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Google licenses VP8 patents from MPEG-LA
- wmf 14y agoThis shows that VP8 wasn't as patent-free as On2/Google claimed. OTOH, there's probably nothing to worry about now since Google has licensed the patents on behalf of everyone. Original context from 2010: http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/archives/377 http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/archives/377
- duskwuff 14y ago> OTOH, there's probably nothing to worry about now since Google has licensed the patents on behalf of everyone. Or have they? The press release says that Google can sublicense the patents to other VP8 implementors... edit: never mind, the rtcweb post (below) nails it down a bit.
- wmf 14y agoThey just sent this out: http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/rtcweb/current/msg06631.html http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/rtcweb/current/msg06631... "Google intends to license the techniques under terms that are in line with the W3C’s definition of a Royalty Free License." (I also see they're playing a bit of the martyr by saying "This agreement is not an acknowledgment that the licensed techniques read on VP8." As if the truth has anything to do with patents.)
- duskwuff 14y agoThe W3C's definition of a "Royalty Free License", for reference: http://www.w3.org/2004/02/05-patentsummary.html http://www.w3.org/2004/02/05-patentsummary.html
- armored_mammal 14y ago...on the other hand nothing is patent free these days. If the diaphragm were invented today we'd all be getting our lungs ripped out for patent infringement.
- mdda 14y agoIt doesn't demonstrate that VP8 wasn't patent-free - just that Google felt signing a license with MPEG-LA was the best route to clearing up the issue. IMHO, MPEG-LA probably just scored some free cash. However, by avoiding a legal battle, and getting a 'clean bill of health' for VP8 from their main detractor, Google's VP8 is now ready for much wider adoption. After all, the principle patent-free niggle issue has now been dealt with cleanly.
- taligent 14y agoPatents were never the reason for a lack of VP8 adoption. When you have the likes of Adobe, Apple, Canon, Microsoft and Sony firmly against it was always going to be a dead on arrival. I honestly don't know why Google bothered to buy the company in the first place. Seems an odd place to assert a competing position.
- nitrogen 14y agoWhen the dinosaurs of old media die, the web will remain. The question is whether that web will be open and royalty free, or owned by new dinosaurs. The purchase of On2 was a move in the direction of an open web.
- 0x09 14y agoThat will sound more palatable when the royalty-free web can provide the technically superior solution.
- taligent 14y agoI unfortunately am cynical and don't believe that in the presence of so many commercial interests that free and open is going to reign supreme. The odds are simply too stacked against it. Instead I would much prefer to see standards made available under low royalty, FRAND terms. This has worked to great effect for WiFi, USB, Bluetooth etc. But of course that is looking harder to achieve with FRAND abusers like Google around.
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- danbmil99 14y agoPrecisely the opposite. If MPEG-LA thought they had VP8 dead to rights, they would never have agreed to this deal -- they would have litigated to the bitter end. This is actually a huge badge of honor for VP8, and a repudiation of the meme that somehow it's just an H.264 knock-off. It's always stunned me that the same community that hates on patent trolls is in love with H264 (aka MPEG4++). MPEG-LA are IMSHO the very definition of trolls -- patenting (and charging royalties for) techniques that were obvious and known art in the video compression community for ages.
- wmf 14y agoLitigating to the bitter end is rarely rational. I can imagine a couple scenarios where this deal makes sense; e.g. if Google paid more than what a pool would have earned.
- anon1385 14y ago>It's always stunned me that the same community that hates on patent trolls is in love with H264 The same community that hates patent trolls continued to use gif and MP3 for many years, so I'm not sure why use of H264 would surprise you. And are people really 'in love' with it? All I see is people who prefer the clearly technically superior option. Not to mention the fact that many of us live in places where software patents are not relevant, and don't feel inclined to use inferior technology just because of the idiocies of the US legal system.
- ZeroGravitas 14y agoH.264 is an inferior technology that only exists because of the idiocies of the US legal system. (MPEG-LA specifically asked the US gov if they could set up a patent cartel without being held to account for antitrust). See the excellent comment above by AnthonyMouse that explains the process. But since those "idiocies" have had their intended effect of squashing competition you don't know what you are missing. Its like everyone complaining about how bad other office suites are when MSFT controls the evolution of the .doc format and Windows. You'll only notice if we end up locked into using and paying for H.264 long after it stops being technically current.
- shmerl 14y agoThis doesn't really show anything until the details on these patents are published.
- ZeroGravitas 14y agoThe fun think about patent poker is that the players never reveal their hand, regardless of if they win or lose. Microsoft ended up giving Barnes & Noble (a bookstore for goodness sake) half-a-billion dollars after going after them for Android/Linux patents, but if you read the press release then they focus on an ongoing royalty payment going in the opposite direction. Google may have entered negotiation with these 11 patent holding firms and threatened to destroy them with either a giant patent lawsuit or just by bullying them with their massive bank account, team of corporate lawyers, and market control. I would suggest the royalty free licence to these patents for use in VP8 or VP9 would take either that or a very big bag of cash from Google (or some combination of the two). It's not really to either sides benefit to reveal what happened after they've got the best deal they thought they could though.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- 0x09 14y agoThere's also a post on the webm project blog about it: http://blog.webmproject.org/2013/03/vp8-and-mpeg-la.html http://blog.webmproject.org/2013/03/vp8-and-mpeg-la.html > we may sublicense those techniques to any VP8 user on a royalty-free basis What did Google put in their drinks?
