Comments on: Lucent sues Microsoft over Xbox technology

Telecommunications equipment maker is charging Redmond with patent infringement related to MPEG-2 video encoding.

[SystemsJunky]

Lucents last breath

of air before dying a slow unbearable death.

Lucent who?

http://www.nyse.com/about/listed/lcddata.html?ticker=LU&fq=D&ezd=1Y&index=5

[thenet411]

I'm confused

Does that mean that every DVD manufacturer has to pay Lucent a license fee for use of MPEG-2 decoders?

Because if so, that is outrageous. MPEG-2 was developed by a task force of engineers and meant to be in the public domain. It does not belong to any specific company.

[bruinsensei]

Well... not quite.

That was my reaction as well when I read the article. But of course cNet never gives you enough true facts in any of their articles to form any sort of informed opinion so I started parsing through the actual patent filing - all gazillion pages of it.

The patent appears to be on the ability to encode and transmit a stream of video using 'codec A' then switch to 'codec B' midstream. For example, if you were streaming a video of a person while there were sitting, you might broadcast it using Intel Indeo which is good for "talking heads" and very bandwidth conservative and clear. However if the person were to suddenly get up and start moving around, you might want to broadcast it using Cinepak, which is better for fast motion action shots, so you might 'change the codec' midstream.

It sounds like Lucent is claiming that they had this idea ever since 1991, then chose not to enforce it until 2006. Real, Quicktime, Windows Media, Macromedia, and a ton of other companies already implement this technology into their products.

The Xbox360 probably uses it for their upcoming videophone capability to optimize bandwidth usage. It's actually supposed to be quite rich and it'll be a pity of Lucent gets away with this because the cost will simply be rolled into the consumer purchase of the Xbo360 video camera in the same way that the XBox Original's DVD remote contained the cost of MPEG decoding; I don't really see how Lucent's VERY ALLEGED technology IP is actually ever used unless variable-codec video encoding is being transmitted and received.

[russ1985]

Lucent, Microsoft's NPR

It's not like Lucent owns all of the rights to MPEG-2. My company works with the technology as well. It sounds to me like Lucent has some obscure patent on a very specific technology. Microsoft should just take a page from RIM, the blackberry people and negotiate a low settlement early, before they push the number to astronomical levels.

[yipcanjo]

Hmmm

Thus encouraging the "perpetual lawsuit" mindset...

[BlinkMM182]

You Know...

...I dislike M$ as much as the next guy, but all these constant lawsuits against them are getting pretty pathetic. Everyone just wants so slice of the pie.

Yet the 435,346th reason the patent system needs MAJOR work.

[sally3745]

law suites

Please excouse me. I was pointing my finger up and did not know some lawyer thought it was pantened. I will still give all the lawyerrs the bird!!!!!

[ejryder3]

Time to Fix Patents

This Patent stuff is getting really stupid. It's time to get rid of software patents and lawyers. The economy would see a nice big improvement. Enough to offset the firing of all the useless societal leeches (lawyers).