-1 is not as efficient as H.264).

hajj_3

14th November 2025, 01:13

patent list was updated today: https://via-la.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Final-Nov.-1-2025-AVC-Active-Attachment-1.pdf

oibaf

14th November 2025, 10:28

Here it is all remaining patents with a priority date <= 2005-03-01 and known expiration date (patents with unknown priority or expiration date are omitted) sorted by their expiration dates (on the first field; the second field is the priority date), according to Google Patents. The patent is clickable.

Part 1/2
2026-02-08 : 2002-10-04 : US 7,555,044 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7555044) : Google Technology Holdings LLC
2026-02-12 : 2003-11-28 : US 7,400,681 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7400681) : Cisco Systems Canada Co Scientific Atlanta LLC
2026-02-13 : 2002-04-19 : US 7,515,635 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7515635) : Godo Kaisha IP Bridge 1
2026-03-06 : 2002-04-19 : US 7,940,845 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7940845) : Panasonic Intellectual Property Corp of America
2026-03-08 : 2002-11-20 : US 7,542,510 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7542510) : Godo Kaisha IP Bridge 1
2026-04-04 : 2002-04-26 : US 7,742,528 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7742528) : Godo Kaisha IP Bridge 1
2026-04-22 : 2000-07-07 : US 8,406,310 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8406310) : Nong Hyup Bank As Trustee For Kdb Infra Ip Capital Fund Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute ETRI
2026-05-01 : 2004-10-15 : US 8,867,619 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8867619) : Fraunhofer Gesellschaft zur Foerderung der Angewandten Forschung eV
2026-05-02 : 2001-07-12 : US 10,504,205 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US10504205) : Tagivan II LLC
2026-05-02 : 2003-01-30 : US 9,036,715 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US9036715) : Koninklijke Philips NV
2026-05-07 : 2001-06-15 : US 7,706,451 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7706451) : LG Electronics Inc
2026-05-12 : 2002-04-26 : US 7,778,331 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7778331) : Sony Corp
2026-05-14 : 2001-06-15 : US 7,711,053 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7711053) : LG Electronics Inc
2026-05-14 : 2001-06-15 : US 7,711,054 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7711054) : LG Electronics Inc
2026-05-17 : 2001-11-30 : BR PI0214328-3 (https://patents.google.com/patent/BRPI0214328/en) : Ericsson Telefon Ab L M
2026-05-23 : 2002-04-26 : US 8,315,313 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8315313) : Sony Corp
2026-05-26 : 2002-05-28 : US 8,228,986 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8228986) : Dolby Laboratories Licensing Corp
2026-05-29 : 2004-01-30 : US 7,599,435 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7599435) : Fraunhofer Gesellschaft zur Foerderung der Angewandten Forschung eV
2026-06-02 : 2002-05-28 : US 8,233,538 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8233538) : Dolby Laboratories Licensing Corp
2026-06-06 : 2001-09-12 : US 7,944,977 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7944977) : Panasonic Intellectual Property Corp of America
2026-06-06 : 2002-04-26 : US 10,477,270 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US10477270) : Sony Corp
2026-06-25 : 2002-07-18 : US 8,472,738 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8472738) : LG Electronics Inc
2026-07-01 : 2002-07-15 : US 7,970,058 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7970058) : Maxell Ltd
2026-07-04 : 2001-09-12 : US 7,961,793 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7961793) : Panasonic Intellectual Property Corp of America
2026-07-07 : 2002-05-28 : US 8,279,927 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8279927) : Dolby Laboratories Licensing Corp
2026-07-11 : 2002-07-18 : US 8,467,620 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8467620) : LG Electronics Inc
2026-07-13 : 2002-07-18 : US 8,467,622 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8467622) : LG Electronics Inc
2026-07-19 : 2000-04-14 : BR PI0109962-0 (https://patents.google.com/patent/BRPI0109962/en) : Siemens Ag
2026-07-19 : 2002-04-23 : US 8,155,201 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8155201) : Tagivan II LLC
2026-07-22 : 2002-11-25 : US 8,009,731 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8009731) : Godo Kaisha IP Bridge 1
2026-07-28 : 2001-11-29 : US 8,254,468 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8254468) : Godo Kaisha IP Bridge 1
2026-07-29 : 2003-05-15 : US 7,742,655 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7742655) : Dolby Laboratories Licensing Corp
2026-08-21 : 2004-01-30 : US 8,565,304 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8565304) : Fraunhofer Gesellschaft zur Foerderung der Angewandten Forschung eV
2026-08-27 : 2002-10-08 : US 7,916,959 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7916959) : NTT Docomo Inc
2026-09-03 : 2002-04-19 : US 8,009,733 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8009733) : Godo Kaisha IP Bridge 1
2026-09-06 : 2002-01-09 : US 8,290,047 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8290047) : Panasonic Intellectual Property Corp of America
2026-09-08 : 2002-07-15 : US 7,760,803 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7760803) : Godo Kaisha IP Bridge 1
2026-09-10 : 2002-04-19 : US 8,184,697 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8184697) : Godo Kaisha IP Bridge 1
2026-09-27 : 2002-03-27 : BR PI0303661-8 (https://patents.google.com/patent/BRPI0303661/en) : Matsushita Electric Indusrial Co Ltd, Panasonic Corp, Panasonic Ip Corp America
2026-10-07 : 2001-11-29 : US 8,345,770 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8345770) : Godo Kaisha IP Bridge 1
2026-10-08 : 2002-04-19 : US 8,204,112 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8204112) : Godo Kaisha IP Bridge 1
2026-10-11 : 2002-04-23 : US 8,213,510 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8213510) : Tagivan II LLC
2026-10-13 : 2002-05-28 : US 8,331,450 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8331450) : Dolby Laboratories Licensing Corp
2026-11-05 : 2002-04-19 : US 8,223,841 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8223841) : Godo Kaisha IP Bridge 1
2026-11-15 : 2002-04-15 : US 8,265,403 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8265403) : VIDEOLABS Inc
2026-12-04 : 2002-07-11 : US 7,995,658 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7995658) : Panasonic Intellectual Property Corp of America
2026-12-13 : 2002-04-19 : BR PI0304534-0 (https://patents.google.com/patent/BRPI0304534/en) : Matsushita Electric Industrial Co Ltd, Panasonic Corp, Panasonic Ip Corp America
2027-01-16 : 2002-05-02 : US 7,702,013 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7702013) : Fraunhofer Gesellschaft zur Foerderung der Angewandten Forschung eV
2027-01-29 : 2002-05-03 : US 8,265,148 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8265148) : Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC
