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Music Media Your Rights Online

Ogg Vorbis Update: Thomson Trouble 315

Posted by jamie from the do-I-put-this-under-patents-or-music dept.
3.1415926535 writes: "In this article on C|Net, Thompson Multimedia's vice president of new business Henri Linde openly threatens the Vorbis project. The quote is, 'We doubt very much that they are not using Fraunhofer and Thomson intellectual property. We think it is likely they are infringing.'" Considering Ogg Vorbis is GPL, you'd think they'd already know.
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Ogg Vorbis Update: Thompson Trouble More

Ogg Vorbis Update: Thompson Trouble

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  • ...we will fight for freedom and shed the blood of tyrants.

    That wouldn't involve getting out of my chair, would it? If so, I'm afraid I can't help you. I can't even get up to get the remote control. I've been watching the Weather Channel for weeks now because the remote is on the other side of the room.

  • ...that it's remarkably difficult, it seems, to create an audio codec which doesn't infringe on patents already covered. While it's most likely laughable that Xiphophorous would use something from MP3 in Ogg Vorbis, it could conceivably infringe on someone else's "Intellectual Property."

    I ran across this information while on the LAME page, which has as one of its goals a completely patent-free audio codec. Look here [sulaco.org]: to see some of the myriad patents on audio compression techniques.

    <insert diatribe on how patents on intellectual property should be abolished, etc>

    ---

  • U.S. patent law specifically states that if you even USE an object that is patented (an object that you did not even create), you can be liable for patent violation. See Title 35, Part III, Chapter 28, Sec 271, U.S. code (check at law.cornell.edu [slashdot.org] for an easy front-end to the U.S. Code).

    Also note:

    "(b) Whoever actively induces infringement of a patent shall be liable as an infringer.".

    So even a plugin-type architecture where the plugin is downloaded from xiph.org could be considered a violation.

    -E

  • Forking off their own release was Netscape's announced intention from the beginning of the Mozilla project. They're not doing anything surprising or particularly evil.

    Anyhow, given the amount of per-unit costs to be saved by availability of Vorbis -- I wouldn't be surprised to see hardware manufacturers (individually or collectively) supporting Vorbis for what it is. They certainly feel the need.

    As for GNOME, just because it tries to attract business involvement doesn't mean it's under business control. I can still download the source, hack on it, fork it if I like. So can you. What's so evil about having a few companies pay people to hack?

    I say this as a guy who gets paid to work on free software -- commercial involvement really ain't all that bad. Trust Me. (tm).

  • He may come across that way, but after reading some of his in depth technical posts, he is also an incredibly bright person. If you read the LKML often, you will see that there are quite a few people that come across as being jerks. Once you get to know how they talk though, you can see that they really aren't that bad.

    Never confuse how a person says something with what they say.
    --
    Mike Mangino
    Sr. Software Engineer, SubmitOrder.com
  • The Macintosh GUI, AFAIK, was not covered by any Apple patents. Apple did have number of patents on its redesign of the mouse, on various pieces of hardware, and numerous design patents. But in 1983, the uspto granted few[er] software patents.

    The "look and feel" lawsuits (circa 1989) were based on copyright law.

    Of course, if software patentabilty had been established in 1983, and if the uspto operated under today's lax standard, Apple probably would have patented all it could. It might even have won its lawsuits against Microsoft.

    Today, of course, a search for "(an/apple)" on the USPTO web site reveals numerous software patents (trivial and otherwise).

  • As the article pointed out, Thompson and Fraunhoefer should know by now whether or not Vorbis infringes. The fact that they only "think" it "probably does" indicates they're just FUDding.

    And if Vorbis does in fact infringe on one patent or another, it's nothing more than a sign that the patent was too broad in the first place. Honestly, this is the trouble with software patents; they don't protect the actual work (which is the code); they only stifle competition when applied to the context of software. Then again, this makes sense, as software is a written work and not a device (which is precisely why it shouldn't be patented; it falls into a completely different category of IP, where only copyright ought to apply).
    ----------
  • No it is not time to calm down. It is time to bash down these folks, Monty.
    So what do you recommend? Sue them for libel in saying that Ogg Vorbis infringes their patents? If they're trying to defame the brand, then it could work. All you need is lots of money and good lawyers.
  • What this corporatist pion dosnt realize is that Ogg is both libre and gratis it is neither a product for sale - nor a competitor in the 'marketplace'.
    They're rattling their sabres about filing suit against the likes of Diamond Multimedia for adding Ogg compatability to the Rio, and all the other current MP3 hardware manufacturers.
  • Infringing a patent is a criminal act.
    Really? You can go to jail for it? I thought it was a civil matter, requiring a plaintiff to make the claim. IANAL, please correct me.
  • ST (Formerly SGS-Thomson) is not related anymore to Thomson Multimedia. ST is the product of the fusion of SGS Microelletronica (Italian company) and the microelectronics division of former Thomson, which has then split into Thomson CSF (now Thalès, military electronics) and Thomson Multimedia (TV, VCRs, etc ...).

    --

  • Apple has completely re-written Display Postscript and created Quartz to be Adobe-free (to avoid paying licencing fees) for Mac OS X. No patent infringement there.

    Actually independent development doesn't help you avoid patent infringement at all. It probably did help Apple avoid paying to use Adobe's copyright on their Display PS/PDF system, but if Apple used techniques that Adobe has patents on, they are liable.

    Furthermore, there have been third-party GPL'd Postscript interpreters for years; maybe a decade at this point.

    Again, this means nothing. GIF writing software, including GPL'd software, was widely available for years before Unisys decided to start enforcing their patent. Unisys won (sorta, in reality most free software ignores the patent and Unisys ignores them. But commericial software makers most certainly cough up the fee to Unisys.

    That said, I have no idea if Adobe has any patents on the techniques in question, no idea if Adobe enforces such patents, and no idea if Apple is paying for such patents.

    The government granted monopoly of a patent does not expire just because it isn't enforced. That's part of the danger of patents, you can wait for a technique to become a standard, then you can start charging.

  • All I can say is that I am glad icast decided to not hire me.

    Levi's made a similar decision to not hire me. Soon after that, had major layoffs as a result of a 94% reduction of their sales.

    - Sam

  • Gah, you're so damned altruistic it makes me want to pay you. Where do I send money? I don't see anywhere on Xiph.org for donations....
  • I was just sitting looking at gracenote's 'documentation' they deigned to send me and shaking my head when I popped up slashdot and saw this....

    Not only do they want to go after formats using mathematical constructs which they think they have a right to but they also want royalties for TCP/UDP/Whatever data transfers if the data just happens to be mp3 and the client decides it wants to play it while receiving . i.e. mp3 streaming.....

    I did the whole live mp3 radio before they demonstrated any technology to do it... maybe I can claim prior art over mp3 streaming and distract attention away from vorbis ;-)
  • > Actually, some of us do have in-depth knowledge of signal processing. I've been playing with my own CODEC projects in my (near-mythical) free time.

    You'll just be next to be sued. Who says we don't have thought police?

    --
  • No it is not time to calm down. It is time to bash down these folks, Monty. Because if you leave these guys thinking that cheap words make a lot of more noise than lawyers then, soon, we will have three, four, five coporations shouting FUD in several other programs. And later we may face wholescale FUD on OpenSource. Because it will cost nothing to do it. You FUD the whole community and they only *sigh* in answer. And you get your customers, your silly users, the consumer herd for the price of nothing. Thomson could have long ago checked if oggvorbis was a violation of their patents. It costs NOTHING for them to get the algorithm, the source code and the programs. So why to FUD that way? I would accept something like "we checked their code and we have strong suspicions they may be violating our patent rights". But no. He speaks about some vaporous "possible violation" and leaves in the air the idea they are eager to get up to you. No more no less.

