codec quality

Posted Dec 13, 2007 13:36 UTC (Thu) by DonDiego (guest, #24141)
In reply to: codec quality by nettings
Parent article: Specifying codecs for the web

theora is based on a patented codec (VP3 by On2) donated to the open-source community. a license for unlimited use has been granted, and a lot of legal babble ensures that this stays so.

therefore it has been scrutinized by patent law to some extent and found sufficiently original that a patent was granted.

Your faith in patent law and the patent offices is honorable, but unfortunately there is no base for it in reality. The above points do not in any way refute my claim that the lack of patent encumbrances in Theora is - sadly - little more than wishful thinking by certain parties.

To the best of my knowledge there has not even been an exhaustive patent search around Theora to put some confidence into the assumption that Theora is free of patent encumbrances. Not that such a search could be exhaustive, but it could give people some confidence.