2027-01-29 : 2002-10-03 : US 7,596,178 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7596178) : NTT Docomo Inc
2027-02-11 : 2004-01-30 : US 7,630,435 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7630435) : Panasonic Intellectual Property Corp of America
2027-02-21 : 2002-04-18 : BR PI0304533-1 (https://patents.google.com/patent/BRPI0304533/en) : Kk Toshiba (Toshiba Corporation)
2027-04-11 : 2001-11-29 : BR PI0206820-6 (https://patents.google.com/patent/BRPI0206820/en) : Godo Kaisha Ip Bridge 1, Matsushita Electric Industrial Co Ltd, Panasonic Corp, Panasonic Ip Corp America
2027-05-01 : 2002-01-09 : US Re. 46,924 (https://patents.google.com/patent/USRE46924) : Dolby International AB
2027-05-01 : 2002-01-09 : US Re. 48,035 (https://patents.google.com/patent/USRE48035) : Dolby International AB
2027-05-01 : 2002-01-09 : US Re. 50,574 (https://patents.google.com/patent/USRE50574) : Dolby International AB
2027-05-05 : 2003-03-03 : US 8,130,842 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8130842) : LG Electronics Inc
2027-05-07 : 2002-07-19 : US 8,379,722 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8379722) : Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC
2027-06-09 : 2003-03-03 : US 8,149,919 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8149919) : LG Electronics Inc
2027-07-02 : 2002-06-03 : US 8,374,245 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8374245) : Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC
2027-08-08 : 2002-09-26 : US 7,760,950 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7760950) : NTT Docomo Inc
2027-08-09 : 2002-05-03 : US 7,609,767 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7609767) : Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC
2027-09-09 : 2003-05-22 : US 7,684,489 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7684489) : Cisco Technology Inc
2027-09-26 : 2001-11-22 : BR PI0206629-7 (https://patents.google.com/patent/BRPI0206629/en) : Godo Kaisha Ip Bridge 1
2027-12-12 : 2001-08-23 : BR PI 0212000-3 (https://patents.google.com/patent/BRPI0212000/en) : Polycom, Inc.
2027-12-19 : 2002-04-23 : BR PI 0304549-8 (https://patents.google.com/patent/BRPI0304549/en) : Tagivan Ii Llc
2027-12-19 : 2002-11-01 : US 9,426,490 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US9426490) : Godo Kaisha IP Bridge 1
2027-12-21 : 2002-11-25 : US 7,881,375 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7881375) : Godo Kaisha IP Bridge 1
2028-02-06 : 2002-04-15 : BR PI 0303566-2 (https://patents.google.com/patent/BRPI0303566/en) : Godo Kaisha Ip Bridge 1
2028-02-14 : 2002-04-19 : BR PI0304543-9 (https://patents.google.com/patent/BRPI0304543/en) : Godo Kaisha Ip Bridge 1
2028-02-14 : 2002-10-22 : BR PI0315552-8 (https://patents.google.com/patent/BRPI0315552/en) : Koninklijke Philips N. V.
2028-02-14 : 2002-11-22 : BR PI0307635-0 (https://patents.google.com/patent/BRPI0307635/en) : Kk Toshiba Toshiba Corporation
2028-02-14 : 2002-11-25 : BR PI0307119-7 (https://patents.google.com/patent/BRPI0307119/en) : Godo Kaisha Ip Bridge 1
2028-02-27 : 2002-01-09 : BR PI 0302580-2 (https://patents.google.com/patent/BRPI0302580/en) : Panasonic Intellectual Property Corporation Of America
2028-02-27 : 2002-04-26 : BR PI0304558-7 (https://patents.google.com/patent/BRPI0304558/en) : Godo Kaisha Ip Bridge 1
2028-02-27 : 2002-11-25 : BR PI0318759-4 (https://patents.google.com/patent/BRPI0318759/en) :
2028-02-27 : 2003-04-10 : BR PI-0408570-1 (https://patents.google.com/patent/BRPI0408570/en) : Thomson Licensing
2028-03-06 : 2002-07-11 : BR PI0303901-3 (https://patents.google.com/patent/BRPI0303901/en) : Godo Kaisha Ip Bridge 1
2028-03-13 : 2002-11-01 : BR PI0306684-3 (https://patents.google.com/patent/BRPI0306684/en) : Godo Kaisha Ip Bridge 1
2028-03-20 : 2001-08-31 : BR PI 0205954-1 (https://patents.google.com/patent/BRPI0205954/en) : Panasonic Intellectual Property Corporation Of America
2028-04-03 : 2002-07-15 : BR PI0305554-0 (https://patents.google.com/patent/BRPI0305554/en) : Godo Kaisha Ip Bridge 1
2028-04-03 : 2002-11-20 : BR PI0306987-7 (https://patents.google.com/patent/BRPI0306987/en) : Godo Kaisha Ip Bridge 1
2028-04-03 : 2004-03-30 : US 8,150,206 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8150206) : Dolby Laboratories Licensing Corp
2028-05-20 : 2003-04-10 : US 7,899,113 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7899113) : Dolby Laboratories Licensing Corp
2028-05-29 : 2003-03-03 : BR 122014032858-3 (https://patents.google.com/patent/BR122014032858/en) : Lg Electronics Inc.
2028-05-29 : 2003-03-03 : BR 122014032870-2 (https://patents.google.com/patent/BR122014032870/en) : Lg Electronics Inc.
2028-06-05 : 2003-03-03 : BR 122014032866-4 (https://patents.google.com/patent/BR122014032866/en) : Lg Electronics Inc.
2028-06-05 : 2003-03-03 : BR PI 0407671-0 (https://patents.google.com/patent/BRPI0407671/en) : Lg Electronics Inc
2028-06-19 : 2002-11-25 : BR PI0307197-9 (https://patents.google.com/patent/BRPI0307197/en) : Godo Kaisha Ip Bridge 1
2028-07-03 : 2002-07-11 : BR PI 0305432-2 (https://patents.google.com/patent/BRPI0305432/en) : Panasonic Intellectual Property Corporation Of America
2028-07-16 : 2003-02-21 : US 8,081,678 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8081678) : Panasonic Intellectual Property Corp of America
2028-09-04 : 2003-05-15 : BR PI0410320-3 (https://patents.google.com/patent/BRPI0410320/en) : Thomson Licensing
2028-09-22 : 2005-01-12 : US 8,315,315 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8315315) : Orange SA
2028-09-25 : 2001-10-17 : BR PI0206157-0 (https://patents.google.com/patent/BRPI0206157/en) : Panasonic Intellectual Property Corporation Of America
2028-09-25 : 2001-10-17 : BR PI 0216048-0 (https://patents.google.com/patent/BRPI0216048/en) : Panasonic Intellectual Property Corporation Of America
2028-09-25 : 2001-10-17 : BR PI 0216072-2 (https://patents.google.com/patent/BRPI0216072/en) : Panasonic Corp, Panasonic Ip Corp America
2028-10-16 : 2003-02-21 : BR PI0406507-7 (https://patents.google.com/patent/BRPI0406507/en) : Matsushita Electric Industrial Co Ltd
2028-11-04 : 2002-05-02 : US 9,362,949 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US9362949) : Fraunhofer Gesellschaft zur Foerderung der Angewandten Forschung eV
2028-11-06 : 2004-10-15 : BR PI 0516336-6 (https://patents.google.com/patent/BRPI0516336/en) : Fraunhofer Ges Forschung
2028-11-07 : 2004-01-20 : US 7,912,122 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7912122) : Panasonic Intellectual Property Corp of America
2028-11-21 : 2003-03-03 : BR PI0406424-0 (https://patents.google.com/patent/BRPI0406424/en) : Matsushita Electric Industrial Co Ltd
2028-11-21 : 2004-10-15 : BR PI 0516348-0 (https://patents.google.com/patent/BRPI0516348/en) : Fraunhofer Ges Forschung
2028-12-04 : 2005-01-12 : BR P10519842-9 (https://patents.google.com/patent/BRPI0519842A2/en) : France Telecom
2028-12-14 : 2004-01-30 : US 7,933,327 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7933327) : Panasonic Intellectual Property Corp of America