    Such freeware FUD should not be tolerated. If one has a case, let him show it. If not, then his opinions are covered by the GPL. And can be copied, transferred, modified and used against him for free... but no one has the right to sell it to no one...
  • Not exactly. The guy is not so stupid. He built his phrase smartly enough to avoid a clear case of libel. Look carefully:

    "We doubt very much that they are not using Fraunhofer and Thomson intellectual property. We think it is likely they are infringing.'"

    The guy expresses only a state of mind. A supposition, a doubt. In other terms, his opinion. In court he may state several reasons for not having seen oggvorbis code. Real or unreal he can state them, restate that he has a right to express his opinion and get clean with this one.

    What is really interesting is that, under the conditions oggvorbis is dispatched to the public, they are still "thinking". This would sound like people thinking and communicating at old Bell protocol speeds - 300bps
  • So a GPL program and they "think"??? Well that's a HEEEELLLLL!

    Can't you see? Some of the biggest market players. Some of the biggest makers of sound algorithms. Some of the biggest sound labs. Some of the most well known investigators. And they "THINK"????

    Well is that SO hard to dig on a few hundreds of kilobytes of Open Source code? Is that SOOOO HAAAARD to understand a GPL program? Hey, maybe the code was written such way that it is hard to understand? Let's see...

    OH MY! Look AT THOSE LINES!!! How they are ordered!!! It's like if someone cared for alignment. Naaa, that's to create confusion. So the code would look like clear and perfect... Like the commies. Everything looks good, all people smiles, but in that damn corner. Oh in that DAMN corner. They are there trying to take over the world. These damn rebelious bastards. Naaa there is soemthing hidden here. It looks too good to be true...

    And what about those comments?!!! Don't you see? One comment here. Another there. Clear confusion! "first things first. Make sure encode is ready." "currently lazy. Short block dispatches to 0, long to 1". Pure nonsense! Where is the Developer's Guide? I wanna see the specs in three veluum volumes like in every good corporation! With resumes, marketing analysis, financial projections, accounting and a short explanation what the Hell is this for!..

    And how about these variables??? "vorbis_info", "ogg_pack_write". What is a vorbis? And how do you pack a ogg? Isn't this taking people into confusion? Yeah that's it! They are clearly HIDING something. Maybe the patent "on how to sing with your lips"? Yeah probably that one. It can't be that these guys made a new fresh algorithm and get us with our pants on. There must be something hidden behind these orgs and vogues...
  • And this matters so much? Maybe oggvorbis will not go too far on what concerns hardware, if no one will support it. However there are three points you're missing:

    Going "nowhere" is too heavy of a statement. Even today mp3 is mostly used through software tools. Besides the quality of algorithm has greatly improved. It produces files a little fatter than mp3 but with an envious quality.

    Almost a couple of years ago mp3 was also going nowhere. There was not hardware support and there was a fear that all these big associations, corporations and mobs would eat alive anyone who dared to produce such hardware. Well, these same groups are still trying to eat alive someone but also trying to sell mp3s now...

    When mp3 was outlaw, there were lots of expectations that someone would create a "mp3 killer". This was due to several technical and strategical reasons for such. Most expected that the "Industry" would finally get the "ideal packer" that would not only protect their egoistic copyright demands but also produce better quality than mp3. Well, a system that is starting to produce better sound quality is here. So what's the problem? That does not protect awkward copyright demands? Well, once Spain also wanted all America for itself. For some reason portuguese ended with more than half of South America and english with nearly all North. And in the end Spain lost even its own latinos... such egoistic ownerships have always a tendency to end quite badly...
  • All that Thomson is doing is laying the groundwork for the abandonment of perceptual encoding. With network speeds improving and storage prices falling, lossless compression schemes like Shorten will inevitably replace lossy compression schemes like jpg and ogg.

    Shorten achieves 2:1 lossless compression on audio files. MP3 offers 10:1 lossy compression. Already people are distributing lossless audio files as .shn files.

    If Thomson succeeds in creating a legal cloud around any and all perceptual encoding schemes, this may be the "push" required for the industry to completely abandon lossy compression in favor of unpatented, lossless 2:1 compression.

    A year or two down the road, if someone surfaces with a patent on Shorten's 2:1 lossless compression, the net will undoubtedly be able to easily handle uncompressed 1:1 lossless audio.

    In short, MP3s are near obsolete, and nothing will force them into the dustbin of history faster than the fear of lawsuits.
  • (And please, let's not delude ourselves that the mythical Open Source Community will magically step in and finish the project: enthusiasm and spirit are no replacement for in-depth knowledge of signal processing.)

    Actually, some of us do have in-depth knowledge of signal processing. I've been playing with my own CODEC projects in my (near-mythical) free time.
  • Man, you're insane. I'm sure you're a troll, but I can't resist biting here. 75% of pharmaecuticals are applications of compounds found in nature. The only pharmaceuticals which require continued treatment are AIDS-suppression drugs and drugs which alter the brain's chemistry. (The former is because we don't know how to kill AIDS; and people usually can wean themselves off of the latter with behavior modification and cognitive therapy.)

    If you're falling for the sort of "health-food store" quackery that says that homeopathic remedies can do anything for you, then you ought to read some Carl Hempel, and think about why "these statements have not been evaluated by the FDA".

  • What's your issue with corporate influence on OSS? I'm the first to criticize corporations, but I fail to see what's so bad here.

    "How many people's mothers and bosses have even heard of "Mozilla"?"

    Who cares? Mozilla still exists and will continue to exist, with or without Netscape 6. All that NS has changed is the number of programmers and the amount of money available to the project. mozilla.org will continue to operate, regardless. Likewise, I'm a happy consumer of Helix Gnome. Although the Gnome Foundation's effects remain to be seen, Helix has improved Gnome considerably in features, ease of use and stability.

    Methinks you're trying to sound the alarm when there isn't actually anything to be upset about yet. If some corporate "benefactor" starts to actually meddle and censor, then I'll be worried, but I think as long as it's open, it's hard for a project to get corrupted.
  • You sir have just sold me a HipZip. I've been waiting for that, and I'm going to buy one now.


    -------
  • This is a quote from the VP. He, like most of us here, has no clue how vorbis works. He probably also has no idea how MP3 works, either. All he knows is that his company licenses it and that Vorbis is a potential competitor. Now, there can certainly be trivial lawsuits, but in order to come up with those, one of their lawyers is going to have to find a patent that Vorbis is actually violating, or at least one that can be violated given a stretch of the imagination. Monty, Jack, et al have been very careful about reading the patents and are quite confident that they're not violating any of them (they haven't responded to the messages about this article on the vorbis mailing list; hopefully they're more concerned with their own future livlihood). Somehow I trust the guys who wrote the code and read the patents in a defensive mindframe than the VP of the company that owns rights to the MP3 patents and probably doesn't understand them.
  • If they are, they aren't doing it for the Mac. The upgrade to version 4 of the DeskJet drivers (which added the ability to save configurations) was free.

    Considering the battle between Epson, HP, Cannon, and others for the home printer market, trying to charge for an updated driver is, like I said, nuts.

    First of all, relatively few people update the software that came with their computers. They are scared to. The revenue stream from driver upgrades would be negligable; it'd probably cost more to set up the system to process the payments than the payments actually bring in.

    Secondly, I can buy an Apollo (really a relabeled HP) inkjet at my local _grocery store_ for $50. They're getting to the point where they are nearly at the disposable price range (for those who can afford computers in the first place). The money is in the ink cartridges, anyway. Nickel and diming people on the printer driver would just generate ill will and virtually no revenue.

    Of course, I'm assuming that HP is run by rational people. This assumption isn't always true.

    -jon

  • I am not a lawyer, but I think it may be useful to document the economic damages of Thomson's attempts at fear, uncertainty and doubt for possible counter-litigation if they want to play "hard ball" as the article says.

