Tag: royalty free

MPEG has issued a request for comments and a call for further evidence on a royalty-free video codec standard under consideration.

The request is contained in the  publicly available meeting resolutions of the October 2010 94th Meeting in Guangzhou, China.

The request follows responses received at the October Guanghzou meeting to the previous August call for evidence on Option-1 licensing (MPEG-speak for royalty-free) and input from the Chinese and US National Bodies.

In addition to information about target performance, the request cryptically asks:

The relevance of pursuing such a standards activity within MPEG, particularly with respect to current market conditions and industry needs.

Presumably this is a veiled reference to the announcement after the August MPEG meeting by the MPEG LA patent licensing administrator of new royalty terms on its AVC/H.264 (MPEG-4 Part 10) pool that has met Internet industry opposition.

————————————————————————————————————————————————

14.6 Option 1 Licensable Video Coding

14.6.1 The Requirements subgroup thanks the following organizations for their response to the Call for Evidence on Option-1 Video Coding Technology: Oracle, Peking University, Tsinghua University, Zhejiang University.

14.6.2 The Requirements subgroup thanks the CNNB and USNB for their input related to Option-1 video coding technology.

14.6.3 The Requirements subgroup recommends approval of the following documents:

No. Title TBP Available
Exploration – Option 1 Licensing Video Coding
11676 Call for Evidence on Option-1 Video Coding Technology N 10/10/15

14.6.4 Interested parties are encouraged to respond to N11676.

14.6.5 MPEG requests that companies comment on the following topics relating to Option-1 licensable video coding:

  1. The relevance of pursuing such a standards activity within MPEG, particularly with respect to current market conditions and industry needs.

  2. What are the specific video codec performance targets that may be required in order to secure the desired level of market adoption? As an example, current discussions related to an Option-1 codec have considered a 2x coding gain, in comparison to MPEG-1, as a minimum performance target.

————————————————————————————————————————————————

References

“Resolutions of the 94th Meeting”, ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC29 N11553, Guanzhou, CN, October 2010, http://www.itscj.ipsj.or.jp/sc29/open/29view/29n11604c.htm

“Think H.264 is Now Royalty-Free? Think Again – and the “Open Source” Defence is No Defense to MPEG-LA”, Peter Csathy, CEO Sorenson Media, Sept. 20, 2010, http://blog.sorensonmedia.com/2010/09/think-h-264-is-now-royalty-free-think-again-and-the-open-source-defense-is-no-defense-to-mpeg-la/

“Mozilla shrugs off ‘forever free’ H.264 codec license: Uh, will H.264 even be relevant in 4 years?’, Cade Metz, August 26, 2010, http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/mozilla-unmoved-by-royalty-free-h264/9499

“Opera still won’t support H.264 video”, Jan Vermeulen, October 1, 2010,  http://mybroadband.co.za/news/internet/15547-Opera-still-wont-support-H264-video.html

“Open Standards for Video — Video standards (formats, codecs, metadata, etc.) should be open, interoperable, and royalty free”, in “Some principles for open video”, Open Video Alliance, http://openvideoalliance.org/wiki/index.php?title=Some_principles_for_open_video

MPEG has moved forward with a royalty-free standard activity, approving a “Call for Evidence”, the typical first step in the MPEG standardization process.

The MPEG Call for Evidence is referenced in the public Resolutions of the just-completed 93rd MPEG meeting, which also hint at an upcoming Call For Proposals.

The Call for Evidence follows the April call for active participation in a royalty-free standardization activity to verify the ISO-required minimum of 5 National Bodies willing to actively participate.

No doubt of interest in response to the Call for Evidence will be performance tests on royalty free codecs and coding techniques (perhaps along the lines of the annual MSU h.264 codec comparison, which in June released test results on Google’s VP8 codec) and background on patent and prior art searches.

