MPEG LA Announces Call for Patents Essential to VP8 Video Codec

Posted Feb 13, 2011 16:48 UTC (Sun) by jmalcolm (subscriber, #8876)
In reply to: MPEG LA Announces Call for Patents Essential to VP8 Video Codec by rfunk
Parent article: MPEG LA Announces Call for Patents Essential to VP8 Video Codec

I mostly agree with you. However, the way that Google is licensing WebM introduces a wrinkle.

If WebM becomes popular, many companies that have actual customers will want to use it. If they do, the WebM license limits their ability to pursue patent suits later.

So, if somebody has patents that they think are material to WebM they may need to choose between opposing it's adoption now or participating in it later.

This does not apply to pure patent trolls of course.

MPEG LA Announces Call for Patents Essential to VP8 Video Codec

Posted Feb 15, 2011 19:17 UTC (Tue) by njs (subscriber, #40338) [Link]

I bet there are a bunch of ways around this in practice. Sell the patents to a troll, switch to a clean-room implementation of WebM and pay any damages for their previous usage, etc. These companies can afford sneaky lawyers.

Having that clause in the WebM license is better than not having it, but it's no guarantee.