oibaf

14th November 2025, 10:28

Part 2/2
2029-02-22 : 2004-05-07 : US 7,894,530 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7894530) : Dolby Laboratories Licensing Corp
2029-05-03 : 2002-10-22 : US 8,391,371 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8391371) : Koninklijke Philips NV
2029-05-10 : 2005-01-11 : US 8,948,739 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8948739) : Siemens AG
2029-06-04 : 2002-07-02 : BR PI 0303336-8 (https://patents.google.com/patent/BRPI0303336/en) : Panasonic Intellectual Property Corporation Of America
2029-06-25 : 2004-10-15 : BR 122018016193-0 (https://patents.google.com/patent/BR122018016193/en) : Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der angewandten Forschung e.V.
2029-07-02 : 2002-03-04 : BR PI 0303342-2 (https://patents.google.com/patent/BRPI0303342/en) : Panasonic Intellectual Property Corporation Of America
2029-07-31 : 2002-05-02 : US 9,450,608 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US9450608) : Fraunhofer Gesellschaft zur Foerderung der Angewandten Forschung eV
2029-08-04 : 2002-05-02 : US 9,490,837 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US9490837) : Fraunhofer Gesellschaft zur Foerderung der Angewandten Forschung eV
2029-08-13 : 2002-04-12 : BR PI 0318797-7 (https://patents.google.com/patent/BRPI0318797/en) : Godo Kaisha Ip Bridge 1
2029-08-22 : 2002-05-02 : US 9,490,838 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US9490838) : Fraunhofer Gesellschaft zur Foerderung der Angewandten Forschung eV
2029-10-01 : 2002-04-12 : BR PI 0303673-1 (https://patents.google.com/patent/BRPI0303673/en) : Godo Kaisha Ip Bridge 1
2029-10-01 : 2002-04-12 : BR PI 0318816-7 (https://patents.google.com/patent/BRPI0318816/en) : Godo Kaisha Ip Bridge 1
2029-11-04 : 2004-10-15 : US 8,218,628 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8218628) : Fraunhofer Gesellschaft zur Foerderung der Angewandten Forschung eV
2029-11-19 : 2003-03-03 : BR PI 0419287-7 (https://patents.google.com/patent/BRPI0419287/en) : Lg Electronics Inc
2029-12-03 : 2004-10-15 : BR 12 2018 016188-4 (https://patents.google.com/patent/BR122018016188/en) : Fraunhofer Ges Forschung
2030-01-08 : 2004-08-18 : US 7,916,782 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7916782) : Panasonic Intellectual Property Corp of America
2030-02-11 : 2002-11-22 : BR 122018011878-4 (https://patents.google.com/patent/BR122018011878/en) : Kabushiki Kaisha Toshiba (Toshiba Corporation)
2030-02-18 : 2002-11-22 : BR 122018011876-8 (https://patents.google.com/patent/BR122018011876/en) : Kabushiki Kaisha Toshiba (Toshiba Corporation)
2030-03-10 : 2002-11-22 : BR 122018011874-1 (https://patents.google.com/patent/BR122018011874/en) : Kabushiki Kaisha Toshiba (Toshiba Corporation)
2030-03-10 : 2002-11-22 : BR 122018011875-0 (https://patents.google.com/patent/BR122018011875/en) : Kabushiki Kaisha Toshiba (Toshiba Corporation)
2030-04-04 : 2004-10-15 : US 8,873,622 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8873622) : Fraunhofer Gesellschaft zur Foerderung der Angewandten Forschung eV
2030-08-07 : 2002-04-23 : US 8,179,968 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8179968) : Tagivan II LLC
2030-11-10 : 2002-05-01 : BR PI0304568-4 (https://patents.google.com/patent/BRPI0304568/en) : Dolby International Ab
2030-11-26 : 2001-09-14 : US 9,356,620 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US9356620) : Siemens AG
2031-05-22 : 2001-03-02 : US 8,374,237 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8374237) : Dolby Laboratories Licensing Corp Dolby Laboratories Inc
2031-07-05 : 2002-01-09 : US 8,290,046 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US8290046) : Panasonic Intellectual Property Corp of America

kurkosdr

14th December 2025, 01:57

Something I just noticed. In their "essentiality overview", VIA-LA considers the patents to be essential for versions of the standard published in 2008 or later:
https://via-la.com/licensing-programs/avc-h-264/#essentiality-overview
(basically, the oldest standard cited is this one (https://www.iso.org/standard/50726.html))

Could be a typo, could be anything, but I find it funny that everyone buys a license from VIA-LA to implement the 2005 version of the standard (aka this one (https://www.iso.org/standard/43058.html)), except the people making Blu-ray 3D players I guess, and yet VIA-LA is like "nah, you don't need a license for that old revision of AVC/H.264".

