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MPEG-LA Considering Patent Pool For VP8/WebM
An anonymous reader writes "Well, that didn't take long. Larry Horn, CEO of MPEG-LA, the consortium that controls the AVC/H.264 video standard, says the group is looking at creating a patent pool license for VP8 and WebM, Google's new open source, royalty-free HTML5 video format... So much for a Web video standard unencumbered by patent issues." We talked about VP8/WebM a couple of days ago when Google open sourced it. Reader Stoobalou points out another late-night email from Steve Jobs, who was asked to comment on VP8 vs. H.264. Jobs laconically sent a pointer to the technical analysis we linked before, where the poster says "VP8 copies way too much from H.264 for anyone sane to be comfortable with it, no matter whose word is behind the claim of being patent-free."
Sounds good: Let's get the patents that MPEG-LA claims might affect VP8 out in the open. Let's get an explicit listing of exactly where they think it infringes. And then we'll fix it.
This as opposed to Microsoft's approach to everything else, and Apple's approach so-far, of obliquely threatening that someone may someday find something that vaguely infringes some potential patent by some unknown party.
When do the patents expire and the invention fall into the public domain?
- "Sometime after both you and your grandchildren are dead."
Well that's a bad plan.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
"The thing is, MPEG-LA ensures that H.264 and you are free from any patent violations".
That's technically not true. However, any third party that tried to litigate would have it made worth their while to join the pool. If it's really money you're after, it's much safer and easier to join the pool.
AV is really the area worst affected by software patents. The media talks a lot about "silly patents", but they're *not* the real problem. MPEG-LA holds over 1000 patents - no amount of raised standards will solve this problem. Patents on playing video have to be declared null and void.
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
Except for the fact that Google has already placed themselves in the crosshairs by using VP8/WebM themselves. Are you worth more than Google? Didn't think so.
Game! - Where the stick is mightier than the sword!
The clone-makers copied the IBM PC and the Intel 486/ Pentiums, and they did not face any legal consequences, because they implemented the technology using a different method (different wiring). Couldn't the folks behind VP8 make the same claim? "Yeah sure it uses similar MPEG4 techniques, but the code is completely different and with differing end results."
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
No they don't. the thing is that MPEG-LA tries to control whether you are violating patents. That is a completely other thing.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
This is why no one is going to seriously use the HTML5 video tag. What advantage does HTML5 offer over Flash for web designers when you have to worry about supporting multiple codecs because no one can agree on a standard codec to use. On the other hand, if you use Flash, pretty much everyone (except those subject to Steve Jobs' Dictatorship) can view your video and you don't have to worry about supporting multiple codecs. So now you have to worry about The HTML 5 tag is a poor standard; a typical result of a standard by committee. The whole point of the web is to be able to display the content on any platform. Allowing people to use proprietary patent-encumbered codecs as part of the official standard goes against that whole concept. The tag is something I would expect to see from Microsoft, not the W3C.
"That's why it might make more sense to just use H.264 and save yourself from future problems."
Sure. Provided this statement is a cash-guarantee to everyone who wants to implement it: You'll pay roll all the licensing fees, yeah?
They don't ensure any such thing. They ensure their patent pool holders won't sue you over H.264; but buying a licence from them does not mean they'll protect you against others suing you over H.264.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
MPEG-LA ensures that H.264 and you are free from any patent violations.
Free of any patent violations of any patent in their pool. Once you pay for their protection. If someone outside the pool asserts a patent, sorry, that's not covered. You're only paying Mr. Guido and his organization for protection. If Mr. Vinny decides to burn down your warehouse because you didn't pay HIM, well, that's just unfortunate.
This is where patent pool organizations are more worthless than real organized crime. In the real protection racket, if some shopkeeper is paying you off on schedule, you prevent other punks from trying to horn in on your territory. In a patent pool, once you've got the developer's license money, if someone else declares that they want in on the action, you can either ignore them and let your licensee deal with it, or invite the new patent holder into the pool and jack up the rates to make sure he gets his cut of the racket too.
so it's a patent bomb waiting to happen and any company that uses it takes risks.
