'Free' H.264 a Precursor To WebM Patent War?

webmink writes "The MPEG LA seem unwilling to explain why they have extended their 'free' H.264 streaming video policy now. This article unpacks the history of MPEG LA and then suggests the obvious — it's all because of WebM — and the worrying — maybe it's preparing the ground for opening a third front in the patent war against Google."

Comments

Not Google but Mozilla

[Per Cederberg]

The natural party to sue would be Mozilla or Opera here, not Google I think. Google already pay the appropriate license fees for YouTube, so there seems to be very little of a legal case there.

Re:Not Google but Mozilla

[feranick]

The lawsuit against Google would concern the alleged violation of MPEG-LA's patents in Google's WebM, not in the unlicensed use of h264...

Re:Wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

What part of "royalty free forever" did you not understand?

A lot more than you apparently. Its royalty free for only ONE SPECIFIC type of streaming. AND you still need a licensed (not free) encoder/decoders. AND they can change their mind. The court fees for any defense you feel entitled too are yours to bear.

so there is no way for Firefox to offer this.

They have more than enough money to pay for this..

The 5million a year does not get you the right for 3rd party distribution. Firefox would not be permitted to be part of any Linux distribution for example with them also paying the 5 million. You would not longer be allowed to give a copy of a distribution to a friend. 3rd party distribution like this will *never* be permitted by MPEG-LA. Not permitting unrestricted 3rd party distribution is a violation of the Mozilla/GPL etc type license. It is simply not legal in the US and other countries that support software patents.

Re:It's not "Free" to begin with.

[TheRaven64]

the encoding is not free

Unless you use x.264.

In which case, you still need a patent license from the MPEG-LA if you live in a country where any of their patents are valid.

So all those open source projects like VLC, MPlayer, etc are paying through the nose to the MPEG-LA?

Nope, they all use FFMPEG, which is based in France. France does not recognise software patents, so they are not required to pay anything. Using them in the USA without a patent license, however, is illegal.

Re:Patented Standards

[mcgrew]

I found a link from TFA to be quite interesting:

Where does WebM fit in?
WebM combines the Ogg Vorbis audio codec with the VP8 video codec Google obtained through its February 2010 acquisition of On2 Technologies for $133.9 million. On2 has a long history in codecs: Its earlier VP3 technology formed the foundation of Ogg Theora, and its VP6 was widely used in video streaming on the Web by virtue of its inclusion in Adobe Systems' Flash Player. VP8 had only been under development until this week, but now Google has issued the specification for the technology, source code and a software developer kit to let programmers use it, and a collection of partners who endorsed it in varying degrees. In contrast to how On2 handled its codecs and to how an industry group called MPEG LA licenses patents for using H.264, Google released WebM as a royalty-free technology. That means among other things that nobody will have to pay for using it and that open-source software projects can incorporate it directly.

Hooray! Free codecs for everyone! Who could possibly be unhappy about this?
The 26 companies and organizations that have contributed to the pool of H.264 patents. Among them: Microsoft, LG Electronics, Panasonic, Philips Electronics, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, and Toshiba. Apple holds a single patent in the pool, too. It's not cheap to research video technology, and it's not cheap to license it, either. For example, even though Microsoft holds 73 patents in the H.264 pool, the company pays twice as much for its rights to ship H.264 support in Windows 7 as it receives back from MPEG LA for its share of the rights.

What's MPEG LA doing about it?
At a minimum, it's raising doubts about whether VP8 infringes video patents, and maybe more. Group spokesman Tom O'Reilly won't comment about whether VP8 infringes any H.264 patents, but he did say Thursday that MPEG LA is considering a new patent pool that would license any patents used in VP8 technology: "Although we assume virtually all codecs are based on patented technology, the AVC/H.264 License we offer is limited to providing coverage for the use of AVC/H.264." Added MPEG LA Chief Executive Larry Horn, "Google has the right to disclaim royalties for its own technologies, if any, but it doesn't have the right to disclaim them without appropriate permissions for technologies owned by others, or otherwise contribute to the infringement of those technologies

Why use H.264 when Google is giving us WebM for free?