EDIT: I am not saying that H.264 High Profile should be declared clear of patents, VIA-LA's "essentiality overview" is not legally binding anyway

kurkosdr

14th December 2025, 16:36

oibaf

14th December 2025, 17:34

Sure, here they are. Note:

BR expiry dates in my previous post are estimated by my script, not by Google Patents
priority is get like this: using the priorArtDate tag in Google Patents, and only if not available using the first priorityDate tag

Unknown expiry and/or priority date - part 1/2
????-??-?? : 2002-04-15 : MY 140969 (https://patents.google.com/patent/MY140969/en) : Panasonic Corp
????-??-?? : 2002-04-15 : MY 141699 (https://patents.google.com/patent/MY141699/en) : Panasonic Corp
????-??-?? : 2005-04-13 : MY 167744-A (https://patents.google.com/patent/MY167744A/en) : Dolby Int Ab
????-??-?? : 2007-01-18 : TW I445412 (https://patents.google.com/patent/TWI445412/en) : Fraunhofer Ges Forschung
????-??-?? : 2007-04-12 : HK 1,255,617 (https://patents.google.com/patent/HK1255617/en) : Dolby International Ab
????-??-?? : 2007-04-12 : HK 40033548 (https://patents.google.com/patent/HK40033548/en) : Dolby International Ab
????-??-?? : 2007-04-12 : HK 40033581 (https://patents.google.com/patent/HK40033581/en) : Dolby International Ab
????-??-?? : 2007-04-12 : HK 40044425 (https://patents.google.com/patent/HK40044425/en) : Dolby International Ab
????-??-?? : 2007-04-12 : RU 2,521,618 (https://patents.google.com/patent/RU2521618/en) :
????-??-?? : 2007-04-12 : RU 2,651,227 (https://patents.google.com/patent/RU2651227/en) :
????-??-?? : 2007-04-12 : RU 2,684,184 (https://patents.google.com/patent/RU2684184/en) :
????-??-?? : 2007-04-12 : RU 2,709,671 (https://patents.google.com/patent/RU2709671/en) :
????-??-?? : 2007-04-12 : RU 2,721,941 (https://patents.google.com/patent/RU2721941/en) :
????-??-?? : 2007-04-12 : RU 2,733,273 (https://patents.google.com/patent/RU2733273/en) :
????-??-?? : 2007-04-12 : RU 2,752,572 (https://patents.google.com/patent/RU2752572/en) :
????-??-?? : 2007-04-12 : RU 2,763,966 (https://patents.google.com/patent/RU2763966/en) :
????-??-?? : 2007-04-12 : RU 2,789,309 (https://patents.google.com/patent/RU2789309/en) :
????-??-?? : 2007-04-12 : RU 2,813,744 (https://patents.google.com/patent/RU2813744/en) :
????-??-?? : 2007-04-12 : ZA 2010/06649 (https://patents.google.com/patent/ZA201006649/en) : Thomson Licensing
????-??-?? : 2007-04-18 : RU 2501179 (https://patents.google.com/patent/RU2501179/en) :
????-??-?? : 2007-04-18 : TW I415450 (https://patents.google.com/patent/TWI415450/en) : Thomson Licensing
????-??-?? : 2007-04-18 : TW I445393 (https://patents.google.com/patent/TWI445393/en) : Thomson Licensing
????-??-?? : 2007-04-18 : TW I445407 (https://patents.google.com/patent/TWI445407/en) : Thomson Licensing
????-??-?? : 2007-07-13 : TH 88077 (https://patents.google.com/patent/TH88077/en) :
????-??-?? : 2009-01-29 : HK 1,220,301 (https://patents.google.com/patent/HK1220301/en) :
????-??-?? : 2009-01-29 : HK 1,220,303 (https://patents.google.com/patent/HK1220303/en) :
????-??-?? : 2009-01-29 : HK 1,220,563 (https://patents.google.com/patent/HK1220563/en) :
????-??-?? : 2009-01-29 : HK 1,220,564 (https://patents.google.com/patent/HK1220564/en) :
????-??-?? : 2009-01-29 : HK 1,221,360 (https://patents.google.com/patent/HK1221360/en) :
????-??-?? : 2009-01-29 : HK 1,221,361 (https://patents.google.com/patent/HK1221361/en) :
????-??-?? : 2009-01-29 : HK 1,222,495 (https://patents.google.com/patent/HK1222495/en) :
????-??-?? : 2010-10-18 : HK 1,227,201 (https://patents.google.com/patent/HK1227201/en) :
????-??-?? : 2010-10-18 : HK 1,227,202 (https://patents.google.com/patent/HK1227202/en) :
????-??-?? : 2010-10-18 : HK 1,227,590 (https://patents.google.com/patent/HK1227590/en) :
????-??-?? : 2011-05-27 : HK 1191778 (https://patents.google.com/patent/HK1191778/en) :
????-??-?? : 2011-05-27 : HK 1198088 (https://patents.google.com/patent/HK1198088/en) :
????-??-?? : 2011-05-27 : HK 40041880 (https://patents.google.com/patent/HK40041880/en) : Dolby Laboratories Licensing Corporation
????-??-?? : 2011-05-27 : HK 40069190 (https://patents.google.com/patent/HK40069190/en) : Dolby Laboratories Licensing Corporation
????-??-?? : 2011-12-06 : HK 1,229,922 (https://patents.google.com/patent/HK1229922/en) : Dolby Laboratories Licensing Corporation
????-??-?? : 2011-12-06 : HK 1231191 (https://patents.google.com/patent/HK1231191/en) :
????-??-?? : 2011-12-06 : HK 1231192 (https://patents.google.com/patent/HK1231192/en) :