Don't kid yourself. In computers, everything is either patented or is about to be. If you do anything creative you're exposed. Suck up the risk and proceed, or shut yourself in your room and accomplish nothing.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
In countries where information processing patents like the H.264 patents exist (namely USA, Germany, and the Republic of Korea), these tend to be broader and harder to work around than patents on hardware, especially when the codec's spec specifies what sorts of processing a decoder shall use. You don't want a decoder "with differing end results" because then you can't decode conforming bitstreams.
You know, On2 has been around a while now in the video codec game. I wonder how many patents they hold that MPEG-LA are violating with their video codecs. If MPEG-LA goes up against Google/On2 chances are they'll retaliate with patents that MPEG-LA is infringing upon.
I'm surprised no one has thought of this (at least all the news posts I've seen), that MPEG-LA may be opening themselves up to some pretty serious patent retaliation.
> OGG Vorbis
OGG is a container format. Vorbis is an audio codec, quite a good one at that. You might be thinking of the Theora video format.
> Is it so fundamentally flawed that not even Google and their legions of high-powered open-source minds can't make it better than H.264?
This is impossible. Spec-wise Theora is based an pretty ancient technology. A good Theora implementation cannot compete with a good H.264 implementation, quality-wise. Unless you change the format, this cannot be fixed.
True, it's not technically true but if a submarine patent did arrive since you did license the patents it would be a sign that you were working in good faith with all the knowledge you had and weren't trying to willfully infringe any patents. Such a thing is very important in patent lawsuits.
They don't need to go after Google first. Google has explicitly stated they don't ensure you don't get patent litigation, so you are on your own to fight it.
This has been the tactic forever - attack the small guy first, so you get backing up to attack the big guys later if you want to.
Only really in America...oh, and Germany as of recently. Damnit, I thought we'd kept those silly "software patent" ideas on the other side of the Atlantic.
It is great how patents are getting so horrendously abused, and yet the people holding them always make it out like a good thing. "Yeah, we've got patents, but we're nice enough to license them to you, and if you sign up then we promise to never sue you (but we'll keep quiet about any other patents that may be floating around)".
One showed up on MP3, and Microsoft had to pay up a bundle on top of their original MP3 licence. Is H.264 simpler or older than MP3?
http://rocknerd.co.uk
Maybe I'm thick, but I don't understand why, if Google's so interested in freeing up a video codec for use as a standard, they don't just apply some of their legendary minds to fixing OGG Vorbis.
Because Vorbis is an audio codec?
Google and their legions of high-powered open-source minds can't make it better than H.264?
Not without likely infringing a number of patents in the process.
When did Apple become MPEG-LA? They hold a very small number of the patents that is in the H.264 pool (I seem to remember it is only 1). When it comes to video codecs, Apple is just a company that tries to protect itself against patent suits.
With or without the authority to sublicense these patents?
They are explicitly not providing patent protection for anyone else.
How about adding something like this to the TOS of an unrelated, widely used Google service: "By entering a query into Google Search, you agree not to sue users of WebM multimedia technology for infringement of any patent that you believe is essential to WebM multimedia technology."
Because that wouldn't stand up in any court of law?
I still feel that the best way to go about that reboot is to start a non-practicing entity (can't get sued) that goes for the jugular of huge companies, attacking their most important products.
Most non-practicing entities just do it for the money, though. They attack the most important products, maybe get imports stopped for a week, and then get a large settlement and go away.
What I'd like to see is an NPE that does it for putting companies out of business. Attack the most important products, get imports stopped permanently, and then wait until the companies either die or patent reform occurs.
The following organizations hold one or more patents in the H.264/AVC patent pool.
* Apple Inc.
* DAEWOO
* Dolby Laboratories Licensing Corporation
* Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute
* France Télécom, société anonyme
* Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der angewandten Forschung e.V.
* Fujitsu Limited
* Hitachi, Ltd.
* Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V.
* LG Electronics Inc.
* Microsoft Corporation
* Mitsubishi Electric Corporation
* NTT docomo
* Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation
* Panasonic Corporation
* Robert Bosch GmbH GmbH
* Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.
* Scientific-Atlanta Vancouver Company
* Sedna Patent Services, LLC
* Sharp Corporation
* Siemens AG
* Sony Corporation
* Ericsson
* The Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York
* Toshiba Corporation
* Victor Company of Japan, Limited
Oh, an in case it isn't clear, Apple is listed first because the list is ordered alphabetically.
The world would, of course, be a lot better off if ignoring suspected patent infringement until it appears like there might be a lot of money to be made from suing the suspected infringer were grounds for dismissal of the suit.
