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Comment by TazeTSchnitzel | Hacker News Reader

Fun fact: there was an attempt by the MPEG working group to design a non-patent-encumbered internet video format.

It was killed late in the process by several companies making patent claims on the finished standard, without saying which patents were infringed, therefore making it impossible for the standard to be reworked.

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I'm not doubting your story, I'm just curious how is that legally possible? I thought in the US you're innocent until proven guilty.

First, that's a principle of the penal system, not the civil courts which would decide such matters. Second, this didn't involve any legal action at all, and was instead just as a threat, basically saying that if they went forward with the standard, they would sue companies that invested into the standard, but by that point the companies would be in a bad situation as they'd have invested tremendous resources into the codec.

The moment you make any kind of non trivial program (say 20k lines and above) you almost guaranteed violate some patent so they were probably even right with their claims.

If your last statement is true, how come there are companies working on software every day and not getting sued constantly?

There’s threats of lawsuits all the time. Run an e-commerce site and you’ll get demand letters for cash from patent trolls.

They are actually getting sued, maybe not constantly, but if you are a valuable target, often enough. It has just become the cost of doing business.

They are. Quibi was under lawsuit by Elliot Management.

I'm pretty sure that patent contests are the fanfare of Europe (not EU or anything, Europe). Since ISO and the now-disbanded MPEG group is based in Europe... (If I remembered correctly the contesting group were mainly European and Asian companies. I forgot if Nokia opposed this.)

It's very difficult to preemptively establish that something is not encumbered by a patent, which is what the group releasing the standard would have to do to make the standard adoptable.

If someone successfully claims the standard infringes their patent after it is released, it failed to accomplish the goal.

It was just a vague threat that MPEG decided to heed, they could have decided to ignore it too.

The problem of course being that if anyone tried to implement the standard without having a license agreement with those companies, they'd get a threatening letter.

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