Patent lawyers working on standards like H.264 actually have incentive to make them cover as little as possible. Making the claims narrower may reduce the chan

Patent lawyers working on standards like H.264 actually have incentive to make them cover as little as possible. Making the claims narrower may reduce the chance of invalidation in any potential dispute. Meanwhile, the patent needs only to cover exactly what's in the standard in order to participate in the licensing pool. As long as they match the standard carefully, implementers can't work around the patent while also remaining compliant. Gregory Maxwell points out that this is likely applicable to H.264 and VP8: "As we’ve pointed out before, many codec patents are exceptionally easy to work around: They specify every little detail because it makes it _much_ easier to get through the examination but doesn’t harm the patent’s ability to read on the final standard because the standard specifics exactly the patented behaviour... We can assume that in cases where VP8 looks similar to H.264 those would have been exactly the cases where care was taken to differ in the right places. I’d expect the primary risks for VP8 to be anywhere _but_ there." http://blog.gingertech.net/2010/05/20/vp8-adobe-is-the-key-to-open-video/#comment-5882 http://blog.gingertech.net/2010/05/20/vp8-adobe-is-the-key-t...