I try to avoid "See I Told Ya So" types of posts, but in this case SCNR: WebM/VP8 patent risk for software developers" (and I previously made that suggestion on my blog in this post on video codecs)
I'm all for open-sourcing useful program code but the question here is whether it's fair for Google to expose an entire community, including the commercial adopters of open source, to this kind of risk. The situation surrounding Android serves as a warning. Google is unfortunately in favor of software patents and doesn't do anything against the problem. They're entitled to their patent strategy. But it's important that third parties don't run into patent problems in reliance upon Google's vague promises.
If Google really believed that WebM/VP8 was safe from a patent perspective, then why in the world don't its WebM license terms contain a hold-harmless clause or at least some basic indemnification (less value than holding harmless but better than nothing) in favor of developers adopting it?
People should think twice (at least!) before relying on any vague promises and they should also consider that Google isn't the patent powerhouse that could start a "pissing contest" with the major contributors to the MPEG LA pool. I explained Google's limits in that regard in this recent slashdot comment, The idea of Google countersuing isn't realistic.
That's why it might make more sense to just use H.264 and save yourself from future problems.
"Nice little codec ya gotcherself there... shame if something should... happen to it."
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
The Republic of Korea has information processing patents?
The Wild Fox maintainer seems to think so.
http://en.swpat.org/wiki/South_Korea
It's already there. AIPLA: South Korea states that information-processing apparatus claims such as "a computer system that does task X by performing steps A, B, and C" are valid. In the case of a video codec patent, X is "prepare video for transmission through a digital channel" for an encoder or "receive video transmitted through a digital channel" for a decoder, and A, B, and C describe a block diagram of the codec.
There is already something like that in the common law tradition. It's called laches.
There are ways to fight software patents within the current legal system.
Create a very large patent pool, but one that isn't defensive. All it takes is for every single company with commercial interest in free software to pool their patents together. Let's call this the good-pool. The companies donate legal fees to this entity. Now,
1. Wait for _ANY_ other software patent licensing pool to be created, such as the MPEG-LA. Call this the bad-pool. Such a group basically consists of companies that have 'donated' their software patents for threatening/suing others and getting paid. Once such a pool is formed, go after the member companies by asserting relevant patents from the good-pool. Don't wait to defend, but go on the offensive. Also, if any individual company threatens/sues another company with software patents, the good-pool again goes on the offensive.
After some time, no company will dare join a pool, or threaten another company again. This works, except for patent troll companies that have no valid business, but that of suing others. We'll come to this in a moment.
2. Software engineers in the community *read the patents in the bad-pool*, and engineer methods very similar to such patents, but those that do not infringe claims in the patents. This is not so tough. Most software patents are ridiculous. Create a wiki and provide alternative methods to avoid each patent.
After some time, no company will dare join a pool again.
In the case of patent trolls, where the company's only reason for existing is to sue others, follow the money. Find out who's behind the company. Even if litigation happens, and there's a payout, the matter doesn't end there. Find out who is benefiting. These people definitely have investments in other companies. Use the good pool to sue these other companies.
Note that this approach is much like the MPEG-LA licensing pool and does not involve companies giving up patents to the pool.
Banu
IANAL, but, wouldn't that make a good case for estoppel? Saying that there were well known, visible implementations of this technology in the field for years, and the rights holder waited until commercial viability and adoption to give economic incentive to litigate. Seems like the definition of estoppel to me (in my NAL understanding).
My Babylon
They are explicitly not providing patent protection for anyone else.
Then how does Google "have nothing to worry about" by promoting a codec the use of which by third parties infringes? Where I come from (USA), that's called inducement, and I see no reason why a court wouldn't draw an analogy from inducement of copyright infringement (MGM v. Grokster) to inducement of patent infringement.
Because that wouldn't stand up in any court of law?
You claim that courts would strike down a patent retaliation clause barring litigants from using other Google services. But on what grounds would this be deemed unconscionable? Are the patent retaliation clauses in Apache License 2 and Mozilla Public License likewise unenforceable?
And as I pointed out, that makes traditional organized crime a more selective "elite" organization, since a patent pool will cheerfully accept anyone who can stop drooling long enough to acquire a purportedly applicable patent. Not to mention that an actual organized crime gang will protect you from their competitors, not invite them in to participate in the racket.