????-??-?? : 2011-12-06 : HK 1231193 (https://patents.google.com/patent/HK1231193/en) :
????-??-?? : 2011-12-06 : HK 1,231,195 (https://patents.google.com/patent/HK1231195/en) :
????-??-?? : 2011-12-06 : HK 1231196 (https://patents.google.com/patent/HK1231196/en) :
????-??-?? : 2011-12-06 : HK 40010382 (https://patents.google.com/patent/HK40010382/en) : Dolby Laboratories Licensing Corporation
????-??-?? : 2011-12-06 : HK 40049320 (https://patents.google.com/patent/HK40049320/en) : Dolby Laboratories Licensing Corporation
????-??-?? : 2011-12-06 : HK 40049879 (https://patents.google.com/patent/HK40049879/en) : Dolby Laboratories Licensing Corporation
????-??-?? : 2011-12-06 : HK 40112223 (https://patents.google.com/patent/HK40112223/en) : Dolby Laboratories Licensing Corporation
????-??-?? : 2011-12-06 : MX 365,964 (https://patents.google.com/patent/MX365964/en) : Dolby Laboratories Licensing Corp
????-??-?? : 2011-12-06 : MX 365,965 (https://patents.google.com/patent/MX365965/en) : Dolby Laboratories Licensing Corp
????-??-?? : 2011-12-06 : MX 380258 (https://patents.google.com/patent/MX380258/en) : Dolby Laboratories Licensing Corp
????-??-?? : 2011-12-06 : MY 193501-A (https://patents.google.com/patent/MY193501A/en) : Dolby Laboratories Licensing Corp
????-??-?? : 2011-12-06 : MY 198864-A (https://patents.google.com/patent/MY198864A/en) : Dolby Laboratories Licensing Corp
????-??-?? : 2011-12-06 : MY 203733-A (https://patents.google.com/patent/MY203733A/en) : Dolby Laboratories Licensing Corp
????-??-?? : 2011-12-06 : MY 203888-A (https://patents.google.com/patent/MY203888A/en) : Dolby Laboratories Licensing Corp
????-??-?? : 2011-12-06 : RU 2,665,211 (https://patents.google.com/patent/RU2665211/en) :
????-??-?? : 2011-12-06 : RU 2,711,102 (https://patents.google.com/patent/RU2711102/en) :
????-??-?? : 2011-12-06 : RU 2,728,845 (https://patents.google.com/patent/RU2728845/en) :
????-??-?? : 2011-12-06 : RU 2,772,241 (https://patents.google.com/patent/RU2772241/en) :
????-??-?? : 2011-12-06 : SG 10201604112P (https://patents.google.com/patent/SG10201604112P/en) : Dolby Lab Licensing Corp
????-??-?? : 2011-12-06 : SG 10201604130U (https://patents.google.com/patent/SG10201604130U/en) : Dolby Lab Licensing Corp
????-??-?? : 2011-12-06 : SG 10201607838P (https://patents.google.com/patent/SG10201607838P/en) : Dolby Lab Licensing Corp
????-??-?? : 2014-12-03 : MX 361131 (https://patents.google.com/patent/MX361131/en) : Panasonic Ip Man Co Ltd
????-??-?? : 2014-12-03 : MX 366,971 (https://patents.google.com/patent/MX366971/en) : Panasonic Ip Man Co Ltd
????-??-?? : 2014-12-03 : MX 383827 (https://patents.google.com/patent/MX383827/en) : Panasonic Ip Man Co Ltd
????-??-?? : 2014-12-03 : MX 389,193 (https://patents.google.com/patent/MX389193/en) : Panasonic Ip Man Co Ltd
????-??-?? : 2014-12-03 : MX 390,639 (https://patents.google.com/patent/MX390639/en) : Panasonic Ip Man Co Ltd
????-??-?? : 2014-12-03 : MX 393,117 (https://patents.google.com/patent/MX393117/en) : Panasonic Ip Man Co Ltd
????-??-?? : 2015-08-04 : HK 40010357 (https://patents.google.com/patent/HK40010357/en) :
????-??-?? : 2015-08-04 : RU 2,736,103 (https://patents.google.com/patent/RU2736103/en) :
????-??-?? : 2016-02-09 : TW I669946 (https://patents.google.com/patent/TWI669946/en) :
????-??-?? : 2016-02-09 : TW I736895 (https://patents.google.com/patent/TWI736895/en) :
????-??-?? : 2016-02-09 : TW I747775 (https://patents.google.com/patent/TWI747775/en) :
????-??-?? : 2016-02-09 : TW I750072 (https://patents.google.com/patent/TWI750072/en) :
????-??-?? : 2016-02-09 : TW I762206 (https://patents.google.com/patent/TWI762206/en) :
????-??-?? : 2016-02-09 : TW I762207 (https://patents.google.com/patent/TWI762207/en) :
????-??-?? : 2016-02-09 : TW I762259 (https://patents.google.com/patent/TWI762259/en) :
????-??-?? : 2016-02-09 : TW I762260 (https://patents.google.com/patent/TWI762260/en) :
????-??-?? : 2016-02-09 : TW I793532 (https://patents.google.com/patent/TWI793532/en) :
????-??-?? : 2016-02-09 : TW I793533 (https://patents.google.com/patent/TWI793533/en) :
????-??-?? : 2016-02-09 : TW I850969 (https://patents.google.com/patent/TWI850969/en) :
????-??-?? : 2016-05-27 : TW I842000 (https://patents.google.com/patent/TWI842000/en) :
????-??-?? : 2016-05-27 : TW I874184 (https://patents.google.com/patent/TWI874184/en) :
????-??-?? : 2016-05-27 : TW I874185 (https://patents.google.com/patent/TWI874185/en) :
????-??-?? : 2016-05-27 : TW I874186 (https://patents.google.com/patent/TWI874186/en) :

