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MPEG-2 Patents Have Expired

mpegla.com

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Re: MPEG-2 Patents Have Expired

#161

Post by patentatt »

phkahler wrote: post #156
MaxBarraclough wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> evidence that patents are beneficial in any field is lacking Pharma? It's trendy to pretend that pharma patents are the Devil incarnate because they enable exploitative pricepoints by the patent-holder, but the fact is that's what enables the profit motive for the research in the first place. (At least, I've never seen a serious argument against this, only righteous blustering.) (The fact that US pharma companies s…

Much of the research is done in non-commercial settings. Then companies pick the most promising stuff, patent it and run clinical trials. The real cost is the clinical trials, not the basic research. Read the wording, they often talk about the "cost of bringing a drug to market" which isn't so much the discovery phase as the "prove it" phase. As an example of exploitation see the statin drugs used to lower cholestero…

No IP protection would destroy the pharma industry. Like you said, the cost is not in basic research, it’s in making sure that new compounds do what they are claimed to do and don’t kill people along the way. But why would anyone go through that process if a generic maker could piggy-back off of that work once it’s completed? There would have to be a redesign of the entire institution as we know it. Maybe that’s a good idea, but just eliminating patents alone would be disasterous without a lot of other changes

Re: MPEG-2 Patents Have Expired

#162

Post by cornholio »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #151
cornholio wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a fundamental difference between copyright and patents: the field of content creators if infinite and no works will ever by identical, writing a great symphony or game does not prevent anybody in the future do write another; in stark contrast inventors deal with the limitations of the real world, with physics and technology, there are a limited number of good solutions to a given problem and a patent on an o…

>and a patent on an obvious and straightforward solution is a major hindrance to everybody else.// Which is why every patent act has the requirements of novelty and non-obviousness.

...that's almost always irrelevant in practice, and courts have upheld an a very low inovation bar. The root problem is that development effort has little relation to the licensing price, the licensing fee is often a monopoly rent.

Re: MPEG-2 Patents Have Expired

#164

Post by ksec »

The page wasn't very clear, is it Mpeg-2 Video ( H.262 )? Or All Mpeg-2 ? Because AAC is part of Mpeg-2 as well.

And just wondering, is it possible to extend H.262 to support 4K resolution, different size Microblock, call it something else rather then Mpeg-2 without hitting any patents infringement?

Re: MPEG-2 Patents Have Expired

#165

Post by cjalmeida »

ksec wrote: post #159
phkahler wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AV1 is better than HEVC, is not patented, and was invented by companies interested in conserving bandwidth out of need. So yes, things get invented without patents.

>AV1 is better than HEVC, is not patented, Being royalty free does not mean it is not patented.

IIRC they did patent it to use as a threat against trolls, but promise never to enforce it against fair users.

Re: MPEG-2 Patents Have Expired

#166

Post by amluto »

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #148
amluto wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Abolish it entirely. I'm not really kidding. I think that evidence that patents are beneficial in any field is lacking. Alternatively, a few major reforms would help. For example: 1. Decrease patent terms to just a few years in most fields. 2. Make it clear that math, in any form, is not patentable. Codec patents, for example, should never have been valid. 3. Eliminate submarine patents. Specifically, require patent…

> evidence that patents are beneficial in any field is lacking Pharma? It's trendy to pretend that pharma patents are the Devil incarnate because they enable exploitative pricepoints by the patent-holder, but the fact is that's what enables the profit motive for the research in the first place. (At least, I've never seen a serious argument against this, only righteous blustering.) (The fact that US pharma companies s…

> Pharma?

There was a paper from one of the Fed branch offices about this. It turns out that the US has two independent mechanisms to help pharma companies make money: patents and FDA-granted exclusivity. It's unclear that patents are needed.

