[Ffmpeg-devel] VP6 encoder

[Tobias Marx]

I am sure if someone manages to look at the VP{X} codecs....which I think so far no patent lawer has done yet (?), you will probably sooner or later find some techniques that have been patented or that might interfere with some patent in one or the other country. You would then need to find out whether the patent itself is justified or not etc....

The point is though, that using the VP6 codec or any other codec with the "guarantee" that you are the righteous user of that codec, it is not your own business anymore - and in doubt, the company who sold the codec will be sued, not the customers who bought a license of the company in question.

The worst that can happen is that on2 is sued and is bankrupt due to law suits and you need to find another codec (but you can not possible be sued in such a constellation) - the worst thing that can happen when you use MPEG4 is that your own company is bankrupt due to lots of different lawsuits from different patent holders....

But I guess the big companies like youtube/google would be the first "victims".....


Maybe it will be the same with MPEG4 than with the GIF format...I think all patents expired 2 or 3 weeks ago.

My 2 Euro Cents......

-------- Original-Nachricht --------
Datum: Sun, 22 Oct 2006 21:08:37 +0200
Von: Michael Niedermayer <michaelni at gmx.at>
An: FFmpeg development discussions and patches <ffmpeg-devel at mplayerhq.hu>
Betreff: Re: [Ffmpeg-devel] VP6 encoder

> Hi
> 
> On Sun, Oct 22, 2006 at 07:31:15PM +0200, Tobias Marx wrote:
> > > Proprietary software is always unreasonable, regardless of whether the
> > > price is low, high, or nothing at all. This is completely unopen to
> > > debate. The scum who make this stuff need to be driven out of
> > > business. Just look what happened with libvp6...
> > > 
> > > Rich
> > 
> > on2 is still cheaper then legally using MPEG4. You only pay for encoding
> > the rest is free. The older codecs are completely free to use. They were
> done because MPEG4 was too expensive. If you are using MPEG4 you might end
> up paying up to 1,000,000 USD of licensing fees or 0,25 USD per played
> video due to the patent situation.
> 
> did on2 check all patents against vp6?
> no?
> then how do you know how expensive the "legal" use of vp6 is?
> 
> there are open standards which are much more widespread then closed 
> propriatery vp6 for which patents have been found 10 years after the
> standard had been published
> (jpeg to be precisse, yes the patent was found invalid due to prior art
> after 20 or so large companies incluing MS sued the patent holder but 
> thats not the point, the point is that its completely impossible to 
> check anything for software patent infrigment, and the validity of a 
> patent is completely irrelevant as you dont have the resources to win
> a patent lawsuit unless you happen to be a large company
> also keep in mind that forgent according to wikipedia has obtained
> 90 million dollar from licensing this invalid patent ...
> 
> with mpeg4 you can at least expect a few companies to be pretty angry
> if someone comes and claims patent rights on it not that this would
> prevent
> the patent holder from sueing you into non existence but with vp6, who
> will?
> on2? do they have the resources? see http://finance.yahoo.com/q/pr?s=ont
> compare it to the data from some likely patent holder and guess who will
> be more likely to win a several year lawsuit during which they cant sell
> their products because of the patent
> 
> [...]
> -- 
> Michael     GnuPG fingerprint: 9FF2128B147EF6730BADF133611EC787040B0FAB
> 
> In the past you could go to a library and read, borrow or copy any book
> Today you'd get arrested for mere telling someone where the library is
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