Clearly, you're getting much greater value for your extortion money with the Mob.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
Yet another reason software patents should not exist. Someone develops software it should be a copyright, period. Patents for what is blatantly obvious is just plain wrong. There will be a point where every bit of software is patented and no one will be able to develop anything better. For the US and any other country with software patents they are screwing themselves. New and better things will be developed outside of these countries and be sold outside of these countries and that patent protection becomes detrimental. It prevents innovation not encourages. Companies with the patents become complacent and do not innovate because they think they don't have to.
google doesn't have guarantee anything involving protection of patent violations. They own the goddamn codec and thus control development. This is unlike MPEG. Unless MPEG can magically prove that not only A: there's something in VP8 that infringes on a MPEG patent (which wouldn't immediately and easily be invalidated once they say which patent it is), but b: this would assume that an open source codec cannot work around a patent restriction, which is quite safe to assume is very real and possible, and also c: that google won't just take MPEG to court and basically prove that they can't do jack shit to patent encumber VP8.
H264 is on many things, but there are many it isn't and won't be unless MPEG says that it can be royalty free permanently.
You're thick, because that's precisely what they did. Theora is essentially VP3, the predecessor of VP8, which is what Google released 2 days ago. Oh that and Vorbis is the audio codec. Notice how they use Vorbis as the audio codec in WebM. And yes, WebM is a subset of Matroska (MKV) before you ask about that.
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
That and the fact that H.264 is already on every device on the planet.
The only devices I own that will play h.264 are my computers. Only in the past 2 years have devices come out that can play h264. Of those, there are even fewer that you would actually want to watch stuff on. Most of those devices have only come out in the past year
And if your talking about web connected devices that can play h264, you have an even smaller pool.
It is defiantly used a lot, but it's impact in the mobile device space is not this huge entrenched market that some think.
There's no patent pool concerning MP3 (or at least, there wasn't when the new claims arose.) On top of that, MP3 kind of took everyone by surprise, it was never supposed to be an online media distribution format. At the time of the original release of MPEG-1, the assumption was it would be used primarily by creators of CD based content, which had a direct impact on the number of organizations who cared at the time to get involved.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
This is just like all those anti-gun politicians who won't go anywhere without their armed bodyguards. Hey, they don't believe in carrying guns personally, but you know, there are bad people out there...
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Yet they trust the MPEG-LA promise that after 2015, they'll continue to allow H.264 for non-commercial use for free. Suuuuuuuuuure.
I would say the same about MPEG LA: don't trust vague promises. However, concerning future increases of royalty fees, they've made a very clear statement concerning the maximum level of increase, which is discussed in this article.
Apart from that, the risk if MPEG LA started to charge for non-commercial use of H.264 after 2015 is that one has to pay or has to cease using it for such purposes, while the WebM/VP8 patent problem could affect every adopter of that technology anytime now and have some really nasty consequences (cease-and-desist, injunctions, damages/backroyalties, future royalties).
It is a BSD style license, and also licenses you to use the patents on it royalty free, however it is revoked in the event you file a patent claim against VP8. Well this implies two things:
1) If you go after VP8, you can't use it in any form in any of your stuff. So say Sony sues over an H.264 patent they hold that they say VP8 infringes on. Ok now all their hardware can't legally play VP8 anymore, their license has been revoked. However that hardware may have the ability to do so because it is part of the TI chip they use (Google is working with chip makers). So now they have to recall existing hardware and redesign using a new chip, or face counter-litigation. Oh, and of course even if they do it means they can't play VP8 content anymore, which means their devices aren't as attractive.
2) Google has patents on VP8, that they got when they bought On2. If any technology the company filing suit makes use of infringes on those, well then they can count-sue. Perhaps one of the VP8 patents applies to H.264 as well. So you could risk getting nailed with a similar suit and finding yourself unable to sell hardware using H.264. Remember: MPEG-LA only says that their members can't sue you if you have a license. If anyone else who's not a member has a patent, well you are on your own.
The decision was reversed on appeal.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Google is not stupid. They have a lot of smart people working there. They also, as with any company, have a plenty large legal staff. Given that they bought On2 some time ago, this is clearly not a spur-of-the-moment kind of decision. They've considered this. Well that tells me that they have come to the conclusion that either VP8 doesn't infringe, or that they have the resources to fight it.
