Patent enforcement is not illegal, but it is illegal to misuse a patent for anticompetitive purposes. The area of law where patent law and anti-trust law inter

Patent enforcement is not illegal, but it is illegal to misuse a patent for anticompetitive purposes. The area of law where patent law and anti-trust law intersect is very complex, so I cannot explain it here, but suffice it to say there are situations where patents can be misused for anticompetitive purposes and this can result in violation of antitrust law. Some examples may include situations where you have a patent for system A that rightfully grants you a monopoly on system A, but use that patent to get a monopoly on or control the distribution of system B which is not covered by your patent. This is something that may apply in this case although I am not sure it does. MPEG-LA keeps its major license agreements secret, so we do not know what is happening. None of the above is legal advice.