    If you are working on a product or project which might include Ogg Vorbis and you receive any negative feedback from customers, resellers, partners, about FUD over statements by Henri Linde and other Thomson representatives or you can document internal costs or lost opportunities within your business, we should document it in some publicly accessible central place (so the data can be replicated by many independent servers).

    For example, we are considering including Ogg Vorbis in our Linux distribution. I personally think it might increase sales by about 100,000 units per year of physical media, on which we might make $10 per copy, but only in the absense of Thomson's fear uncertainty and doubt campaign. So, that's about a million dollars per year of damages, although, obviously, these numbers are likely to change with market research.

    If somebody wants to establish a central point for submitting and disseminating this type of data, please post a follow up here. In the meantime, it would be helpful for others to post their estimates as follow-ups here.

  • Okay. I didn't realize that (and I obviously didn't take the time to check).

    I still propose though.. what about things that are purely non-corporate OSS projects? Is there not a point where there is nobody to sue?
  • Javascript, isn't that ECMA 262 in open source parlance?

    Dave :)

  • Likewise, I don't see /. charging being even remotely feasible. Them selling our link histories? Yeah, probably. Probably do the referrers too.

    Dave :)

  • Ogg Vorbis does NOT use Wavelets, it uses MDCT (like MP3, although it empoys it differently from MP3).

    Ogg Vorbis has plans to incorporate Wavelet processing at a future date, but doesn't currently.

  • notice how many people *are* using png? not a lot...

    I am, at least for the titles on my, erm, original MP3 page [prmsystems.com]. Irony abounds.

  • Disney wil perpetually have rights to the Mickey mouse character as a trademark. Look at Bass Ale: they've had the red triangle for centuries. What was up to expire was the copyright on some of the first Mickey Mouse films--Steamboat Willie, that sort of thing. Wouldn't hurt Disney a bit--a pinprick on a giant. But it pained them in their minds to know that they might possibly lose a right they should never have had.

    Copyright should be 20 yrs.--long enough to make money, long enough for a work to no longer be current (and thus valuable), but short enough that it may actually do some good.

  • The reason that we care about drug companies--and any other company performing research--is that we, as a society, need said drugs. So we give the companies an incentive to create them, but then we take them over some years later.

    Why don't we fund research publicly? Really, it's much the same thing--taking from others (right to one's earning's rather than right to mix chemicals) to give to another. But, as anyone who's taken a decent economics course cna tell you, private research generally yields much better results than public research. It's profit-oriented. And profit is an indicator of utility. There's a huge market for viagra--a lot of people want it. The market for a drug to make one impotent is somewhat smaller. Gov't is notoriously bad at prioritising--what if some ivory-tower scientist figures that impotence-causing drugs are much more itneresting physiologically? Never mind that ten years and millions of dollars later society has not benefited one bit.

  • I am saying the gov't should spend my money as I see fit. Or, even better, that I should spend my money as I see fit. taxation is theft. To steal my money and then spend it on what I do not support is even worse.

    No, I'm not an anarchist; it's obvious that some amount of gov't is needed, and that taxes are needed as well. Taxation is like the killing an attacker: necessary but unfortunate. We should keep them to a minimum.

    As far as parks, if people won't pay for them then they shouldn't exist. Same iwth anything, really. If you wish to preserve something, then do it. get a bunch of people together and do it. Form a massive world-spanning organisation and do it. But don't make me.

    Notice I say make me. I contribute a large amount of money to causes great and small. I only object when my contribution is stolen from me at gunpoint--i.e., by Uncle Sam.

  • This is Claim 1 from one of the patents:

    1. In apparatus of the type for encoding a signal by means of spectral analysis of overlapping time segments of such signal, and including apparatus for processing respective said time segments according to a window function for imparting a characteristic amplitude function to said respective time segments prior to such analysis of said signal, an improvement comprising:

    "In an apparatus of the type for..." means that this paragraph describes the state of the art. "an improvement comprising:" means that the following paragraphs describe something new.

    The state of the art in this case means breaking the sampled signal into blocks and doing an FFT or something similar to get its frequencies. The "overlapping windows" bit refers to the fact that sudden changes between blocks are audible, so you have the blocks overlap and fade one into the next gradually.

    means for detecting occurrences of instantaneous frequency changes in said signal exceeding a predetermined frequency change, and generating control signals indicating occurrences of said frequency changes; and

    In other words, detecting something that the existing system doesn't code for well. The word "means" here means a mechanism or system or something like that. Its the same sense as in the phrase "by any means possible".

    means, responsive to said control signals, for adaptively providing said window functions such that respective time segments of signal which exhibit said instantaneous frequency changes are subjected to a significantly narrowed window function relative to window functions applied to time segments of signal which do not exhibit said instantaneous frequency changes, and wherein window functions of overlapping time segments overlap.

    When we detect this problem within one of the data blocks ("windows"), we reduce the block size to compensate.

    So, any audio codec which uses the overlapping window system, detects sudden frequency shifts and reduces the window size to compensate will infringe on Claim 1 of this patent. If there is any published work using this system which predates this patent then the claim won't hold up.

    If you decide that this claim would hold up then you can try to evade it, perhaps by:

    • Doing something other than spectral analysis. Wavelet encoding would probably do it. In fact almost all the patents I've looked at seem to assume that encoding will be done in the frequency domain. Hence almost any other transform would probably not infringe.
    • Attack the "control signal" bit: find a mechanism of narrowing the window which does not have separate detection and window-narrowing means.
    • The window narrowing mechanism here is a boolean function: its applied only if the instantaneous frequency change exceeds a certain value. So a system of variable window sizes where the window size grows until some threshold is reached would probably not infringe.

    Mind you, I'm not any kind of lawyer. But computer programmers, of all people, should be able to handle dense complicated documents written in strange languages.

    Paul.

  • The royalty for the is not that much: something like 0.50$US by player. I don't think it's a big market stopper although the minimum licencing is 15,000 units. BTW, I still prefer Ogg/Vorbis. I'm looking to make it in fix points algorithm for better performance on arm and other non-fpu embedded platform.

    The killer isn't the player charge. The paperwork and hassles involved in the licencing is what will really cause manufacturers to move to OGG. That, and the freedom to modify it. That's why the Tivo runs on Linux. It isn't as if Microsoft hasn't been trying to get into that market for years. But why licence something if you can download and use for free? Any hassles with the GPL are barely noticable compared to working out a licencing agreement with Fraunhoffer and Thompson.

  • I talked to several different hardware manufacturers at the most recent CEDIA show. Every single one of the engineers, executives and salespeople I talked to was very interested in OGG Vorbis. They have no particular love of Thomsom or Fraunhoffer. A free encoder and decoder means they can sell their product for less and get a larger share of the market, make more money and buy their baby a new pair of shoes!

    I'll be spending an equal amount of time at the COnsumer Electronics Show doing the same thing. I might even make business cards with a description of the Vorbis project and URLs. As soon as the code is optimized, it will appear in commercial products. It doesn't even have to sound better than MP3, just as good as MP3.

    The big product at this year's CES will be home audio jukeboxes. Virtually every one of these will be running some version of GNU/Linux. Why? Because it's free...and you can get loads of programmers practically begging you to work on the project. The only thing keeping the price from dropping and getting it into homes is the MP3 licencing issue. That is delt with via Vorbis.

    We'll see MP3 jukeboxes with 9 gig IDE drives designed to hook up to your home network in the $399 price range if they choose to go the Linux/Vorbis route.

  • The joy of licensing is that you can write exactly what you want into a license. The patent itself doesn't at all regulate what the license will look like. I can obtain a patent, and tell the whole world that there is a free license, but only if they paint my house. No matter how ridiculous the terms, I can try to sell it to people. Similarly, there are already folks who offer a free license to patents. This type of license looks like freeware or the GPL, "use the patented technology, but follow these rules."