The documents use the new MPEG-speak for royalty-free licensing of “Option-1 Licensing”, named for the first check box on the ISO/IEC/ITU Common Patent Policy Patent Statement and Licensing Declaration, which allows patent holders to affirm that “[t]he Patent Holder is prepared to grant a free of charge license to an unrestricted number of applicants on a worldwide, non-discriminatory basis and under other reasonable terms and conditions to make, use, and sell implementations of the above document.”

14.6 Option 1 Licensing Video Coding

14.6.1 The Requirements subgroup recommends approval of the following documents:

No. Title TBP Available
Exploration – Option 1 Licensing Video Coding ISO-group.jpg
11533 Call for Evidence on Option-1 Video Coding Technology N 10/07/30
11534 Draft Context, Objectives and Applications for Option-1 video coding for Internet applications N 10/07/30
11535 Draft Requirements for Option-1 Video coding for Internet applications N 10/07/30
11536 Draft Call for Proposals for Option-1 Video Coding for Internet applications N 10/07/30

The Requirements group requests National Bodies and experts to provide contributions on the draft Option 1 Licensing Video Coding documents

As readers of this blog know, I am a long-time proponent of royalty-free standardization as the best option for open Web media, preferable to informal, vendor-run open-sourcing of undocumented or unreviewed Intellectual Property Rights.

MPEG, an ISO working group (WG 11 of ISO/IEC JTC 1 / SC 29, to be precise), has been looking into royalty-free standardization and has issued a resolution soliciting interest in active participation by the relevant voting units (“National Bodies”).  Here is my manifesto on why a new dual-track standards activity in ISO could succeed where the 2001 h.264 royalty-free baseline failed.

So I forwarded the resolution to Steve Jobs (Apple has been a long-standing member of the MPEG committee), soliciting Apple’s support.

His response — “The problem is that it will have lower quality video…” — is in my view an accurate and reasonable conclusion and one shared by others, including the head of MPEG, who has said “I believe MPEG should enlarge its portfolio of standards by offering some that are expected to be royalty free and typically less performing and with less functionality next to those that are state of the art, more performing and with more functionality”.

Judge for yourself (no, no response to my second email):

——– Original Message ——–

Subject: Re: Please help develop a royalty-free ISO video standard
Date: Tue, 01 Jun 2010 11:21:28 -0700
From: Rob Glidden <rob.glidden@xxx.xx>
To: Steve Jobs <sjobs@apple.com>

Steve:

Same quality at ~20% more bandwidth looks patent-safe today, so not a direct replacement for h.264.

Rather, a viable HTML5 solution, because World Wide Web Consortium, vendors, and community require codec to be royalty free AND standardized (not just open sourced).

Would Apple support ISO starting standardization process for HTML5-type uses?

Rob

On 6/1/2010 10:03 AM, Steve Jobs wrote:

The problem is that it will have lower quality video…

On Jun 1, 2010, at 9:33 AM, Rob Glidden wrote:
Steve:

I am writing to encourage Apple to actively participate in developing an ISO-approved royalty-free video coding standard.

The MPEG group has issued a resolution seeking active participation in developing a Type-1 (royalty-free) video coding standard:

“Given that there is a desire for using royalty free video coding technologies for some applications such as video distribution over the Internet, MPEG wishes to enquire of National Bodies about their willingness to commit to active participation (as defined by Section 6.2.1.4 of the JTC1 directives) in developing a Type-1 video coding standard. MPEG would appreciate if NBs provide the names of individual organisations that will commit resources”

Type-1 (royalty-free) licensing has been considered at recent MPEG meetings, and multiple National Bodies have expressed their support.

ISO procedure requires active participation by individual organizations to move the activity through the ISO standards process.

Please contact your ISO / SC 29 National Body and express your support for this important standards initiative.

