Jobs: Patent Pool Being Assembled To Go After Theora

[TransformX]

http://www.osnews.com/story/23233/Jobs_Patent_Pool_Being_Assembled_To_Go_After_Theora

Well, this certainly explains a whole lot. Both Apple and Microsoft have stated that the legality of Theora is highly debatable, and as it turns out, they knew more than we do - most likely courtesy of their close involvement with the MPEG-LA. Responding to an email from Free Software Foundation Europe activist Hugo Roy, Steve Jobs has stated that a patent pool is being assembled to go after Theora.

Hugo Roy published an open letter to Steve Jobs in response to the Apple CEO's letter regarding Adobe and Flash. In it, he praises Jobs for his position on Flash and Apple's involvement with HTML5. He then goes on to remind Jobs that H264 is not an open standard.

"May I remind you that H.264 is not an open standard? This video codec is covered by patents, and 'vendors and commercial users of products which make use of H.264/AVC are expected to pay patent licensing royalties for the patented technology'," Roy writes, "This is why Mozilla Firefox and Opera have not adopted this video codec for their HTML5 implementation, and decided to chose Theora as a sustainable and open alternative."

Roy also sent the open letter to Steve Jobs' email address, and lo and behold, he received a reply. The reply is genuine (he published the email headers), and it doesn't bode well for the future of the Theora codec. This is what Jobs had to say:

All video codecs are covered by patents. A patent pool is being assembled to go after Theora and other "open source" codecs now. Unfortunately, just because something is open source, it doesn't mean or guarantee that it doesn't infringe on others patents. An open standard is different from being royalty free or open source.

The reply is a little vague about who is assembling this patent pool to go after Theora and other open source codecs, but seeing Apple's close involvement with the MPEG-LA, it seems most likely that's where it's all happening. It's obvious that Microsoft will be involved as well.

I am quite shocked about this. It seems that after a decade of empty threats, the MPEG-LA is finally planning on making a legal move against Theora. Such a move will send a shockwave through the industry, and would open yet another front on the Apple-Google tug-of-war: Google, Mozilla, Opera, and Wikipedia are among some of the major names that implement Theora support and/or employ Theora.

A lot of pieces of the puzzle suddenly fall into place. Both Apple and Microsoft (as well as the MPEG-LA) have expressed concerns over Theora's legality, but these concerns were always empty, and never backed up by any facts. It now seems they knew more than we did.

It also explains why Google openly distanced itself from Theora; their legal department is probably aware of what's coming their way. It never made any real sense for Google to support H264, since Google is not part of the MPEG-LA, and thus, has to follow the whims of its biggest competitors (Apple and Microsoft).

It seems like the future of a truly open web now depends on Google opening up VP8, hoping they did their homework and made it not infringe. Google, please open up VP8, and launch a HTML5/VP8 YouTube version, which will work flawlessly on Chrome, Firefox, and Opera.

Serve Flash to every browser that does not implement it. Harsh, but fair. Force-feed Apple and Microsoft that Flash pie.

[Jammrock]

It should be an interesting battle. Theora claims to have done their homework very thoroughly as to not infring upon any known patent. I wonder if this "patent pool" has some old submarine patents that can sink Theora.

It will be a sad day for Open Source if the MPEG-LA takes out Theora, and possibly Ogg in the process.

[TransformX]

It's probably FUD and as one commented there..

"In recent news, president Obama explained the new patent reform bill to the Senate. Quote: 'You either bring it on or you shut the f--k up! We just cannot accept these patent threats any more! God bless America!'. We registered thunderous applause from both democrats and republicans."

-dreams

It's time for such legislation. If someone would try to do anything similar in order to drive someone's stock down in the hardware industry, I don't thing it'd be accepted.

[dZeus]

It's probably FUD and as one commented there..

It's time for such legislation. If someone would try to do anything similar in order to drive someone's stock down in the hardware industry, I don't thing it'd be accepted.

I think it wouldn't be unlikely if most 'open source' videocodecs do infringe on patents. The problem is that there are patents on just about anything, and nearly all companies infringe on each other patents. They protect themselves by creating large patent pools themselves, so that anyone that would consider suing them for infringement would likely be infringing on their patents as well. 'Mutual assured lawsuits' would be the end result, hence the status quo.

This is where patent trolls come in as they are companies which only owns IP (often not even produced by themselves, but acquired due to financial opportunism) and start suing others with less risk of being counter-sued (avoiding the mutual-assured-lawsuits).

What is most important right now is that there is a really good discussion on what we as a society want from intellectual property protection, and how we're going to change the current system into something that fits our needs better than the sorry excuse we use right now.

[TransformX]

I just hope Apple will end up as another SCO fiasco.