    Proposed open patent license terms: This patent covers the following technology: ---fill in the blank.-- A worldwide, perpetual, royalty free license is available to this technology. However, any product incorporating this techology must --fill in the blank.--

    The alternative, and somewhat cheaper, solution is to not file for a patent, but file a Statutory Invention Registration. [bitlaw.com] This is basically a mechanism that publishes a patent application, without awarding patent rights.

    The third, and even cheaper, solution is to publish the invention, with a declaration that the technology is not now, nor will it be patented. This means that no one else can patent the technology (since this is proof of your invention, and the US is a first to invent country).

    There ya go, all yours.

    Thalia

    This does not constitute legal advice, so don't even think it.

  • Sun with Java(script)
    Javascript isn't Sun technology. It's a Netscape creation, originally named Livescript but was renamed to javascript before release because of some type of marketing partnership with Sun. Aside from it's ability to control Java apps javascript has nothing to do with Java, they are completely seperate products.

  • Assuming they would file a suit without having read the source and with no other basis they may be liable for a Rule 11 violation which prohibits filling such frivilous suits.

    Interesting - anybody know if anything similar would apply in the EU (Maybe Germany in particular)?
  • Sure, and microsoft probably payed them for a license, whether they really needed to or not. In the long run it would have been better just to pay off patent holders... or even better... buy them out
    treke
  • I was considering Microsoft there, and these are strategies they have used before.
    treke
  • This is a bluff. Do what you do in Poker: CALL.

    "If you think we are infringing, here's our legal address. Send the process server over and give us the papers, and we will see you in court. Otherwise, you will immediately and publicly retract what you've said, or we shall bring charges of unfair restraint of trade against you."

    Can any of the noted attourneys in the audience comment on this strategy? <Paging Dr. Hawk, Dr. Hawk to the blue courtesy phone >
  • Is it really possible to stop MP3? Software and source code exists on every platform there is. Free source gives it an infinite lifetime. Who cares if Fraunhofer won't license it? I can go download the LAME source and make my own. I can compile it, upload it to my friends, burn CDs... I can even make a car MP3 player without their licenses.

    Why should I worry? Am I missing something? If so, please reply to this and tell me.
  • Nah, I just believe that there are limits on reasonable behavior. Someday I hope to [modestly] cash in on Ogg along with everyone else... but only once it's established and well defended against IP terrorism. Don't read me to be a total angel-- that's Linus's position ;-)

    As for a donations page, well, we were actually in denial for a long time that folks would actually be asking to donate money. We were wrong. We've seen the error of our ways, wholeheartedly apologize, and are doing the paperwork (and setting up the means) by which we can accept donations from generous supporters such as yourself.

    Monty
  • I would think an open letter to them would be much better, get /. to post it, see about salon, wired, anyone who will carry it. Something very politely worded, along the lines of "We think you made that statement in error, would you please let us know exactly what portions of the program (source available) that are infringing? After all, we're reasonable people who would never dream of infringin on anyone elses IP and would be happy to correct anything we find doing just that..."

    They pulled their heads out of their asses long enough to come up with this tripe for the sake of a little FUDmongering. Let's make them walk away with ogg* on their faces.

    *Oh dear, that was bad. Terribly sorry.
  • First off, you don't need to prove your smart -or- not. secoundly i know how huffman encoding works. thirdy, where did you get the idea i thought huffman encodeing was patented? the patent seems to say that "huffman encoding on DCT transforms". which means the patent applies to applying the huffman encoding to the output after the DCT transform. (discret cusion transform) BITS->QUANT->DCT->HUFF is how JPEG, MPEG, MP3 and pretty much all media lossy compressions work. it just seems silly they could patent the DCT->HUFF part of it. -Jon
  • thanks for the link, i was looking over it and noticed this..

    Lossless compression of quantized MDCT coefficients

    Some type of lossless compression and encoding of quantized data. MP3 uses Huffman coding with precomputed tables each assigned a unique code.
    The type of Huffman coding used in MP3 is patented (US5579430). Are there other types of Huffman coding which we could use? Is the concept of precomputed tables patentable? Or are just the tables themselves patented? A version of the algorith in gzip, optimized for audio frames would probably be the best just.
    But just the very fact of using optimized encoding is claimed to be patented! (US5579430).

    Wow, you mean no one (i.e. JPEG) has thought of a huffman encoding on DCT transforms? jezz this is the basics of all losses media compression. You know the sad truth is that they would all use LZH if Unisys didn't have a pack of layors protecting it.

    -Jon
  • I hope prior art is the keyword. If anyone can show prior art of the technologies Fraunhofer holds patent over, we might be able to save 50 cents on various mp3 players.

    I mean - this is all mathematics. Surely, someone must have done this before Fraunhofer?

    I haven't seen the specs, but isn't the mp3 technology mathematically similar to the JPEG technology?
  • Thompson isn't going to sue the Ogg Vorbis people. They'll sue (or threaten to sue) anyone of significance that decides to use the technology.

    For example, Thompson (RCA) was going to sell a TiVo box at RadioShack this Xmas season. They cancelled production when Gemstar threatened to cut off ties with Thompson because Gemstar is suing TiVo over a patent for putting a TV schedule in a grid. (I am not making this up. http://boards.fool.com/Message.asp?mid=13657926 [fool.com] )

    Lawsuits and Patents are corporate weapons, not about justice.

  • And the funding is coming from?
    a)Private Industry
    b)Charities and government funding

    Rich

  • Gov't is notoriously bad at prioritising

    OK then, place these in order of private industry priority for development

    1)Drug that cures an illness or physiological problem requiring no further medication

    2)Expensive medication for illness or physiological problem that patients will have to take twice daily for the rest of their lives

    It's not hard to see the real reason we don't have a cure for cancer yet.

    Rich

  • Or am I missing something?

    Is it not simply the U.S. Patent system that is the problem here, and if so why do people continue to let the work they love be subjected to it? I can understand how International law would probably prevent the ogg boys successfully moving to Europe to avoid legal challenges, but could U.S. Patents have any impact on a project developed in Europe (other than the lawsuits that could fly over the distribution of the technology in the U.S., but if it is in a non-US section of the software mirrors and hence never held on a U.S. subjected server.....)?

    Is it simply a case that despite the shit it causes, coders just aren't willing to leave th U.S. for any length of time? If so, perhaps its time the anti-european software patents crew along with the EFF etc to setup a nice new facility that coders can ask for permission to use to develop work in a patent free environment. Post to a website telling it what you want to do and why you need to get out of the U.S. If you get enough votes/are deemed worthy enough ... you get a ticket and a workplace (maybe even a subsistance grant) with individuals to help and distract you. The Free Software Reseach Laboratory

    Bottom line, if Alan Cox (he does live in England doesn't he?) added mp3 technology to the kernel, could he be touched (if he sourced all code from non-US contaminated sources or wrote it himself)?

  • I would assume that the European countries and the US have some sort of agreed-upon reciprocity for patents.. you honor ours, we'll honor yours..

    I guess this is the exact question I was asking....does such an agreement exist? I cannot believe for an instant it does otherwise why would the EU be debating the possibiliiity of introducing software patents!

    I am a European and were I to discover that my usage of Ogg/Vorbis OR bladeenc OR xmms was subjected to US patent law I would be out on the streets of Dublin (as I was planing a few weeks ago as talk built of the possibility of a fast decision from the EU). Software patents are absurd and the U.S. patent Office a monstrous joke. I cannot believe for an instant that any forms of reciprocal deals (besides, why have European and U.S. patents if they will honor each others) would cover an area which is unpatentable on either side.