Something else to remember is that while it might infringe on some patents, perhaps those patents are invalid, perhaps there's prior art. Now, who would be able to find that sort of thing the best? Probably someone who had access to a lot of information and was good at data mining. Well, that would be Google. They are the kings of data mining, they have access to more information than, well, probalby anyone except maybe the NSA.
So perhaps they looked at the MPEG-LA patents and said "Well, all of the ones VP8 might infringe on have prior art out there, so we can get them shot down."
Whatever the case, I bet this was a reasoned, thought out, move. They didn't just say "Hey, let's open source some shit for fun!" Also please note the coincides with their Google TV stuff. Google wants in to the video distribution market in a big way, they've been working on this and planning.
Now that doesn't mean they'd be successful. This could all get fought in court, Google could lose, etc. However they have the resources, in terms of money, brainpower, technology, and so on to fight. I'm guessing they think they can win.
Apple is just scared because they were starting to believe they were going to become the kings of all media, that everything would have to come through their devices, and Google is now threatening to take that away.
The question that comes to my mind, is that if the MPEG-LA wants to torpedo VP8, it would mean putting those patents up to court scrutiny, and potentially getting them revoked in the process.
They should be careful what they wish for.
Yeah, but even MPEG-2 is better than MPEG-2.
That's not a joke or a typo. The codec world has moved on quite considerably since the release of MPEG-1, and development of MPEG-2 encoders has resulted in stunning improvements in the last few years, in part because of the requirements of ATSC, and in part because of the improvements in processor technology.
I've been wondering for a while if the right approach for the whole codec mess is to wait until MPEG-1 is truly free and clear, and adopt that. You may laugh, but try encoding something in MPEG-1 with ffmpeg, using large (> 100) GOP sizes, and high numbers of B-frames (16+.)* On a normal high performance computer in 2010, the speed of compression is too low to be practical, but the results are excellent, even at relatively low bitrates. 4-6Mbps is more than enough for high quality 720p24, in most cases.
For that reason, I think the Internet video codec debate will be over sooner than people think. The real work has to be done on the encoder side, improving the capabilities of encoders for older formats that'll be patent free soon. But if you look at the bigger picture, MPEG-1 video (and MPEG-1 layers 1/2 audio) will soon be free (some claim they already are), bandwidth is improving, CPU power is improving, While a superb MPEG-1 encoder will never be as good as a superb H.264 encoder, the necessity of one over the other will diminish in time.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
AFAIK VP8 was designed with avoiding infringing patents in the first place. The easiest way to do that is to exactly like h264, while changing enough so as to be different from at least one claim of each patent. IIRC if you can show you're not doing something exactly like the claim, you're not infringing. That doesn't work when the patent is too vague, but then the patent owner faces the risk of having his patent rejected and/or having prior art.
Wouldn't Google's acquisition of On2 Technologies mean they acquired some relevant patents too? [...] You seem very convinced Google has no patents they can use to countersue should the need arise, [...]
Just to clarify, I didn't say that I rule out Google has any patents that may read on H.264 or on some products of MPEG LA contributors. But Google as a whole has far too few patents to even take on one of the major MPEG LA members, let alone all of them. If they start that kind of "pissing contest", they'll face a very serious problem.
If Google had the necessary patent power, it would have come to the aid of HTC as well. However, HTC determined it had no alternative to paying royalties to Microsoft and Apple sued HTC (which provoked a complaint by HTC to the US International Trade Commission, but that one looks very weak).
After the first billion or so, there's a limit to how much better of a lawyer you can buy.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
(Warning: Contains far more than usual amount of fuming.)
There's only one chance to make a first impression. MPEG-LA just used theirs, in relation to the WebM. And good grief, what did that reveal.
The MPEG-LA wants patent-encumbered video format as a web standard. That'd allow them to rake in the money. The whole "H.264 is free of charge for time being" thing is a giant big smokescreen. Google is already allowing VP8 to be freely used in perpetuity; in light of that, what other purpose than long-term plan to start charging for the whole thing would MPEG-LA's patent pool have than to start charging for the stuff after all? If they really wanted a free standard, they'd just leave Google alone.
