Codecs and Software Patents - Part II - AV1 and HEVC Not Really Safe
Yesterday in Part I we gave somewhat of an introduction and today we'll begin discussing AV1 and HEVC, which we've long regarded to be patent bait with 'submarine' attacks waiting to happen (despite the promises and assurances made). Software patents are a danger to all codes, but some are more risky than others (to adopt fully) because patents get wrapped up or strung together for "licensing" and there are no effective "FRANDs" (which are misnomers anyway). If you serve or encode a lot of material in some format, the patent trolls - yes, trolls but glorified ones with headquarters and all - can insist that you're liable and demand payments (or else face ruinous lawsuits).
Not too long ago Snap(chat) got sued over AV1 and HEVC in the US and Brazil. As usual, Dolby did it.
An associate has since explained that it's important to note that in the US, any company can sue any other company for absolutely any reason, made up or not.
The article is from a trolls-friendly site, but note that Florian Müller has resurfaced again. Some more people have noticed this. He is promoting patent trolls these days.
Ars Technica (habitual slopfest) said a couple of months ago that "AV1's open, royalty-free promise in question" because of this lawsuit and FRAND remains a problem.
According to this article, Dolby brings up "four of its patents: U.S. Patent No. 10,855,99 Inter-plane prediction; U.S. Patent No. 9,924,193 Picture coding supporting block merging and skip mode; U.S. Patent No. 9,596,469 Sample array coding for low-delay; and U.S. Patent No. 10,404,272 Entropy encoding and decoding scheme."
Those are covering software.
As we showed before, Dolby also uses software patents to attack some GNU/Linux distros. This is well documented.
In the next part we'll show a European role in all this. It relates to illegal and unconstitutional patent tribunals in Europe.
We are, in effect, looking at a sort of cartel (like the one which came out of Germany with MP3). █