  • But, it looks like there is an agreement of reciprocity between the U.S. and E.U. (along with other nations)... here's a link where they discuss it

    Thanks for the link, it actually provides me with reassurance and does not suggest that these dodgy patents would carry across or be respected in any way outside of the issuing country. To pull the relevant quotes:

    The major international agreement concerning the international recognition of patents are the 1970 Patent Cooperation Treaty and the 1883 Convention Union of Paris
    The 1883 Paris agreement gives the basic rules for how the roughly ninety countries who signed the agreement will treat foreigners applying for patents........It is important to note, however, that the 1883 Agreement did not alter the rules concerning what is or is not patentable. Those laws are still up the national governments.
    The Patent Cooperation Treaty is an agreement designed to reduce the cost of obtaining international patents by implementing more uniform procedures......Note, however, that each PCT nation still determines whether or not the patent should be granted according to its own laws.

    IANAL and I don't know whether tannedfeet.com who you linked to are in any way accurate or trustworthy but they certainly make clear that international patent law does nothing to grant a patent in other countries than where a patent is successfully granted. My idea stands, stop coding in the States and get out of the legal IP nightmare!

  • Really. Are you aware that Ogg Vorbis uses wavelet compression methods while MP3 still uses the fourier transforms only?
  • If it's got a licensing agreement, it's got a copyright. If it's got a copyright, SOMEONE owns it. BSD "licensed" software is the only type that might get around this, because its licensing agreement only says that it's in the public domain, making no restrictions on use whatsoever.

    If no one owns the copyright, then it's no longer covered by the GPL, and people are free to incorporate it into whatever commercial products they like. And companies can still sue whoever distributes it, as with DeCSS.

  • How likely is it that you'll be able to convince a judge to toss out an IP lawsuit - which will undoubtedly be sold as an industry-breaker on both sides - on the grounds that it's frivolous?

    These clauses simply don't apply if you've got enough money to march into court with a pack of lawyers and a balance sheet that is the envy of most third world countries.

    You might be able to stop Ma Barker from suing you for trampling her petunias using this clause - but big greasy corporate lawyers? Ha.

    --

  • You need to read the article a little more closely.

    Eric Scheirer doesn't work for Fraunhofer, he works for Forrester Research [forrester.com].

  • Ok. I concede that there is a philosophical school of thought based on the (IMO, naive) notion that if I scratch backs, mine will be scratched too.

    Which does not necessarily apply. Yes, releasing something as GPL doesn't guarantee people will give you free development, good will, etc. But there are no guarantees in business in general. There are no guarantees people will buy a proprietary software package, etc.

    Second, the GPL gives certain rights in exchange for you granting some rights back.

    It would be naive if the GPL only pleaded with its reader. However, it makes a legal demand, you can NOT do certain things without permission, which is only granted if you do certain other things.

    It's more like if you don't do something for me, I won't do something for you (i.e. give you a license). And it has the force of copyright law to back it up. Copyright law allows almost any restrictions to be made by the copyright holder. The only things not allowed would be things such as illegal discrimination against a protected class, restrictions designed to further criminal activity (e.g. encryption licensed for all but police), and anything similarly illegal or against public policy. Any lawyers care to comment?

  • We need a fight (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 11, 2000 @09:28PM (#566217)
    I had mentioned this in a reply to another post, but I want to start a new thread on this one... Perhaps it's time to make a stand here. What do we have here? IMHO, we have a corporation (two, actually) that's apparently decided to play hardball, never mind whether or not they have a legal leg to stand on. Notice that this "issue" didn't come up until CMGI withdrew its support for Ogg Vorbis, probably because CMGI could have coughed up the cash to mount a defense, whereas the developers probably can't. So Thomson is going to try to steamroll over a potential competitor. Are there legitimate patents on audio compression technology that Ogg Vorbis is violating? Possibly, but I don't think that's Thomson's intent. They're out to crush a competitor that they see as vulnerable now and a potential threat later. Even if the applicable patents could cover this area, are they too broad? Once again, we don't really know, but we aren't going to learn anything if Ogg Vorbis is forced to roll over and die. IMHO, we need a very public, very nasty, very enlightening fight here, if Thomson is willing to oblige. Why? Because we'd better define how patents and intellectual property are going to be applied in the coming decades. I'm not saying who's right or wrong, but we'd better dtart defining some boundaries whiel there's something left to defend. Get the debate off of Slashdot and out into the mainstream. There are lots of ways to do that, and I'll leave it to others to define exactly how, but we need to make more people begin to think about what role patents and IP are playing in new technologies, such as computers and the Internet. I will pose this question: If the current interpretation of patents was in use about 100 years ago, would one company have been able to patent automobiles? If it was in effect 50,000 years ago, would someone have been able to patent fire? What about the wheel? I can see it now. "A device for the smooth transport of passangers and cargo across the surface of the earth by means of rounded edges and continuous motion almong the ground."

  • Fraunhofer (Score:3)

    by belial ( 674 ) on Monday December 11, 2000 @07:05PM (#566218) Homepage
    Fraunhofer owns patents on damn near everything
    sound related. Everything they do is cross patented. It's a research lab. This is how they
    make money. They're extremely good at it. If .ogg hits them in the pocket, expect litigation.

    Here's a list of their patents pertaining to MP3.
    http://mp3licensing.com/patents.html [mp3licensing.com]

  • Re:So naive. (Score:3)

    by Phillip Birmingham ( 2066 ) on Monday December 11, 2000 @08:10PM (#566219) Homepage
    Another factor is that a suit by Thompson will hardly appear as an act of good faith to a judge. If Thompson can download and examine the source code, they can hardly claim ignorance when they lose the suit.

  • 50 cents? HAHA (Score:3)

    by rhinoX ( 7448 ) on Monday December 11, 2000 @08:56PM (#566220)
    Try more like 2-6.00 US dollars a copy of any shipping software product.

    Plus the 10k US yearly minimum.

    It's quite a racket they have going with mp3. They did a good job pulling the wool over most people's eyes.

  • Re:Ominous. (Score:3)

    by Lemmy Caution ( 8378 ) on Monday December 11, 2000 @06:58PM (#566221) Homepage
    In this case, if you abandon your principles, survival becomes irrelevant. What does survival in this context mean?

  • Re:How can MP3 be stopped? (Score:3)

    by Ektanoor ( 9949 ) on Monday December 11, 2000 @09:20PM (#566222) Journal
    You forget the law that will be passed three years from now and where the traffic patroller will have the right to ask for your driver's licence, your seat belt and your car player...

    Highway UCITA...
  • Y'know, I've always wanted to play those clock-speed dependent 286 games again.

    But seriously, Ogg's been Ogged [tuxedo.org]. Frauenhofer is making a kamikaze attack without regard to future repercussions. The irony is wonderful.

    I forsee the rattling will continue. The Ogg Vorbis format will exit beta and enter into the Internet's various mirroring services and freenet-style anti-censorship services, the company Xiph will get sued out of existance, the CODEC will survive, plugins for Xamp and Winamp will abound, business as usual will continue. Anyone remember why we should be using PNGs instead of GIFs?? right. do you? same deal.

  • Re:So, what's next??? (Score:3)

    by TWR ( 16835 ) on Monday December 11, 2000 @08:14PM (#566224)
    Nice try, but I think you're completely off base on several things on this list.

    For example, Apple has completely re-written Display Postscript and created Quartz to be Adobe-free (to avoid paying licencing fees) for Mac OS X. No patent infringement there. Furthermore, there have been third-party GPL'd Postscript interpreters for years; maybe a decade at this point. The other file format examples that you provide are equally impossible.

    Sun doesn't have anything to do with JavaScript; you'd think that /.ers could figure that out after 5 years. Nothing in Java is patentable (it's a language and a spec for a class library), so submarine patents are unlikely. There are multiple sources for JVMs (both Sun and IBM make JVMs for Win32 and Linux), so if Sun starts to charge, people will stop using it.

    HP charging for it's printer drivers (apart from the cost of the printer) is crazy. What would you do with a printer without a printer driver?

    /. charging is, I would bet, quite likely within 5 years. As VC money dries up, companies are going to need to find some other way to pay for providing content (and such).

