Re: I don't like this story.
Happily I am not particularly keen on either company
Google has suggested that Microsoft should pay around $4bn a year for the wireless and video patents of Motorola that Redmond uses in its Xbox and Surface fondleslab. An expert witness at the trial, originally between Microsoft and Motorola but now including new Motorola Mobility owner Google, testified that Microsoft would …
(Sorry for invoking Godwin's Law) Hitler V. Stalin. You really want both of them to lose, so you don't know who to really root for.
The best possible outcome for this is to have "method patents" disallowed. Then we can all go home and worry about more pressing issues.
"The best possible outcome for this is to have "method patents" disallowed. Then we can all go home and worry about more pressing issues"
I agree in a lot of cases. But some method patents are valid. Or at least it's a supportable argument that they are. In this case we're talking about video encoding. A great deal or work, imagination and cleverness can go into working out a new way of compressing images into video - thinking of ways that you can record only changes between two images for example. MPEG-4 has methods by which it checks forward and backward to reference frames, adjusts for motion blur and all kinds of things. It's a lot of work. And yet when that work is done, you could independently implement it relatively easily in different languages or platforms. Should the people who worked hard on developing those solutions not be recompensed because copyright does not cover it?
> But some method patents are valid.
I don't see many fitting into that category...
> A great deal or work, imagination and cleverness can go into working out a new way of compressing images
It can do, but most of that is grunt work; working out how to tune well-known algorithms to fit the sort of sequence you are expecting.
> MPEG-4 has methods by which it checks forward and backward to reference frames
So do most video compressors. That was old hat when I got into the industry. Even if it were patentable originally, that ship has long sailed.
> It's a lot of work.
It is[1]. But it's not a lot of *invention*. And patents cover invention, not sweat-of-the-brow labour.
> Should the people who worked hard on developing those solutions not be recompensed
They *are* being recompensed; the purpose of these standards is to sell encoding and decoding equipment. Standards are required to ensure that the market for such devices exists.
If I lay a road, that's a lot of work. Should you have to pay me for every journey you make over that road?
Vic.
[1] I did a fair amount of that work...
1. Google get awarded X for their patents
2. Microsoft counter-sue and get awarded Y for their patents (where Y is remarkably close to X)
3. Microsoft and Google end up paying pittances to each other since X and Y more less cancel each other out
4. Any new comer would have to pay X to google and Y to Microsoft...endgame