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> I've never understood the objection to MPEGLA. [...] MPEGLA is a licensing agency, so there are no personal or political issues.

They have a vested interest in having their technologies (ones for which they have pools) win over other technologies, and they have a whole chest of patents (aka. legal weapons) with which to intimidate companies who won't come into the fold.

The whole problem of patents is that they give established interests total control over everyone else. At best, the established interests will be content to just take a cut. At worst, the established interests will refuse to license to you, because they don't want a competitor. And they can change their mind on this matter whenever they want.

> That VP8 infringes on patents is pretty much a sure thing-- unless I'm fundamentally misunderstanding how VP8 works

How do you know that h.264 doesn't infringe on Google patents?

> If you wish to go to a system whereby there is no patent system, then recognize that people wouldn't be revealing their inventions, and thus things like android couldn't exist, because they wouldn't have a source of technology to copy.

Are you seriously suggesting that the creators of Android read Apple's patents, as a way of "catching up?" Or that Apple wouldn't have released the iPhone, which is a cash cow for them, if they couldn't patent it?

"Or that Apple wouldn't have released the iPhone, which is a cash cow for them, if they couldn't patent it?"

Patents were definitely part of the plan from the start or Jobs wouldn't have stood on stage in front of a giant 200+ slide at the 2007 keynote and said:

"We filed for over 200 patents for all the inventions in iPhone and we intend to protect them."*

With no patents they wouldn't have had any defense against the other mobile phone makers. That's the way it works. You say I infringe your patents, I say you infringe mine, we come to a cross-licencing agreement. Otherwise, I pay you money.

* Bottom of this page - http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/09/live-from-macworld-2007-s...

The question is what good do the patents provide? Apple would still have released the iphone.

Patents & Intellectual property are an anathema to a free society. Though they do allow entrenched interests protect their market from upstarts.

First you say "Apple would still have released the iphone" and then "...they [patents] do allow entrenched interests protect their market from upstarts." You seem to be contradicting yourself.

When Apple released the iPhone, they were the upstart in the mobile phone segment. The patents are what allowed/allows Apple to protect themselves from the 'entrenched interests' of the market. That is what good the patents provide.

Not at all, by upstart i mean small companies without massive legal departments and lobbying dollars.

At worst, the established interests will refuse to license to you, because they don't want a competitor.

Hence patent pools, in which participants who are often direct competitors agree to license to each other and anybody else on the same terms.

Are you seriously suggesting that the creators of Android read Apple's patents, as a way of "catching up?"

I can't speak for him but I don't think that's what he's saying.

You're fixating on the common fallacy that the only things that can or should be patentable are things that cannot possibly be understood except by reading a thorough working description by the party that created it. This is wrong.

I have here on my keychain an instance of patent 4,864,898 "Combination pop-top can and bottle opener". It consists of a shaped piece of plastic with a little piece of metal, and it is completely obvious how it works just by using it. There is no hidden mechanism and nothing that needs explaining. And yet: this did not fall off a tree. This is not a product of nature but of human ingenuity lending greater value to this shape than the equivalent mass of plastic in a less intentional shape. It's that difference that a patent attempts to recognize as an independent thing that has economic value, not the textual description of the patent, which is an artifact of that recognition.

So, to bring that back around: the point is that without patents, any invention which is not either directly tied to the means of production or hidden in a black box loses the bulk of it's economic value and thus the bulk of it's reason for ever being created.

  > Don't be mad at the patent holders for protecting
  > their work- they published it for everyone to
  > benefit from in exchange.

Is this really the case anymore? Would the world have been a worse-off place had Amazon not patented One-Click? Would the world be a worse off place had Microsoft not patented parts of FAT32?

The point of patents was to encourage inventors to open up to the world how their inventions worked. There are so many patents granted presently that are not really secrets in any fashion. In most cases, they are just the next iteration in a long line of improvements in a specific area. It has become a me-first free-for-all, where it doesn't matter if the first person that needed to solve problem X would have come up with solution Y (regardless of the person). It just matters who walks down to the patent office first. There are a number examples of patent cases where someone developed something, then someone else saw that and tried to patent it before the original inventor.

The flaw in your statement is your presumption that all (or most) patents should be valid. I argue that most patents granted in the two decades (at least) should never have been granted and do more to hinder innovation than they help it.

> I've never understood the objection to MPEGLA. [...] MPEGLA is a licensing agency, so there are no personal or political issues.

Others have comments on other parts of this statement, but I wanted to mention that the political factors in the patent pool can have significant effects on the codec's final quality.

There are pieces of the MP3 codec which exist only to include the patent. After all, if your patent is in the technology, it is quite a lot of money in royalties you'll be getting. There is extraordinary pressure to get your patented tech into the standard even if it isn't helpful.

When I originally hired Monty to work on Ogg Vorbis fulltime, I also hired Mark Taylor (LAME author) to work on a new codec as well. His idea was essentially to remove all the idiocy from MP3 and leave only the useful pieces. It was an eye opening experience.