    -jon

  • Question: the memes of Ogg! (Score:3)

    by mindstrm ( 20013 ) on Monday December 11, 2000 @09:40PM (#566225)
    As the project itself is not under the umbrella of any corporation, who exactly is being sued? The visible maintainers/authors? Who says it can't just be picked up by anyone else?

    Can't anyone pick up where it left off? How can you charge a piece of information with a crime?

    Is this not a way in which OSS can almost circumvent the system by simply not being part of it? The software will exists as it's own entity, and simply be serviced by whoever wants to work with it.

  • Re:It's very likely... (Score:3)

    by Azog ( 20907 ) on Monday December 11, 2000 @09:42PM (#566226) Homepage
    Did Microsoft license Fraunhofer / Thompson's patents when they created their Windows Media (.wma) format?

    If so, Microsoft would have another reason to be happy to see .ogg files disappear.

    But if not, that's proof that it is possible to build a decent encoder without the patents. At least if you have barns full of money and don't need to worry about nasty legal threats.


    Torrey Hoffman (Azog)

  • It's very likely... (Score:3)

    by crt ( 44106 ) on Monday December 11, 2000 @06:59PM (#566227)
    It's actually quite likely that Vorbis infringes on several of Fraunhoffer/Thompson's patents (now, whether you agree with the patents or not is a seperate issue).

    The fact is that Fraunhoffer has pattent MANY different technologies used in perceptual encoding. Basically everything in MP3 and AAC is covered by strong patents. They even have many patents on other perceptual coding techniques not used in those formats.

    One of the biggest impediments to commercial development of competitors to MP3 has been the Fraunhoffer patent collection - which makes it difficult to do any type of perceptual encoding without infringment. Pretty much the only other companies that can get away with it are people like Lucent (w/ PAC/ePAC) that also have their share of perceptual audio coding licenses that they can cross-license w/ Fraunhoffer so they don't sue each other into oblivion.

    The chances that the Vorbis guys have discovered some completely revolutionary method of encoding that doesn't infringe on any of these patents is unfortunately very slim.

    Of course, I wouldn't expect to see Thompson do anything about this until it becomes a real threat. No reason to waste money on lawyers otherwise.

  • Re:isn't there a law? (Score:3)

    by townmouse ( 78660 ) on Tuesday December 12, 2000 @04:57AM (#566228)
    >Isn't there a law against harassing suits? If not, there should be...

    I think we should harass suits more often.

  • Re:FUD not against OV Team, but against others (Score:3)

    by xiphmont ( 80732 ) on Monday December 11, 2000 @09:04PM (#566229) Homepage
    An astute observation.

    Actually we are trying to set things up such that xiph.org is the only easy target in any litigation that might come Vorbis's way. The idea, obviously, is to mimimize potential liability of any industry adoptees--- not because it's strictly necessary, but because the industry is more likely to adopt if we can give them additional armor-plated warm fuzzies.

    Monty

  • Re:The horse's mouth: Time to calm down folks (Score:3)

    by xiphmont ( 80732 ) on Monday December 11, 2000 @09:50PM (#566230) Homepage
    Oh, erm, actually I was only talking to the folks that seemed ready to flee if MPEG said "boo". Sort of a "stop running, good, now breathe deeply, yes, good" in calm soothing tones.

    Now if you're pissed and feel like getting a few hundred developers to march on Thomson headquarters with flaming torches (maybe we could get the Large Hot Pipe Organ to play) to make our opinions known (loudly, spectacularly, but peacefully), I'll volunteer right now for propane torch duty so long as someone volunteers crash space for the sleepover!

    Monty
    .

  • Re:How can MP3 be stopped? (Score:3)

    by xiphmont ( 80732 ) on Tuesday December 12, 2000 @01:03AM (#566231) Homepage
    As an individual, sure, you have relatively little to worry about. Except that all the really *fun* artists and companies will spend more time worrying about the bottom line than getting music to you to enjoy.

    Oh and don't forget about all the restrictions on when you can use your music. SDMI may yet require you to listen on only a single 'approved' player. Buy a copy for your desktop, another for your portable, another for the backup disc... SDMI and FhG are on friendly terms.

    We're making Vorbis for everybody, and that includes all the companies and artists, big and small. The small fry (who can't afford mp3) have the most to gain. The big fry are happy too because this whacks a chunk of money right out of expenses. It levels the technological playing field and makes it easier for everyone to make money at the same time it keeps the technology free (and interoperable: easy to use)

    Mmmm. Makes me just want to go lie down in a peaceful, sunny field of flowers (and code, of course).

    Monty

  • Re:So, what's next??? (Score:3)

    by stevens ( 84346 ) on Monday December 11, 2000 @08:03PM (#566232) Homepage
    Here are some that might be on the horizon, although some or all may be a stretch, and some may already be happening. What do you all think?

    I agree, some are a stretch. But some are exactly what I'm talking about:

    • Adobe and .ps/.pdf
    • Microsoft and .doc

    Although I use postscript and pdf all the time, I worry a little. I realize that they've been so useful to me because Adobe has published the formats and allowed implementations to thrive. They could pull a Unisys, though.

    And MSFT's .doc format? Just Say No.

    Whenever you depend upon something that you use by permission, not by right, you are creating a dependency that may cost you in the future.

    Steve

  • In the UK this is called Libel (Score:3)

    by nagora ( 177841 ) on Tuesday December 12, 2000 @02:46AM (#566233)
    Thompson is libeling the authors of Vorbis. Could the EFF be talked into taking them to court, rather than waiting for Thompson to make a claim of patent infringement? Attack is the best form of defence.

    Making groundless statements in order to sabotage a company's prospects is a serious crime, at least in the UK, and the fines are unlimited. Since the code is open the CEO or whoever it was has no defense: he should have known whether the patents were infringed or not before opening his mouth.

    TWW

  • Re:Patents, the joy, the pain... (Score:3)

    by cthugha ( 185672 ) on Monday December 11, 2000 @08:19PM (#566234)
    IANAL, but I believe that one kind of patent (the statutary patent) already allows this. The point of such patents is to simply say, "I discovered this." You can't charge license fees, but neither can anybody else, and you go on record as the inventor.

    Of course, a better idea would be to patent something, and license it under a variant of the GPL for patents, eg "You can use this to produced a derived work, and patent that, but you must license that patent under the PGPL".

    I'm unsure of whether existing patent law would allow this kind of thing, though.

  • Not quite (Score:3)

    by 2nd Post! ( 213333 ) <gundbear.pacbell@net> on Monday December 11, 2000 @07:09PM (#566235) Homepage
    This will be a real-world test of GPL and the power of the internet.

    You are right that the OV people have no resources, money, or lawyers, but the OV people aren't critical either. OV can live and thrive *without* the OV people.

    So what can happen? Thompson stifles the top 10 developers? 100? 1000? Will they target everyone who's downloaded the code?

    Lets say the top 10 developers are sued to, essentially death. That doesn't mean they lose; OV could be found non-infringing. At which point *any* developer could pick up the pieces and continue.

    If it is found infringing, well, that's all folks. The code was infringing... Fix, and release again, I guess.

    A commercial big daddy will help it nothing in proving the code is not infringing, I don't think. It can only provide resources. In the end, I hope OV survives, and that we have a better solution, that the GPL reigns powerful, and Thomson gets egg on their face.

    Geek dating! [bunnyhop.com]

  • Ominous. (Score:3)

    by Kiss the Blade ( 238661 ) on Monday December 11, 2000 @06:57PM (#566236) Journal
    Considering Ogg Vorbis is GPL, you'd think they'd already know.

    They very probably do. Of course, that's not to say that Ogg V does use mp3 technology, but it is certainly possible that it has been influenced by it.