oibaf

14th December 2025, 17:37

Unknown expiry and/or priority date - part 2/2

????-??-?? : 2016-05-27 : TW I874187 (https://patents.google.com/patent/TWI874187/en) :
????-??-?? : 2016-05-27 : TW I874188 (https://patents.google.com/patent/TWI874188/en) :
????-??-?? : 2016-05-27 : TW I878091 (https://patents.google.com/patent/TWI878091/en) :
????-??-?? : 2016-10-04 : HK 40066004 (https://patents.google.com/patent/HK40066004/en) : 有限公司B1影像技术研究所
????-??-?? : 2016-10-04 : HK 40066005 (https://patents.google.com/patent/HK40066005/en) : 有限公司B1影像技术研究所
????-??-?? : 2016-10-04 : HK 40066006 (https://patents.google.com/patent/HK40066006/en) : 有限公司B1影像技术研究所
????-??-?? : 2016-10-04 : HK 40066007 (https://patents.google.com/patent/HK40066007/en) : 有限公司B1影像技术研究所
????-??-?? : 2016-10-04 : HK 40071040 (https://patents.google.com/patent/HK40071040/en) : 有限公司 B1 影像技术研究所
????-??-?? : 2016-10-04 : HK 40071404 (https://patents.google.com/patent/HK40071404/en) : 有限公司B1影像技术研究所
????-??-?? : 2016-10-04 : HK 40072997 (https://patents.google.com/patent/HK40072997/en) : 有限公司 B1 影像技术研究所
????-??-?? : 2016-10-04 : HK 40072998 (https://patents.google.com/patent/HK40072998/en) : 有限公司 B1 影像技术研究所
????-??-?? : 2016-10-04 : HK 40073014 (https://patents.google.com/patent/HK40073014/en) : 有限公司 B1 影像技术研究所
????-??-?? : 2016-10-04 : HK 40073015 (https://patents.google.com/patent/HK40073015/en) : 有限公司B1影像技术研究所
????-??-?? : 2016-10-04 : HK 40073016 (https://patents.google.com/patent/HK40073016/en) : 有限公司B1影像技术研究所
????-??-?? : 2016-10-04 : HK 40073017 (https://patents.google.com/patent/HK40073017/en) : 有限公司B1影像技术研究所
????-??-?? : 2016-10-04 : HK 40074073 (https://patents.google.com/patent/HK40074073/en) : 有限公司B1影像技术研究所
????-??-?? : 2016-10-04 : HK 40074506 (https://patents.google.com/patent/HK40074506/en) : 有限公司B1影像技术研究所
????-??-?? : 2016-10-04 : HK 40074507 (https://patents.google.com/patent/HK40074507/en) : 有限公司B1影像技术研究所
????-??-?? : 2016-10-04 : HK 40076522 (https://patents.google.com/patent/HK40076522/en) : 有限公司B1影像技术研究所
????-??-?? : 2016-10-04 : HK 40076523 (https://patents.google.com/patent/HK40076523/en) : 有限公司B1影像技术研究所
????-??-?? : 2016-10-04 : HK 40076524 (https://patents.google.com/patent/HK40076524/en) : 有限公司B1影像技术研究所
????-??-?? : 2016-10-04 : HK 40089889 (https://patents.google.com/patent/HK40089889/en) : 有限公司B1影像技术研究所
????-??-?? : 2016-10-04 : HK 40089890 (https://patents.google.com/patent/HK40089890/en) : 有限公司B1影像技术研究所
????-??-?? : 2016-10-04 : HK 40089891 (https://patents.google.com/patent/HK40089891/en) : 有限公司B1影像技术研究所
????-??-?? : 2016-10-04 : HK 40090142 (https://patents.google.com/patent/HK40090142/en) : 有限公司B1影像技术研究所
????-??-?? : 2016-10-05 : EA 042564 (https://patents.google.com/patent/EA042564/en) :
????-??-?? : 2016-10-05 : EA 048261 (https://patents.google.com/patent/EA048261/en) :
????-??-?? : 2016-10-05 : EA 048724 (https://patents.google.com/patent/EA048724/en) :
????-??-?? : 2016-10-05 : EA 050028 (https://patents.google.com/patent/EA050028/en) :
????-??-?? : 2016-10-05 : HK 40010573 (https://patents.google.com/patent/HK40010573/en) :
????-??-?? : 2016-10-05 : HK 40012966 (https://patents.google.com/patent/HK40012966/en) : Dolby Laboratories Licensing Corporation
????-??-?? : 2016-10-05 : HK 40090947 (https://patents.google.com/patent/HK40090947/en) :
????-??-?? : 2016-10-05 : HK 40091904 (https://patents.google.com/patent/HK40091904/en) :
????-??-?? : 2016-10-05 : IL 265,771 (https://patents.google.com/patent/IL265771/en) : Dolby Laboratories Licensing Corp
????-??-?? : 2016-10-05 : IL 280688 (https://patents.google.com/patent/IL280688/en) : Dolby Laboratories Licensing Corp
????-??-?? : 2016-10-05 : IL 287875 (https://patents.google.com/patent/IL287875/en) : Dolby Laboratories Licensing Corp
????-??-?? : 2016-10-05 : IL 296162 (https://patents.google.com/patent/IL296162/en) : Dolby Laboratories Licensing Corp
????-??-?? : 2016-10-05 : IL 305702 (https://patents.google.com/patent/IL305702/en) : Dolby Laboratories Licensing Corp
????-??-?? : 2016-10-05 : IL 310,366 (https://patents.google.com/patent/IL310366/en) : Dolby Laboratories Licensing Corp
????-??-?? : 2016-10-05 : MX 388842 (https://patents.google.com/patent/MX388842/en) : Dolby Laboratories Licensing Corp
????-??-?? : 2016-10-05 : MY 201472-A (https://patents.google.com/patent/MY201472A/en) : Dolby Laboratories Licensing Corp
????-??-?? : 2016-10-05 : OA 19660 (https://patents.google.com/patent/OA19660/en) : Dolby Laboratories Licensing Corporation
????-??-?? : 2016-10-05 : PH 1/2019/500718 (https://patents.google.com/patent/PH12019500718/en) : Dolby Laboratories Licensing Corp
????-??-?? : 2016-10-12 : MX 393311 (https://patents.google.com/patent/MX393311/en) : Fraunhofer Ges Forschung
????-??-?? : 2016-10-12 : TW I664857 (https://patents.google.com/patent/TWI664857/en) :
????-??-?? : 2016-10-12 : TW I753263 (https://patents.google.com/patent/TWI753263/en) :
????-??-?? : 2016-10-12 : TW I810763 (https://patents.google.com/patent/TWI810763/en) :
????-??-?? : 2016-11-29 : EA 039463 (https://patents.google.com/patent/EA039463/en) :
????-??-?? : 2017-07-11 : BR PI0304528-5 (https://patents.google.com/patent/BRPI0304528/en) :
????-??-?? : 2017-08-22 : BR PI0206777-3 (https://patents.google.com/patent/BRPI0206777/en) :
????-??-?? : 2017-10-31 : UA 124806 (https://patents.google.com/patent/UA124806/en) :
????-??-?? : 2018-04-10 : UA 128323 (https://patents.google.com/patent/UA128323/en) :
????-??-?? : 2018-04-13 : UA 129191 (https://patents.google.com/patent/UA129191/en) :
????-??-?? : 2018-05-16 : UA 129781 (https://patents.google.com/patent/UA129781/en) :
????-??-?? : 2018-08-21 : BR PI0306560-0 (https://patents.google.com/patent/BRPI0306560/en) :
????-??-?? : 2019-03-11 : EA 042523 (https://patents.google.com/patent/EA042523/en) :
????-??-?? : 2019-03-11 : EA 044734 (https://patents.google.com/patent/EA044734/en) :
????-??-?? : 2019-03-11 : EA 047543 (https://patents.google.com/patent/EA047543/en) :
????-??-?? : 2019-03-11 : HK 40035149 (https://patents.google.com/patent/HK40035149/en) :
????-??-?? : 2019-03-11 : HK 40067049 (https://patents.google.com/patent/HK40067049/en) :
????-??-?? : 2019-03-11 : HK 40069255 (https://patents.google.com/patent/HK40069255/en) :
????-??-?? : 2019-03-11 : HK 40069256 (https://patents.google.com/patent/HK40069256/en) :
????-??-?? : 2019-03-11 : IL 277365 (https://patents.google.com/patent/IL277365/en) : Dolby Laboratories Licensing Corp
????-??-?? : 2019-03-11 : IL 289965 (https://patents.google.com/patent/IL289965/en) : Dolby Laboratories Licensing Corp
????-??-?? : 2019-03-11 : IL 295131 (https://patents.google.com/patent/IL295131/en) : Dolby Laboratories Licensing Corp
????-??-?? : 2019-03-11 : IL 304034 (https://patents.google.com/patent/IL304034/en) : Dolby Laboratories Licensing Corp
????-??-?? : 2019-03-11 : PH 12020551511 (https://patents.google.com/patent/PH12020551511/en) : Dolby Laboratories Licensing Corp
????-??-?? : 2020-06-15 : HK 40085735 (https://patents.google.com/patent/HK40085735/en) : Dolby Laboratories Licensing Corporation
????-??-?? : 2020-06-15 : HK 40090617 (https://patents.google.com/patent/HK40090617/en) :
????-??-?? : 2020-06-15 : HK 40098573 (https://patents.google.com/patent/HK40098573/en) :
????-??-?? : 2022-10-13 : MA 60463 B1 (https://patents.google.com/patent/MA60463B1/en) : Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft zur Fërderung der angewandten Forschung e.V.
????-??-?? : 2022-10-13 : MY 207325-A (https://patents.google.com/patent/MY207325A/en) : Fraunhofer Ges Zur Frderung Der Angewandten Forschung E V
????-??-?? : 2022-10-13 : TW I871646 (https://patents.google.com/patent/TWI871646/en) :
????-??-?? : 2022-10-13 : ZA 202305828 (https://patents.google.com/patent/ZA202305828/en) : Fraunhofer Ges Forschung
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : AE 6837 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : AE 6838 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : AE 8094 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : AP 6125 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : AP 6941 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : AP 7595 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : AP 7908 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : AP 7968 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : CL 63,859 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : CL 71,581 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : CO 39273 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : CO 41016 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : CO 42394 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : ET PT173 B1 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : ID P000090281 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : ID P000090285 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : ID P000092070 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : ID P00202111148 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : IN 306797 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : IN 423822 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : IN 429172 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : IN 433633 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : IN 433634 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : IN 433635 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : IN 433636 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : IN 438081 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : IN 463635 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : IN 463733 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : IN 463753 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : IN 463845 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : IN 463864 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : IN 463887 