Re: MPEG-2 Patents Have Expired

#168

Post by phkahler »

patentatt wrote: post #161
phkahler wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Much of the research is done in non-commercial settings. Then companies pick the most promising stuff, patent it and run clinical trials. The real cost is the clinical trials, not the basic research. Read the wording, they often talk about the "cost of bringing a drug to market" which isn't so much the discovery phase as the "prove it" phase. As an example of exploitation see the statin drugs used to lower cholestero…

No IP protection would destroy the pharma industry. Like you said, the cost is not in basic research, it’s in making sure that new compounds do what they are claimed to do and don’t kill people along the way. But why would anyone go through that process if a generic maker could piggy-back off of that work once it’s completed? There would have to be a redesign of the entire institution as we know it. Maybe that’s a go…

Researcher: "I've found that this rhinovirus is devastating to certain kinds of tumors when injected into them... in mice. We need to do more testing, and in humans."

Company: "But that's a naturally occurring virus, we can't patent that so we're not interested. Do something else, or find a way to 'make it better' so we we can patent it and make money."

True story. Now imagine this:

Researcher: "I've found that this rhinovirus is devastating to certain kinds of tumors when injected into them... in mice. We need to do more testing, and in humans."

Oncologist at major center: "We've seen a number of terminal patients with that type of cancer, current treatments don't work especially at stage 4. We could test that virus on a number of people if they were willing to try it."

Cancer Patient "Sign me up!"

There has to be a way to make this work, and it should cost far less than the current approach. I'd argue that it would cost the government less to fund the studies than to pay medicaid costs for the patented treatments. Sure, change would need to happen but it would happen fast, and in the mean time nobody would eliminate current treatments - they're already established and profitable.

Re: MPEG-2 Patents Have Expired

#169

Post by mastax »

Solar19 wrote: post #93
amluto wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Abolish it entirely. I'm not really kidding. I think that evidence that patents are beneficial in any field is lacking. Alternatively, a few major reforms would help. For example: 1. Decrease patent terms to just a few years in most fields. 2. Make it clear that math, in any form, is not patentable. Codec patents, for example, should never have been valid. 3. Eliminate submarine patents. Specifically, require patent…

I agree with some of this, and I think most software patents are garbage and should not be legally permitted. But I'm stuck on codecs. Codecs are real, as real as a bag of apples. And they're complicated, extremely specific (and necessarily formally specified), and the result of a lot of work, sometimes brilliant work. If there's any software that has a chance of convincing me of patent worthiness, it's probably code…

> I despise patent predators, née trolls. But MPEG-LA isn't a good example for me to work with because I think they're actual companies that do stuff – make movies, Blu-ray players, TVs, etc. Some of them invented DVD and Blu-ray probably, and evidently they invented MPEG-2, which I remember was viewed as pretty slick and technically awesome when it came out (as were DVDs – I remember VCRs and boy did they suck).

To a certain extent, I agree. If license fees for MPEG codecs have kept codec researchers in jobs, then that's a good thing.

But take a look at the MPEG-LA HEVC patent list [1], keeping in mind that includes but a small portion of the HEVC-related patents. From what little I know about codec development, I expect that HEVC's advantage over AVC is from a few large changes and many small changes. However, it's difficult for me to believe that there are literally thousands of substantial patentable improvements over the state of the art in HEVC. How many of those companies are paying for cutting-edge research and how many just got a patent that mentioned coding so they could get a part of the royalties?

I have neither the time nor the expertise to go through that list and tell you which are "worthy" and which are "trollish", but its farcical to suggest that all of them are so valuable that the owners deserve to rent-seek the entire video industry.

1: http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/HEVC/Pages/PatentList.as...

Re: MPEG-2 Patents Have Expired

#170

Post by MaxBarraclough »

amluto wrote: post #166
MaxBarraclough wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> evidence that patents are beneficial in any field is lacking Pharma? It's trendy to pretend that pharma patents are the Devil incarnate because they enable exploitative pricepoints by the patent-holder, but the fact is that's what enables the profit motive for the research in the first place. (At least, I've never seen a serious argument against this, only righteous blustering.) (The fact that US pharma companies s…

> Pharma? There was a paper from one of the Fed branch offices about this. It turns out that the US has two independent mechanisms to help pharma companies make money: patents and FDA-granted exclusivity. It's unclear that patents are needed.

> patents and FDA-granted exclusivity. It's unclear that patents are needed.

I admit I don't know much about the latter, but what about international markets?

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