    What we are looking at now is a commercial company deciding to go after a defenseless GPL project. How will Ogg V survive? They don't have any resources or money or lawyers, do they? In the real world, that's what it takes to survive, and Thompson's know it.

    Perhaps it would be good for Ogg V to get a commercial 'Big Daddy' that will defend it under the GPL.

    But I fear that would be impossible. They would only defend it if they owned it, of course, or if they had some power over it.

    If Ogg V is reliscensed under a more commercially friendly license, such as MozPL, It may survive.

    What do you want more? Your principles or Survival? That is what it comes down to, I fear.

    KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.

  • The positive side (Score:4)

    by Outlyer ( 1767 ) on Monday December 11, 2000 @07:21PM (#566237) Homepage
    There is a positive. At this point, while the Open Source community is quite supportive of this technology, the majority of the world is still fixated on MP3.
    Likely, the lawsuit will be dismissed, or at least won by Ogg Vorbis, but the damage to MP3 will be that Ogg Vorbis will suddenly be well known to people who aren't neccessarily going to hear about it in the community.
    It's free advertising via a nuisance lawsuit... sounds like a case of "Any publicity is good publicity to me." (Excuse the cliche)

  • Ogg goes nowhere without hardware. (Score:4)

    by isaac ( 2852 ) on Monday December 11, 2000 @08:16PM (#566238)
    I can walk over to my local Circuit Shitty today and buy a $199 Philips [expanium.com] or $150 D-Link [dlink.com] portable CD/MP3-CDR(W) player (there's even an off-brand "Classic" MP3CDRW player for $99), a $299 Aiwa [aiwa.com] car unit, a $299 Philips mini-system (sorry, no link. I think the model is FWM55M37), and an Apex [nerd-out.com] or Aiwa (model XD-DV370, I think) or Raite or similar DVD/VCD/SVCD/MP3 player for ~$200, and have MP3 capability with media compatibility across all typical listening environments for under $1000.

    Ogg can't chain me to my computer or even to a PDA and expect to thrive. Ogg should spend some time bringing their codec to the typical embedded A/V processors found in the new generation of cheap OEM DVD and CD chipsets for consumer electronics (like the ESS VideoDrive 4308 and 4318, found in most of the DVD/VCD/MP3 combo players)

    -Isaac

  • Re:So naive. (Score:4)

    by luge ( 4808 ) <slashdot&tieguy,org> on Monday December 11, 2000 @07:44PM (#566239) Homepage
    I think the point was not "being GPL will give it some kind of special legal protection" but "if they were competent, and they thought it was infringing, they'd just download the source and figure it out themselves." Clearly, being GPL doesn't mean much- the license itself has not even been significantly tested in court. But it does lend a layer of transparency to the project that makes these types of threats both more irritating in their bluster and arrogance and more pathetic in their ignorance.
    ~luge

  • So naive. (Score:4)

    by Lemmy Caution ( 8378 ) on Monday December 11, 2000 @06:57PM (#566240) Homepage
    The fact the Ogg Vorbis is GPL will only be relevant once the case begins, if it begins at all. The purpose of any litigation has nothing to do with truth or fairness, and everything to do with protecting Thompson's business. As the article says, the threat of litigation is enough to scare would-be hardware and software and content providers away. The idea is that Thompson has a big enough legal war chest to win even if they lose.

    "This is what hardball is like" is what their representative said. Essentially, it's plutocracy as normal.

  • How to read a patent. (Score:4)

    by Paul Johnson ( 33553 ) on Tuesday December 12, 2000 @12:07AM (#566241) Homepage
    When looking for patent infringement you look at the Claims rather than the specific Embodiment. The idea is that the claims stake out the intellectual territory covered by the patent and the Embodiment tells you how to build a specific example. You aren't interested in the Embodiment in the patent, you are interested in some other Embodiment (in this case Ogg/Vorbis) and whether it sits on territory staked out by the Claims.

    The Claims are a series of mostly concentric circles. The outer ones are going to be very broad and will almost always have prior art against them. Inner ones will be progressively more specific. So the first thing is to look at the published state of the art before the patents were applied for and decide which of the Claims are actually real. Then you can look at Ogg/Vorbis and see if any of those Claims cover their work.

    Paul.

  • Someone needs to stick to the name brand crack (Score:4)

    by xiphmont ( 80732 ) on Monday December 11, 2000 @08:58PM (#566242) Homepage
    Troll. Your mama would spank you.

    I was never a VQF developer. One of my professors in Japan, Sadoaki Furui, is head of NTT Human Interfaces lab, which developed the original VQF, then called TwinVQ. The fact that we knew each other was the limit of the overlap (and we met exactly because we both worked in compression).

    Any technical commonality (there is some) is coincidental. Both TwinVQ and Vorbis draw more from speech encoding technology than mp3 does.

    (Incidentally, VQF has noise problems because of the way the lossy/nonuniform vector quantization interleaves MDCT scalars. Vorbis works differently).

    Vorbis was never a 'limited hack of VQF'. Please, *do* go inspect the original CVS snapshots as well as the previous generations of Xiph.org codecs, Squish, '95' and Stormbringer, all of which predate TwinVQ.

    But, eh, I just fell for arguing eith a fool. Now I feel all dirty.

    Monty

  • Re:Ogg goes nowhere without hardware. (Score:4)

    by xiphmont ( 80732 ) on Monday December 11, 2000 @09:12PM (#566243) Homepage
    It's happening. Don't forget it took WMA a year and a half to make it into its first handheld. We're already running under Dadio, the iObjects [iobjects.com] handheld operating system software licensed by handheld manufacturers based on ARM (eg, Cirrus Maverick). And we haven't even had an official 1.0 release.

    My Iomega HipZip plays .oggs, but I'm not allowed to give out that firmware version yet. For those of you who have the HipZip, had you wondered why the xiph.org twirlfish logo was in the 'about player' menu? :-)

    Monty

  • Re:Question: the memes of Ogg! (Score:4)

    by xiphmont ( 80732 ) on Monday December 11, 2000 @09:57PM (#566244) Homepage
    Ogg is and always has been under Xiphophorus, a registered S-corporation in Somerville, Massachusetts. Xiphophorus holds all the copyrights.

    Xiph.org would be the target, not any contributors.

    Monty

  • Theory behind patents (Score:4)

    by Galvatron ( 115029 ) on Tuesday December 12, 2000 @01:59AM (#566245)
    Actually, the thoery is that if there were no patents, companies would keep everything as trade secrets. By giving them legal protection if they explain what they've done, everyone can build on their innovation, at least once their patent runs out. Also, patents help companies recoup R&D costs, thereby encouraging them to do more research

    Of course, since patents now last 17 years, and are awarded for things that could never have been protected by being trade secrets (One-click, anyone?), or for that matter even required R&D, the situation is ridiculous.

  • So, what's next??? (Score:4)

    by big.ears ( 136789 ) on Monday December 11, 2000 @07:44PM (#566246) Homepage
    We should see these things coming a mile away? Here are some that might be on the horizon, although some or all may be a stretch, and some may already be happening. What do you all think? Are there any others?
    • Adobe and .ps/.pdf formats
    • Microsoft and their .doc format
    • Sun with Java(script)
    • Napster
    • Bluetooth
    • The zero-emmission vehicles that run on that special juice
    • Sony et al. with Hi-quality CDs
    • Free isps like Juno
    • HP with printer drivers (now their free, but once market dominance is assured...you pay)
    • hotmail et al.
    • /. (wouldn't you pay $1.00/month for a access/posting privileges/a +2 bonus/10 karma points/etc.)
    • The applix anywhere java office suite
    • Free on-line disk space/storage companies

    I'm not totally happy with these items--none seem as obvious as the mp3/.gif examples. Oh well, it goes to show that there is an important difference between free and Free.

