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Google and MPEG LA Reach VP8 Patent Agreement

Posted by timothy on from the you-drive-a-hard-bargain dept.

First time accepted submitter Curupira writes "The official WebM blog announced that MPEG LA has licensed all VP8 essential patents to Google Inc., allowing the company to sublicense the described techniques it to any VP8 user on a royalty-free basis." TechCrunch offers a bit more analysis.

1 of 112 comments (clear)

  1. My perspective by xiphmont · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'll add my own thoughts here, also posted at http://xiphmont.livejournal.com/59893.html

    "After a decade of the MPEG LA saying they were coming to destroy the FOSS codec movement, with none other than the late Steve Jobs himself chiming in, today the Licensing Authority announced what we already knew.

    They got nothing. There will be no Theora patent pool. There will be no VP8 patent pool. There will be no VPnext patent pool.

    We knew that of course, we always did. It's just that I never, in a million years, expected them to put it in writing and walk away. The wording suggests Google paid some money to grease this along, and the agreement wording is interesting [and instructive] but make no mistake: Google won. Full stop.

    This is not an unconditional win for FOSS, of course, the LA narrowed the scope of the agreement as much as they could in return for agreeing to stop being a pissy, anti-competetive brat. But this is still huge. We can work with this.

    For at least the immediate future, I shall have to think some uncharacteristically nice things about the MPEG LA.*

    *Apologies to Rep. Barney Frank"