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : IN 489440 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : IN 490303 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : IN 492454 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : IN 492801 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : IN 521571 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : IN 532324 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : IN 532329 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : IN 532335 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : IN 532499 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : IN 541566 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : IN 541570 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : IN 541691 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : IN 541693 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : IN 550878 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : IN 551609 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : IN 553133 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : IN 559422 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : IN 559428 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : IN 562879 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : IN 564462 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : IN 564468 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : IN 564475 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : KH /GP/00082 SG :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : KH /GRRP.SG/00029 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : KR 716,142 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : KR 934,671 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : KR 947,234 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : MO J/002075 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : MO J/003489 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : MO J/003619 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : MO J/004098 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : MO J/006352 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : MO J/007454 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : MO J/008156 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : MO J/008982 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : MO J/009006 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : MO J/009007 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : MO J/009008 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : MX 258,980 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : MX 297,667 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : MX 304,576 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : MX 318,296 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : MX 318,297 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : MX 318,298 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : MX 342,823 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : MX 371,677 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : MX 397985 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : MX 398630 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : MX 400314 (https://patents.google.com/patent/MX400314/en) :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : MX 400699 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : MX 400700 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : MX 400701 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : MX 400702 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : MX 403,827 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : MX 406720 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : MX 407173 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : MX 410,075 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : MX 410,077 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : MX 410,080 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : MX 410,081 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : MX 410,082 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : MX 410,083 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : MX 410,084 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : MX 410,085 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : MX 410,086 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : MX 410,087 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : MX 411618 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : MX 411624 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : MX 413083 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : NG F/P/2022/153 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : NG F/P/2022/154 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : NG F/P/2022/156 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : NG F/P/2022/159 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : NG F/PT/C/2023/7894 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : NG F/PT/PCT/2024/13532 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : NG/PT/C/2020/4909 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : NG/PT/PCT/2021/5867 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : OM 00506 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : SA 20224 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : SA 20365 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : SA 20748 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : SA 20815 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : SG 10202102102T :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : SG 10202300347X :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : SG 10202301501X :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : SG 10202400240V :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : SG 10202400241Q :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : SG 10202401555W :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : SG 11201902914S :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : VN 100 12388 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : VN 1-0014619 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : VN 10014713 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : VN 1-2019-02282 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : VN 1-2021-07208 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : VN 1-2022-00255 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : VN 1-2022-00257 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : VN 1-2022-00262 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : VN 1-2022-00263 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : VN 1-2022-01418 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : VN 1-2022-01419 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : VN 1-2022-01422 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : VN 1-2022-01423 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : VN 12809 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : VN 22362 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : VN 28918 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : VN 30446 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : VN 31201 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : VN 31202 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : VN 31203 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : VN 31204 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : VN 31205 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : VN 31206 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : VN 31207 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : VN 32207 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : VN 32336 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : VN 35211 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : VN 35977 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : VN 41821 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : VN 41822 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : VN 41823 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : VN 41824 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : VN 42191 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : VN 42194 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : VN 43301 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : VN 44404 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : VN 44405 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : VN 44406 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : VN 44407 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : VN 44408 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : VN 44927 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : VN 45110 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : VN 45418 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : VN 46044 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : VN 48260 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : VN 49296 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : VN 49602 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : VN 50057 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : VN 51042 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : VN 51124 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : VN 51979 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : VN 52235 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : VN 52382 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : VN 52384 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : VN 52455 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : VN 52640 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : VN 52645 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : VN 53518 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : ZA 2009/06749 :
????-??-?? : ????-??-?? : ZA 2009/06982 :

