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I think the article you linked is a pretty reasonable interpretation. Google was claiming VP8 didn’t infringe any patents they didn’t own, which apparently wasn
by rlanday 14y ago
I think the article you linked is a pretty reasonable interpretation. Google was claiming VP8 didn’t infringe any patents they didn’t own, which apparently wasn’t the case, and now they’re having to backpedal and say, “well, it did infringe them, but we’re covering the licensing.” My understanding is that MPEG-LA does not engage in “patent trolling,” but exists to provide an easy way to license all the (known) patents. I think it would be up to the individual patent holders to try to sue for infringement. I think Daniel Eran Dilger is spot-on here; there’s been a lot of misinformation being spread by some proponents of free video codecs, first that Theora is good or almost as good as H.264 based on some crappy codec comparisons (it’s not), and then that VP8 was not patent-encumbered. I recall thinking the situation with VP8 when Google first released it for free kind of seemed to me like a “turd sandwich,” since the quality was somewhere between slightly inferior and very inferior (due to a bad encoder) to H.264, and the licensing was uncertain, despite Google’s claims.
- TheZenPsycho 14y agoIt seems that google's position is firmly that this agreement is not an admission that they infringed any patents. That said, it's a pretty funny statement coming from an entity that just paid for patent licensing. The tricky thing about the situation is that the details of the agreement aren't clear enough to say who "won", and personally, it looks to me more like a stalemate. Even stalemate might be putting it strongly, as it implies that they are in some kind of opposition, which may not be the case.
- ratherbefuddled 14y ago"Paid for" is an assumption isn't it?
- TheZenPsycho 14y agoOh you're right. It seems they are being tight lipped about whether money was exchanged.
- corresation 14y agoGoogle was claiming VP8 didn’t infringe any patents they didn’t own, which apparently wasn’t the case, and now they’re having to backpedal and say, “well, it did infringe them, but we’re covering the licensing.” VP8 saw little market acceptance because of the legal threats of MPEG-LA (did that consortium ever actual detail specific "infringed" patents? The last I saw they just made blanket statements that there must be something). So Google paid them protection money. By no analysis does this mean that they admit infringing of anything, and such an analysis of legal agreements is woefully naive.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]