There is also the problem that MPEG and ISO have fairly closed membership. This is one reason why the IETF has taken up codec work over the last year or so.

There is also the problem that MPEG and ISO have fairly closed membership.

Anyone can participate in standards development.

What kind of idiocy is in the MP3 codec? Did Mark publish anything talking about this? That's fascinating!

> they published it for everyone to benefit from in exchange.

Although I've upvoted you, I think that this is the fundamental disagreement. I've never felt that I could look up a patent and learn from it. In fact, it seems like a game to write patents as vaguely as possible, to cover things which noone has thought of, but might do in the future. Certainly, I've not seen a patent which manages to get past the legal language such that it is easy to read.

But MPEGLA goes a step further. They take their specs, for example H264, and then annotate them with patent information. So if you're reading section 2.1.1 of the H264 spec, you can look up and see what claims in which patents apply. That's pretty darn awesome, and some pretty good value add and some nice transparency.

It's a nice way to blend the legal (the patent) with the technical (the spec).

Well, that spec sounds useful, but I'm less sure about how the patent helps anyone but the lawyers.

I've read a few, admittedly mostly the infamous patents, and have yet to find anything useful. At worst, we have someone patenting doubly-linked lists (What if, instead of one pointer, lists had two pointers... and they could point anywhere! Or maybe they could have N pointers! Genius!) and other obvious dreck (A stick as a dog toy? Defeated only because two other people already had patents!?)

Or sometimes they file wish claims on things none of their products actually do. They don't require code to actually prove that you even could do what you claim to have invented, even though source code would be analogous to requiring blueprints for machines.

Anyhow, my point would be that I've never heard of anyone reading patents to learn anything about computer programming (maybe they do, but I've never heard of anyone learning that way). Maybe patents are a lot more useful with mechanics, I don't know, but the software patents I've seen are not even useless. Half of them read like they were written by the "I just need a typist, err, coder to implement this for me" people. I've even seen people say "you've got a flowchart, what the hell else do you need?"

Human AI Flowchart: [Evaluate state of world] -> [Think like a human] -> [Act] -> [Repeat]

(The similarity to the evaluate-apply loop in Lisp should be obvious.)

I've always thought patents were supposed to be detailed enough so that one competent in the field could produce the invention. In SW that is clearly not the case.

I'm not justifying patents. I also think they're generally not useful and destructive. But they are here.

I certainly agree with you there. Sadly, the metrics the politicians appear to be using to grade the health of the system are: "amount of money made by licensing patents" and "number of patents granted."

It doesn't take much imagination to see why those are bad metrics for people more concerned with promoting the progress of science and useful arts.

you're essentially forced by the nature of video and the desire to compress to recognize features of images that exist in multiple frames and then encode based on them

Which is exactly why such methods should not be patentable. Do you really think the VP8 guys had no idea how to do that until they read the H.264 patent? Of course not; it's a strategy that's obvious to skilled engineers, and granting a monopoly to the first entity to file a patent creates huge market inefficiencies and reduced innovation.

things like android couldn't exist, because they wouldn't have a source of technology to copy.

What did Android "copy"? An interface with a grid of icons?

"What did Android "copy"? An interface with a grid of icons?"

In layman terms, yes. You might argue Android copied it from Apple who copied it from Win Mobile who copied it from Windows who copied it from Apple who bought it off Parc. But that would be annoying to read.

If you've got a better idea for how intellectual property should be protected or not, then, please start a political movement. Don't go after people following he laws as they are. Given the existence of the system, companies must patent and defend their patents.

Isn't Google an obvious counter example? They patent software because that is how the system works but they do not use their patents offensively as a business strategy. Just becaus someone isn't breaking the law doesn't mean they are above reproach and doing good work.

We should go after people abusing/influcing the laws in an unfair manner.

Don't be mad at the patent holders for protecting their work- they published it for everyone to benefit from in exchange.

They published the patents because you have to publish patents. Why are you assuming this is a benevolent act?

things have to be patented, because even if you invented it, someone else can patent it if you don't

This is an incorrect statement.

Is it? The way I see it, the patent may not hold up to appeal, but that's not the same thing as not being patented by someone else.

And appealing a patent? That isn't cheap. :(

There is nothing preventing someone else from patenting something you have invented but did not patent. They may not be able to stop you from using your invention, but patents are first-come, first served.

Please, if you are going to make an assertion like that, you need to explain exactly how it is an incorrect statement. Maybe you misunderstood me, or maybe you misunderstand the state of the law. Without an explanation, you leave no opportunity to respond to the specific issue you have, forcing the person who have called out to take a stab in the dark and try to guess why you say this. I feel this is disingenuous.