kurkosdr

14th December 2025, 20:42

Thanks!

Also:

Wow! So many patents without a prior art date or priority date, and in fact not even a Google Patents page, I didn't expect Google Patents to have such massive blind spots (with fairly large countries such as India and Mexico being largely in the blind spot).

To deduce the countries that are "unsafe", you can use the following chart to convert two-letter code to country: https://www.searchapi.io/docs/parameters/google-patents/countries

The exception is the "AP" code, which is a regional intellectual property organization/office (kind of like the EPO, but for some African countries), so, to find the countries that the AP patents affect, you have to use the following list: https://www.aripo.org/member-states

And then there is this "ET PT173 B1" patent, which I have no clue what it corresponds to (and any kind of Googling I did and any searches I did on Espacenet turned up nothing), so if anyone knows, please post.

--

When it comes to patents with a known prior art date or priority date, the only ones before March 2005 are the following:

????-??-?? : 2002-04-15 : MY 140969 (https://patents.google.com/patent/MY140969/en) : Panasonic Corp+
????-??-?? : 2002-04-15 : MY 141699 (https://patents.google.com/patent/MY141699/en) : Panasonic Corp+

And I find those two weird. Their filing date (2003 year) implies they should have already expired, but VIA-LA lists them as non-expired. Weird.

Sunspark

14th December 2025, 21:57

kurkosdr

15th December 2025, 00:08

More information is needed. It's possible they're something like a submarine patent. It's one where issuance and publication is delayed.

One of the MY ones is filed 2003 but not published until 2010. Looking at a CY one, filed 2011, published 2015.

Will be interesting to see if people decide they don't care anymore, or if they want 100% global publications to be clear first. If the latter, it's going to be a long wait because there are many countries in the world that haven't had a filing yet.
See? This is what I don't understand. According to the following website:
https://henrygoh.com.sg/10-things-you-need-to-know-about-the-malaysian-patent-grant-process/
"All Malaysian patents with filing date on or after 01 August 2001 have a maximum term of 20 years, calculated from the filing date. "

There should be no "submarine patents" for patents filed after 01 August 2001 in MY.

I mean, that Malaysian patent you filed in 2003 expired sometime in 2023, right? Yet the ones I mentioned show up as non-expired in VIA-LA's list. Weird.

kurkosdr

20th January 2026, 21:30

Semi-related: VIA-LA published patent lists for the AAC and MPEG-H 3D Audio licensing pools (https://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=2027355#post2027355)

I have seen HE-AAC used alongside H.264-encoded video in the wild, and the list may include patents essential for AAC-LC (in Malaysia or wherever), so that makes it semi-related to H.264, I guess.

SeeMoreDigital

22nd January 2026, 00:00

I have seen HE-AAC used alongside H.264-encoded video in the wild, and the list may include patents essential for AAC-LC (in Malaysia or wherever), so that makes it semi-related to H.264, I guess.
It's used in the UK for FTA high definition DVB-T2 broadcasts...

Avclover

11th February 2026, 20:46

my oh my: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jan-ozer_just-stumbled-across-what-looks-like-a-massive-activity-7426979005725347840-pAeI

Z2697

12th February 2026, 15:28

Kinda hilarious.

takla

4th April 2026, 02:25

https://www.tomshardware.com/service-providers/streaming/h264-streaming-license-fees-jump-from-100000-to-4-5-million

As per usual, american greed knows no limit.

hajj_3

4th April 2026, 09:38

kurkosdr

4th April 2026, 16:28

https://www.tomshardware.com/service-providers/streaming/h264-streaming-license-fees-jump-from-100000-to-4-5-million

As per usual, american greed knows no limit.

This is why I personally think royalty-encumbered formats have no place in the open web. Watching Netflix and Disney+ is a privilege, accessing the web should be a human right, since people are expected to access the web to file taxes, attend college courses, and do their jobs. In fact, this will become even more prevalent now that the upcoming oil crisis will reduce people's ability to commute to do things in-person.

For example, you may need to watch an instructional video that's a user guide for a governmental tax-filing service or as part of a college course, and then there is videoconferencing for work purposes

So, until there is a concrete, legally-binding definition of "FRAND", I think the web should steer clear of royalty-encumbered formats, yes, even if that means using less efficient formats such as VP8 or even Theora. Without a concrete, legally-binding definition of "FRAND", assuming that users will always be able to afford the royalties for H.264 decoders or that governments and state colleges will always be able to afford the H.264 streaming royalties has no basis in law other than vague allusions to "fair" and "reasonable" terms. In plain English, the fact that H.264 royalties have remained mostly affordable so far has always been a "gentlemen's agreement", not concrete law. But if the 2020s have shown us anything, it's that you cannot expect "gentlemen" to act like gentlemen.

The remaining patents for H.264 High Profile cannot expire soon enough, and let's count our lucky stars that H.265 went nowhere on the web and only saw success in pay-to-view streaming services (that are a privilege anyway, not a necessity).

(but good luck explaining the above to some people here)