This attitude alone, in my opinion, weighs far more than any technological merit H.264 has. MPEG-LA not in to produce any sort of amicable, altruistic solution to the whole thing. They're not interested in creating a standard that could be used royalty-free. Take any further tokens of niceness with a grain of salt.
Pardon me for getting a little bit cynical here: Part of me wants to say "December 31, 2015 is the day people will start paying for H.264 Internet production and streaming", but since the chance that we'll ever see a HTML5 video standard due to bullshit just like this is close to zero, it's all academic anyway and nothing remarkable will ever happen.
Yes, but it does show the amount of protection that the MPEG-LA license afforded. Absolutely none. Microsoft still had to go pay to defend itself from litigation, it still lost the litigation, and if it wouldn't have been for a judge that was willing to overturn a jury verdict Microsoft would still have been on the hook for millions of dollars.
The MPEG-LA license did absolutely nothing to protect against patent claims from parties outside the pool.
You do realize that licensing and disclaimers couldn't be more different, right?
A disclaimer is a feeble attempt to protect yourself from litigation. The only time it has any force of law is when the law says something like "blah blah blah without notifying the other party blah blah blah". That's when disclaimers work, and that's it. It also shows that the potentially injured party was well aware of the risks involved, and can mitigate, and occasionally completely eliminate, someone's liability.
A license is entirely different. It's a contract. All contracts - even verbal contracts - have the force of law. Period. The only time they don't is when a provision in a contract is countermanded by a state or federal law. For example, a manufacturer cannot create a contract with a buyer that sets a limited warranty for 10 days when the state or federal law says all manufactured goods must have a limited warranty of at least 2 years. The law wins, and that provision is unenforceable.
However, if you agree to paint someone's house blue in 10 days for a peppercorn, you'll lose your ass in court if you paint it red in 12 days and demand ten thousand dollars. That contract has the force of law, and you have to abide by the provisions or face legal consequences. There are usually only damages related to the value of the work done, or not finished, but if you essentially vandalize the place instead of paint it as agreed (in the case of our painting example), you could potentially face punitive damages as well.
Patent and Copyright license is the exact same thing, except it's a contract that allows you to use an idea (patent) or creative work (copyright) under certain conditions.
Open source licenses like BSD or GPL are just as enforceable as any closed source royalty based contract. In fact, I'd imagine almost all closed source licenses have inverse restrictions, mirrors to what open source licenses have - like not being able to share and the like.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
And that is the reason we need to get rid of software patents.
That's not a joke or a typo. The codec world has moved on quite considerably since the release of MPEG-1, and development of MPEG-2 encoders has resulted in stunning improvements in the last few years, in part because of the requirements of ATSC, and in part because of the improvements in processor technology.
I can confirm that. I was checking out some old HDTV recordings from ~2002. They were full-bitrate (~18Mbps) 1080i. They look like crap compared to the ~14Mbps 1080i stuff on most channels now. And those channels look like crap compared to ~30Mbps mpeg2 blurays (which look roughly the same as ~30Mbps h264/vc1 blurays when comparing different releases in different regions that happen to have different encodings).
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
You may be unfamiliar with On2 (makers of VP8), formerly The Duck Corporation.
These guys were doing highly-compressed video in the early '90s, and they've been a background player for quite some time (funny enough, just around the lifetime of patents). Google's looking to do a very giving and unifying thing here (not to mention, cost-saving), but they're not doing it with baskets of rainbows and kittens. They no-doubt have a lengthy patent portfolio to draw on (the reason for buying On2).
News flash: Google also has lawyers.
Stock up on popcorn...
Algorithms cannot be patented.
You're full of it. Just the usual patent proponent hand-waving with no basis in reality. e.g. Video codecs in their entirety are nothing but an algorithm, a computer program, for transforming one collection of bits to another collection of bits. The fact that you don't recognize that shows how deluded you are.
For example, if someone too the MP3 patent and swapped out the key algorithms, they'd be infringing the patent. Conversely, you can take the compression algorithm out of MP3 and use it in something else without violating the patent.
Yep, completely out of touch with reality. When you extract some part of an algorithm all you've got is another smaller algorithm. Distinctions between "idea" and "algorithm" in this context are simply patent office fantasy. Just like their dishonest pretense they can objectively decide whether two ideas are the same or different when they can't even objectively decide whether two shades of the color orange are the same or different.
---
It's valuable because it's standard, not standard because it is valuable.