More than half of the H.264 patents have expired

[oibaf]

Originally Posted by benwaggoner

Unified Patents has list of patents in litigation by company: https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/pt...echnologies+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]

New patent list, 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.

[FranceBB]

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

[oibaf]

Originally Posted by Spyros

New patent list, 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]

Originally Posted by FranceBB

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]

Originally Posted by oibaf

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]

Originally Posted by oibaf

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]

Originally Posted by benwaggoner

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 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]

Originally Posted by kurkosdr

This is why I've begged this person 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]

Originally Posted by benwaggoner

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]

Originally Posted by hajj_3

nokia is suing hp and amazon over h264 patents:

https://www.courtlistener.com/docket...s-oy-v-hp-inc/
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket...amazoncom-inc/

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

Originally Posted by hajj_3

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

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]

Originally Posted by ksec

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.

why bother? h.264 is cheap to licence.

[rwill]

Originally Posted by ksec

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.

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.

[kurkosdr]

Originally Posted by ksec

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 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 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]

Originally Posted by rwill

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]

Originally Posted by ksec

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]

Originally Posted by hajj_3

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]

patent list was updated on September 3rd, not sure what changes there are: https://www.via-la.com/wp-content/up...ber-3-2024.pdf