While RTMP has not been patented explicitly in this patent, something that sounds even wider reaching has (at least to my limited experience), namely a "Method and system for facilitating communications between an interactive multimedia client and an interactive multimedia communication server".
While I don't know if this particular patent is the one cited in the white paper but it was the only one I could find that appears applicable. It is US patent number 7246356, filed on Jan 29, 2003 (that's not too long after FCS was released and way before FMS2) and issued on Jul 17, 2007.
The inventors list is a who's who of Flash and FMS and includes Slavik Lozben, Pritham Shetty, Jonathan Gay, Stephen Cheng and Bradley Edelman.
I'm not sure what implications (if any) this patent may have for the likes of Red5, Wowza and other RTMP servers but it certainly appears that Adobe wants to protect their intellectual property at least on paper and 'just in case'.
I say this because the patent has been granted a while ago and of course no legal action of any kind (that I know of) has been taken against anyone who has implemented the RTMP protocol, and I doubt we will see this happen either. But stating quite openly the fact that RTMP is patented is a first a far as I remember. Patents are of course a daily occurrence at Adobe - the Google Patent search is limited to 100 results and a search for Adobe as assignee brings up 100 matches, suggesting that there are way more.
What do you think to this? Should Adobe draw a line somewhere on how it 'allows' others to implement RTMP and if so, where? Nobody would want to see Red5 development being halted (and Wowza brings some healthy competition to the table) but would you expect Adobe to treat any major competitors in the same way? What if say for example Real's or Microsoft's server products became RTMP compatible, using Adobe's proprietary and potentially patented protocol? Or would that maybe be a good thing? I don't think we can simply point at AMF and say 'that's what they should do' because I believe that AMF and Remoting never made Adobe any real money, and at the end of the day that's what they aim for - generate revenue. And that's definitely not something I'll blame them for. The point being is this: it's much easier to 'give something up' such as AMF that is of little value in terms of the revenue it generates, but of great value to developers.
I'd love to see RTMP being more open, but I would not like it to be traded in for the future of FMS. Maybe Adobe should consider adding RTSP support to the Flash Player instead? I'm glad that I don't need to make these decisions.
You have hundreds if not thousands of sites giving their own product competition. Not to mention h264 being used.
Did you really think this was not going to happen, specially if flash video technology was being pushed due to server software like Red5?
The impact will be crippling for any none-licensed server.
The question now will be HOW MUCH to license?
The stupid thing is that if people have to pay an Adobe tax in order to stream to flash clients, they're just going to find other ways - either use flash but don't stream (e.g. progressive dl chunks like youtube), or don't use flash at all (java, dhtml).
To finish with a stylish quote: "The more you tighten your grip, the more star systems will slip through your fingers."
It's true!
the patent is one reason why we dont copy the original rtmp specification to our vcs- software. we use own tcp-handler and we dont connect to the server with the netstream object. we also dont allow serverside scripting and we use session and own tls flash crypt lib to communicate with our software. this is all fms is not doing and as we wrote on many mailinglist we send server request over simple http-protocol.
the last thing is that we are working on a rtsp bridge and all i can say is that it is possible to implement rtp/s into flash9.
lets see what adobe next step will be.
best
gary
That reasoning is nothing short of sublime. A company has the right and the responsibility to protect its investment AND to do anything it can (legally) to bar competitors from gaining market share. IF competitors can come up with a better mousetrap via their own R&D investment, then and only then should there be competition. Its ludicrous to think that "society" should coerce companies to limit the return on their investment by opening up their intellectual property portfolios for average joe to have a peek. That would actually lower the competitive standard. If you personally owned IP rights, how would you feel when some schmuck suggested that you release your work to the world "for the good of society"?
Open source has a purpose, but no one can force the hand.
J
"Its ludicrous to think that "society" should coerce companies to limit the return on their investment by opening up their intellectual property portfolios for average joe to have a peek"
what's ludicrous is that corporations are getting patents on the most basic means of internet transmission and monopolizing them such that it is impossible to receive or transmit broadcasts to the mainstream audience without having to use patented technology on that which is so trivial that it's the equivalent of patenting the method of A.M radio broadcasting. society will maintain the right to send & receive internet broadcast to the mainstream audience in whatever form it evolves regardless of what contrived methods the greedy & unscrupulous corporations come up with to try to monopolize them.