The incorrectness of your statement is explained in every definition of patent requirements. For example, it's in the 2nd paragraph of Wikipedia article called "Patent". I'll even give you a direct link to this requirement: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novelty_(patent)

Like I said, if you're going to make such an assertion, please provide an explanation how it is incorrect. Linking to wikipedia as you did is fallacious for more than one reason, including argument from authority, argument from false authority, and on the basic fact that you did not actually make a claim, you just implied someone else made a claim, and left it to me to guess where that claim was made and what part of the second paragraph showed an error in my claim.

The article you linked to actually confirms my assertion by going over the situations where one inventor will get a patent on something another inventor also created. Therefore, one is incentivized to patent something to obtain protection, which is the claim I was making in the first place.

So, not only are you flat out wrong, you have twice been given the opportunity to provide an explanation for your assertion and twice failed to do so. Meaning you are not worth taking seriously because you are apparently more interested in saying I'm wrong than making an argument, which means I think you're trying to argue to the person rather than the point. Downvoting only convinces me of this.

"The incorrectness of your statement is explained in every definition of patent requirements. For example, it's in the 2nd paragraph of Wikipedia article called "Patent". I'll even give you a direct link to this requirement: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novelty_(patent)

In this case, then, the parent comment is correct, and you are wrong.

If I invent something, and neither sell it or make it known to the public (thus it continues to meet the novelty requirement), then there is nothing preventing someone else from patenting said invention.

No, the statement is "things have to be patented...". It's incorrect because you can either patent it, or publish without acquiring a patent. (I'm focusing on this part, because the statement was made to justify patenting. It's not, you don't have to patent anything.)

Suppose for a moment that you invent something, but don't tell anyone. Then someone else can obviously patent it.

Suppose you publish something on your blog. The patent examiner doesn't read blogs, so someone else can obviously patent it.

Suppose you publish it in a well-respected journal of computer science. The patent examiner doesn't read journals either, so someone can obviously patent it.

Now obviously, none of these patents are valid, but that is not how the patent system works.

Or suppose someone else is trying to patent the exact same invention that's already patented by you. The patent examiner makes a mistake and issues a patent.

Oh, you mean that patent on the stick as a dog toy? Yeah, that one sucked. I can't believe it took four years, a reexamination by the USPTO Director and referencing no less than two prior patents as prior art to invalidate all of its claims:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/49521/Worlds-Craziest-Patent

'Going after' people following the laws as they are is one of the ways to get the laws changed.

I've seen zero effort from the anti-IP movement to go after politicians or even try to reach them, and I have seen a lot of FUD and propaganda against selected companies that are determined to somehow be "evil" while other, favored companies get a pass.

I don't understand their motivations, but I'm not convinced that actual change is one of them.

Further, I am not a fan of the current system, but I have yet to see a proposal for an alternative.

Finally, isn't it hypocritical to attack people for operating under the system as it is, when the people doing the attacking are not trying to change the system at all?

Do you see google giving up its patents in any area where it has a competitive advantage?

Of course not.

Do you not see the stories on HN about the EFF constantly doing exactly what you say no one is doing?

I don't see EFF attacking people for operating under the current system, so obviously I wasn't saying they aren't trying to change the system at all.

I also haven't seen a proposal from the EFF for a constitutional amendment of any stripe.

Are either of those feasible? Are there other actions that are feasible, and is the EFF doing those?

Well, the EFF can't really step in to lawsuits between large companies, so it's a bit hard for them to get directly involved.

They've certainly challenged the status quo on copyright law, though.

"The Congress shall have Power [...] to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries[....]"

It shouldn't require an amendment for the Congress to decide to exercise that power differently or not at all, especially if they realize what's happening now doesn't actually promote progress in new fields without a critical mass of open prior art.

What would you think about having to license a patent to build a car? What if there were the equivalent of MPEGLA for cars that could prevent you from competing with other legally licensed car manufacturers? What if the licensing authority threatened to sue anyone who distributed, sold or bought your car?

It did happen. You might enjoy learning about Henry Ford's patent struggle against the ALAM (Association of Licensed Automobile Manufacturers.) They possessed an essential patent to automobiles and wielded it as a weapon against anyone who tried to compete.

References:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_B._Selden http://www.bpmlegal.com/wselden.html http://www.cojoweb.com/us-patent-2.html http://www.s363.com/selden/zapped.html http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aacarsseldona.htm

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" -- Santayana

>If you wish to go to a system whereby there is no patent system, then recognize that people wouldn't be revealing their inventions, and thus things like android couldn't exist, because they wouldn't have a source of technology to copy.

Congratulations. You win the 'most mind-bogglingly retarded statement of the millennium' award.

In reality, I'm aware that nobody is actually stupid enough to hold such an indefensibly ludicrous position, so you're clearly trolling. Good job though, it's the first troll so successful that I'm not going to read HN again. A community that could give this trash even a single upvote is not a community I want to go anywhere near.

A community of sufficient size is always going to have people whom you consider complete idiots.