Kind regards

Rob Glidden

References

[1] Resolutions, the 92nd SC 29/WG 11 Meeting, 2010-04-19/23, Dresden, Germany, SC 29/WG 11 N 11241, http://www.itscj.ipsj.or.jp/sc29/open/29view/29n11185c.htm:

“Given that there is a desire for using royalty free video coding technologies for some applications such as video distribution over the Internet, MPEG wishes to enquire of National Bodies about their willingness to commit to active participation (as defined by Section 6.2.1.4 of the JTC1 directives) in developing a Type-1 video coding standard. MPEG would appreciate if NBs provide the names of individual organisations that will commit resources. MPEG will use the information gathered from the NB responses, particularly including the number of countries willing to actively participate, in order to decide at the Geneva meeting whether to request approval of a new Work Item Proposal. MPEG does not intend to reopen the issue, unless strong support of at least five national bodies is presented in the future.”

[2] ISO/IEC JTC 1 Directives, 5th Edition, Version 3.0 ISO/IEC JTC 1 N8557, http://www.itscj.ipsj.or.jp/sc29/directives.pdf:

“9.3.1.1 Votes on NPs at the SC Level

… For the ballot to be successful at the SC level, the NP shall be supported by a majority of all P-members of the SC with at least five P-members committed to active participation.

6.2.1.4  Active participation for NPs includes involvement by NBs in more than one of the following:

– Attendance at meetings (see also 7.11);
– Contributing to the development of the WD;
– Performing substantial review on a CD and subsequent stages;
– Submitting detailed comment with ballots.”

[3] Meeting Report, the 91st SC 29/WG 11 Meeting, 2010-01-18/22, Kyoto, Japan, SC 29/WG 11 N 11077, http://www.itscj.ipsj.or.jp/sc29/open/29view/29n11151c.htm:

“Royalty-free Codecs

In order to help with the discussion on royalty-free codecs, several National Bodies provided input as requested in N11066 Call for Comments on Possible Future activities on “Royalty-free” Standardization by MPEG. MPEG thanks with N11222 Responses to NB position statements on N1066. No clear conclusions could be drawn from the diverse responses. Furthermore, neither MPEG nor ISO can guarantee that a standard developed with the goal of being RAND or royalty-free will actually be RAND or royalty-free since the analysis of patents is outside of the scope and competence of ISO and MPEG.

MPEG issued document N11221 Possible future actions on standardization with Type 1 licensing where the legal issues are summarized and discussed. Type 1 licensing refers to option 1 of the joint patent declaration form, where an intellectual property holder can indicate that he will not charge for his IP. Laymen refer to this type of licensing as royalty-free.

However, MPEG believes that 20 years after its publication some technology will become royalty-free. Since parts of MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 were published in 2013 and 2014, candidates are a MPEG-2 Part 2 baseline profile carved out of MPEG-2 Part 2, MPEG-1 Part 3 Layer 2 baseline profile carved out of the MPEG-1 part 3 Layer 2, a MPEG-1 Part 3 Layer 3 baseline profile carved out of the MPEG-1 part 3 Layer 3, and a MPEG-2 Part 1 baseline profile carved out of the MPEG-2 part 1. These candidates would be compatible with existing equipment. Alternatively, MPEG may define a new set of standards which are believed to be RF provided such standards provide sufficient differentiation to be successful in the market place.“

[4] Meeting Report, the 90th SC 29/WG 11 Meeting, 2009-10-26/30, Xian, China, SC 29/WG 11 N 10876, http://www.itscj.ipsj.or.jp/sc29/open/29view/29n10944c.htm:

“Royalty-free Codecs

The Chinese National Body encouraged MPEG to discuss the option of royalty-free codecs developed within MPEG (N11065 Responses to CNNB position statement on more friendly IPR policy). Especially small companies perceive licensing as cumbersome. Some royalty free standards have become successful in the market place.

MPEG might consider royalty-free codecs only as a supplement to its current standards development process. The preliminary results of the discussion are summarized in N11067 Summary of Issues and question from the 90th MPEG Meeting in connection with CNNB input document (M16903). In order to help with this discussion, MPEG requests National Bodies to provide input according to N11066 Call for Comments on Possible Future activities on “Royalty-free” Standardization by MPEG.”

Last night Google appears to have ended its silence about its willingness to standardize VP8 and WebM.

