More than half of the H.264 patents have expired

[oibaf]

Originally Posted by kurkosdr

It's been 3 months since August 1, 2023, so MPEG LA pushed a new list:
https://www.via-la.com/wp-content/up...tachment-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]

Originally Posted by oibaf

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]

Originally Posted by kurkosdr

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

Indeed, fixed, thanks. Also added other countries.

[oibaf]

Originally Posted by kurkosdr

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...expired_yet%3F
https://www.uspto.gov/patents/laws/p...erm-calculator

[kurkosdr]

Originally Posted by oibaf

Some other useful resources here:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Have...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, 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]

Originally Posted by kurkosdr

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, 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]

Originally Posted by oibaf

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/up...4VCrossRef.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-con...496-2_2004.pdf

[oibaf]

The page at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Have...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 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).

The difficulty is to find if they really apply to the standards on not. About 7,395,211 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.

[kurkosdr]

Originally Posted by oibaf

The page at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Have...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 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, 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.

Originally Posted by oibaf

The difficulty is to find if they really apply to the standards on not. About 7,395,211 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]

Originally Posted by kurkosdr

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]

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-see...ia-inventions/

nokia vs amazon u.s lawsuit document: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket...amazoncom-inc/
nokia vs hp u.s lawsuit document: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket...s-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.

[hajj_3]

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

[kurkosdr]

Originally Posted by hajj_3

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]

Originally Posted by hajj_3

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-see...ia-inventions/

nokia vs amazon u.s lawsuit document: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket...amazoncom-inc/
nokia vs hp u.s lawsuit document: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket...s-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 (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]

Originally Posted by kurkosdr

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]

Originally Posted by kurkosdr

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.