  • patent system encourages innovation? (Score:4)

    by Dr. Awktagon ( 233360 ) on Monday December 11, 2000 @07:50PM (#566247) Homepage

    So let me get this straight. We have patents so people won't use existing technology, and instead will have incentive to create new solutions to problems. Now patents are used to make sure new technologies DON'T appear. When did this huge disconnect come about?

  • Missing the Important Bits (Again) (Score:4)

    by Doktor Memory ( 237313 ) on Monday December 11, 2000 @07:01PM (#566248) Journal

    You have to wonder if either the submitter or the editors actually read this article.

    Sure, Thompson Multimedia is doing some entirely predictable sabre-rattling. Anybody who didn't see that coming a mile off should see an optometrist.

    The important thing mentioned in there is that CMGI has pulled the plug on Vorbis development. That's a far more important, and ominous development. Corporate backing was allowing progress to be made very quickly on Vorbis, and will be critical when the inevitable patent infringement suit comes. If someone else with deep pockets doesn't step in soon, we can just resign ourselves to paying Frauenhoffer's license fees for the forseeable future.

    (And please, let's not delude ourselves that the mythical Open Source Community will magically step in and finish the project: enthusiasm and spirit are no replacement for in-depth knowledge of signal processing.)

  • It's not very likely at all. (Score:5)

    by gschmidt ( 18105 ) on Monday December 11, 2000 @07:43PM (#566249)
    > It's actually quite likely that Vorbis infringes on several of Fraunhoffer/Thompson's patents

    Actually, no. Monty, Xiphophorus, and iCast did their homework, and also hired some clueful technology IP lawyers to look things over, some of whom I've met -- these guys are sharp, and they grok psychoacoustics.

    Have you read the actual patents? If you work out exactly what is being claimed, FhG doesn't actually own the farm, as I've heard it told.

    Yeah, I was skeptical too, but I've been convinced.

    Note, also, this: FhG has never actually claimed any infringement by Vorbis. FhG's lawyers could certainly read the source if they wanted to know.

  • Re:Sheesh (Score:5)

    by ChadN ( 21033 ) on Monday December 11, 2000 @07:33PM (#566250)
    Or maybe they have a patent on "A method of compressing audio to preserve quality but reduce space usage.

    Well according to this patent [delphion.com], obtained by Thompson for his "invention", that may be exactly what they claim. The patent would seem to cover any audio compression method that converts from time domain to frequency domain, does quantization, then entropy coding.

    The other Fraunhofer patent [delphion.com] is at least a bit more focused, and specifies a breakdown into frequency groups, followed by quantization, then compression. The Ogg Vorbis [xiph.org] scheme avoids the first stage of prefiltering into smaller frequency bands, and does the transform in one feel swoop. This requires more work for the transform, but arguably gives better results.

    In short, the first patent I mentioned seems difficult to defend against, unless it can be shown to be overly broad or invalid. The second is exactly what Ogg Vorbis was avoiding.

  • Info about the Patents (Score:5)

    by RachaelAnne ( 76777 ) on Monday December 11, 2000 @08:53PM (#566251) Homepage

    From this url [mp3licensing.com] given elsewhere by another poster, I looked up all the patents that Thomson Multimedia and Fraunhofer have in the US (apparently some weren't approved in US but in other countries). With all the hub-ub about overbroad/silly patents I thought I could go read some in more detail. The list of patten numbers is:

    • 5,742,735
    • 5,455,833
    • 5,579,430
    • 5,559,834
    • 5,703,999
    • 5,706,309
    • 5,736,943
    • 5,701,346
    • 4,942,607
    • 5,214,742
    • 5,227,990
    • 5,384,811
    • 5,321,729
    • 4,821,260
    (You can look up any of them at the patent office [164.195.100.11]. Just enter all the numbers in the search field separated by spaces.)

    Some interesting things I noted:

    1. I know something about math (and signal processing) and I couldn't decipher what was meant by a lot of them. In other words, how can the patent office people decide if an application is a valid patent if the application is incoherent? I know that specialists are supposed to look at applications for patents in their field but they might not be up to speed about everything in their field. Yeah, they might reject it for that reason but aren't they just as likely to approve it, thinking "maybe I'm just stupid/ignorant about this sub-field."
    2. They seem to be fairly specific (although specificity doesn't necessarily mean something is patentable).
    3. These "ominous words" were found at the end of patent #5,579,430, titled "Digital encoding process":
      • Although the invention has been described and illustrated in detail, it is to be clearly understood that the same is by way of illustration and example, and is not to be taken by way of limitation. The spirit and scope of the present invention are to be limited only by the terms of the appended claims.
      Since most of the patents I found did not specify that the encoded signal had to be audio, this seems like they have a patent on any use of whatever their algorithms are trying to do (which I found not very clear...) In other words, it is almost like somebody patented a specific hash table function (I'm sure someone has) and then patented it specifically for application X, but didn't rule out the possibility of "owning" it in any application that uses hash functions.

    4. All of the above must be taken with at grain of salt because the legal-ese in the patents (especially the beginnings where the claims are listed) is very weird and I had trouble deciphering what kind of math they were getting at. Not to mention one could spend days if not weeks reading them all and all supplemental material. Overall it looks like Ogg would have to include some very specific algorithms to be infringing (unless just the fact that the patents claim to patent one method of doing a certain type/part of encoding signals is enough to claim infringement--i.e. one form of encoding algorithm counts as owning them all...but that doesn't seem very reasonable.)

      Rachael

  • The horse's mouth: Time to calm down folks (Score:5)

    by xiphmont ( 80732 ) on Monday December 11, 2000 @08:00PM (#566252) Homepage
    Linde said what he said only because it was an opportunity for some free FUD. Between the lines, it says, "we're worried/scared, they're on our radar, and we need to make some noise. Words are cheaper than lawyers."

    Big surprise.

    If Slashdotters didn't expect that already, well, shame on you. Sudden worried speculation about Fraunhofer's and Thomson's 'newly ominous tone' is just the snowball they'd like to start (while pressing full-steam ahead with the new webcast and download licensing). I'd be annoyed if they managed to start it with a single public sentence (we've known they didn't like us for quite a while in private). Let's not be a herd of sheep being maneuvered into the chute.

    Thomson and FhG both have a reputation of a loud bark, but tend to pursue relatively little litigation in practice and they'll have to work hard to find basis against Xiphophorus. When we did our patent review, we focused on the FhG/Thomson MPEG patents. Our counsel advises us we don't infringe, what we knew already.

    In other words, nothing's changed from yesterday except that Linde has decided to bluff before the call.

    Monty

  • Eric Scheirer is on our side (Score:5)

    by xiphmont ( 80732 ) on Monday December 11, 2000 @08:08PM (#566253) Homepage
    Don't attack Eric for telling what he sees to be the truth. That's his job.

    Behind the scenes, he's a friend of the Ogg project and has been for some time. He's doing his job by calling it how he sees it, and we don't ask him to spin the facts toward our favor. He also doesn't have control over which quote a reporter will choose.

    Monty

  • We should catch this earlier next time (Score:5)

    by stevens ( 84346 ) on Monday December 11, 2000 @07:07PM (#566254) Homepage

    These delayed-action patent issues are becoming predictable. The community ought to keep its collective eyes out for this in the future. While not exactly the same, the similarities are striking:

    1. gif/unisys/lzw Unisys waits until the file format is literally covering the world, and then threatens lawsuits.
    2. Rambus We've been using SDRAM for how long, and they're just waking up to the idea that they have patents on it?
    3. CDDB Don't worry, it's "free." Right. Sure.
    4. Now, Fraunhofer ...

    We should all be experienced enough with this phenomenon to see it coming a mile away. From this perspective, things like Windows Media are not competitors to mp3, they are just different complainants in the patent lawsuits.

    I strenuously suggest people use png [libpng.org], .ogg, and anything other technology that isn't trying to strangle open standards.

    The Internet wouldn't have existed if they played by these rules at the beginning.

    Steve

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