Cnet has updated a news article, “Mozilla trying to build VP8 into HTML5 video“, with Google’s response:

“We’re excited by the community’s response to the WebM project, and we support efforts to standardize the technology,” Google said in a statement.

Updated 10:28 p.m. PDT with Google comment.

Perhaps not the most ringing endorsement of standardization, but with the W3C’s Philippe Le Hegaret pointing out in the same article that “[t]o be seriously considered by the W3C HTML Working Group, the specification would need to go through a standards group”, it must have been increasingly difficult to remain silent (or hope to arm-twist Android partners into shouldering the patent risk).

Le Hegaret’s full statement points to potential responsible next steps on the standardization path:

“WebM/VP8 has the potential of providing a solution for the baseline video format of HTML5. To be seriously considered by the W3C HTML Working Group, the specification would need to go through a standards group and be developed under RF [royalty-free] licensing participation terms,” Philippe Le Hegaret, leader of Web video work at the W3C, said in a statement. “W3C remains interested in having a video format for HTML5 that is compatible with the W3C Royalty-Free Patent Policy.”

As I have argued, standardization in a royalty free process is the right path for open video.

UPDATE (Dept. of Beware of Non-Ringing Endorsements)

The Register’s Cade Metz followed up with Mozilla to clarify their advocacy of including VP8 in HTML5:

Though Cnet says that Mozilla is working to incorporate VP8 into HTML5, the organization tells us that John Lilly was “discussing the ideal scenario for VP8, not what Mozilla is currently doing.”

Last week I encouraged Google to rethink their VP8 open sourcing patent strategy and

“do the right open standards thing — join and contribute to responsible standards groups that are working to solve the royalty-free open standards need.”

The blog was picked up in Simon Phipps’ ComputerWorld blog, ZDNet, The Register, LWN and elsewhere.

At one level, this is a classic debate about what is “open” and what should be its hierarchy of values, priorities, and even basic definitions.

But is a “de facto” standard the same as an “open” standard?  No, at least not in the definition of open standards of OpenForum Europe, of which Google is a leading member.

But there is more to consider.  Google is including WebM in the next version of Android and rules Android device makers with a strong hand, necessarily playing favorites to steer the Android ship. So the message must be clear to Android device makers, suppliers, and wannabes to get on the WebM bandwagon.  And though Google is known as tough with patent trolls, Android device makers appear to have been either left to fend off patent attacks themselves, cut deals, or perhaps be quietly aided in patent litigation defense.

All commercially rational choices in the crazy, hard-nosed, twisted global mobile patent wars.  After all, look at where the patents came from in MPEG LA subsidiary MobileMedia’s law suits against Apple, HTC, and RIM (Nokia and Sony) and HTC’s counter suit against Apple (AMD through Saxon).

So is the net-net simply “until you take open source and put it in a product you can’t get sued,” so just watch the big boys force each other to take, or cave in to, patent risks in order to get to the head of the line for a promising platform?  And just hope in the meantime that royalty-free open standards for the Open Web escape cannon fodder, collateral damage, or sell-out status in the smart phone patent wars?

Unfortunately, patent hold-up gambits thrive on adopt-first-ask-questions-later scenarios of the sort Google seems to be arm-twisting for here.  Standards groups, regulators, and industry continue to grapple with this challenge.   See yesterday’s FTC/DOJ/PTO workshop and the EU’s draft guidelines for horizontal cooperation agreements that mention that “[t]here should be no bias in favour or against royalty free standards, depending on the relative benefits of the latter compared to other alternatives”.

But if vendors ignore open standards altogether, we all lose.

UPDATE

According to CNET, the W3C is taking the position that WebM/VP8 needs to go through a royalty free standards process:

“WebM/VP8 has the potential of providing a solution for the baseline video format of HTML5. To be seriously considered by the W3C HTML Working Group, the specification would need to go through a standards group and be developed under RF [royalty-free] licensing participation terms,” said Philippe Le Hegaret, leader of Web video work at the W3C, in a statement. “W3C remains interested in having a video format for HTML5 that is compatible with the W3C Royalty-Free Patent Policy.”