- olgeni 14y agoAnd what did the complimentary Google Glasses actually show?
- samspenc 14y agoI wonder if this also relates to the Motorola-Microsoft lawsuit over Motorola patents being used in Microsoft products... apparently MPEG-LA figures in there somehow: http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20130302164903635 http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20130302164903635
- rayiner 14y agoThis is an educational take on VP8 that considers both patent issues and technical issues: http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/archives/377 http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/archives/377
- ChuckMcM 14y agoThis seems like a pretty rational way to go. It side steps the issue fairly cleanly by paying off the consortium who now would look bad if they came back and tried to sue people for using VP8.
- taligent 14y agoPretty sure the handful of people who use VP8 aren't going to cause a PR problem for MPEG LA or its members.
- nitrogen 14y agoIt's obvious you have a personal axe to grind with VP8. You show up in every VP8 thread, going on and on about how VP8 is dead on arrival[0]. Why don't you tell us all why you're so personally invested in this argument? [0] http://www.hnsearch.com/search?q=VP8+taligent http://www.hnsearch.com/search?q=VP8+taligent
- ChuckMcM 14y agoPerhaps a refugee from 'pink' ? Codec wars are pretty old though, just look at discussions of Ogg vs MP3. My hope is that a bit of traction out there on it and it will establish itself by virtue of its lack of royalties.
- Legion 14y agoHe does the same in Every. Single. Thread. about Linode. http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=linode+taligent http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=linode+tali... Basically, all this person seems to do is troll a certain set of pet topics.
- taligent 14y agohttp://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=taligent http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=taligent I have a higher karma than you in a much shorter time. So logically that means I comment on a range of topics. I continually comment on Linode because I don't believe that companies that deliberately hide security incidents should be praised.
- Millennium 14y agoWay to legitimize the FUD, Google.
- danbmil99 14y agoThis is an excellent development -- it takes almost all the remaining FUD out of VP8.
- shmerl 14y agoThis sounds bad. Does it mean that Google admits that VP8 is patent encumbered now? What are those patents and is it really true or it's Google chickening before the MPEG-LA trolls and there are no real patents involved?
- stefantalpalaru 14y agoLooks like they just payed the bullies instead of fighting them.
- shmerl 14y agoGoogle should disclose what those patents are so others could evaluate whether they really affect the codec or not. While I don't like that Google obliges these trolls, this can be conductive for wider VP8 adoption.
- danbmil99 14y agoOn2's patents: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-adv.htm&r=0&p=1&f=S&l=50&Query=AN%2F%28%28%22Duck+Corporation%22+OR+On2%29+ANDNOT+Green%29%0D%0A%0D%0A&d=PTXT http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sec... MPEG's patents (pdf, sorry): http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/avc/Documents/avc-att1.pdf http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/avc/Documents/avc-att1.p... enjoy
- shmerl 14y agoThis doesn't help sorry, since it doesn't say which patents are supposedly affecting VP8, and which Google has supposedly licensed.
- jfb 14y agoI know facts are tough, but the MPEG-LA is in no wise comprised of trolls. Dolby, Apple, Philips, Samsung, Microsoft -- not NPEs, sorry.
- TazeTSchnitzel 14y agoNow if only Google would actually remove H.264 support from Chrome.
- calebegg 14y agoFor real. They said they were going to over two years ago. http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/html-video-codec-support-in-chrome.html http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/html-video-codec-support-in... I'd really like to see them actually follow through on this.
- Already__Taken 14y agoA huge part of the problems with the web are people playing politics with technology. Leave the highly common hardware accelerated that's the _only_ one all browsers support alone. VP8 can beat it on technical grounds.
- calebegg 14y agoAs far as I remember, Firefox only supports H.264 on Windows. So it's not quite supported by all browsers.
- holloway 14y agoWhat does this mean for the WebRTC developers who made Opus and are now looking at making a video codec? It would have been nice to have examples of video that didn't step on MPEGLA's patents.
- gcp 14y agoThere is a push to make VP8 MTI for WebRTC, but there was obvious pushback from people who preferred H.264, despite most of the normal arguments for H.264 (hardware support) have zero bearing on the low-latency requirements of WebRTC (most hardware encoders can't meet the requirements for videochat). Those people didn't have an argument and can't even pretend they have one now. What's going to happen next is that all in the MPEG-LA will still oppose making VP8 MTI (because the licensing for it is obviously way less interesting for them compared to H.264), but any neutral bystanders might be swayed more in the direction of VP8. It would have been nice to have examples of video that didn't step on MPEGLA's patents. We have, it's called VP8.
- josteink 14y agoInvent your own technology and then license the patents for it from someone else. Hmmm... Why doesn't that seem right?