Motorola wins Xbox, Windows 7 ban in Germany over H264 patents
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Wed 2nd May 2012 11:46 UTC
Legal "Motorola Mobility has been granted an injunction against the distribution of key Microsoft products in Germany. The sales ban covers the Xbox 360 games console, Windows 7 system software, Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player. It follows a ruling that Microsoft had infringed two patents necessary to offer H.264 video coding and playback." But... But... The MPEG-LA, Apple, and Microsoft have been lying to us all this time about the safety of using H264 over WebM, with their supporters blindly parroting the party line? This surprises me greatly and deeply, and I dare say I have not seen this coming at all. Not at all. No sir. Not at all.
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The WebM fanboys should be careful here.
by MollyC on Wed 2nd May 2012 18:37 UTC
MollyC
Member since:
2006-07-04

There would appear to be an assumption that WebM violates zero of the ~2500 H.264 patents. I would find that hard to believe.

For the sake of argument, let's say that WebM does indeed violate a subset of the ~2500 H.264 patents. Those in the H.264 patent pool enjoy getting royalties based on those patents (granted those royalties are roughly a 1.2 million times less per patent than what Motorola is demanding for each of its 50 H.264 patents, but whatever...). If Microsoft is prevented from using H.264 in Windows and Xbox, then H.264 could very well be dead, and this would result in everyone abandoning H.264 in favor of WebM. In that scenario, do you think those in the H.264 patent pool will simply sit on their hands and do nothing as their royalties dry up (as a result of H.264 being abandoned in favor of WebM)? You think they might consider enforcing their patents against WebM in that case?

Also, Google should be careful that the EU doesn't see this as an an attempt to kill off H.264 to make way for WebM, as the EU approval of Google's purchase of MotoMobo was based on promises not to engage in such shennanigans.

Reply Score: 2

shmerl Member since:
2010-06-08

Let them come up with some patents first. Otherwise it's FUD. Making way for WebM is required in some form. So far Google betrayed their promise to drop H.264 from Chrome. I doubt they'll ever do it for Youtube in the near future. So if this is a blow for H.264 - it's good. So far WebM is way behind in market adoption.

Edited 2012-05-02 19:00 UTC

Reply Parent Score: 3

ndrw Member since:
2009-06-30

They won't come up with them because these patents are only useful as a scarecrow. They don't apply to WebM (as they deliberately designed it with this in mind), any overlooked patents have a big chance of being invalidated in case of any dispute. See the talk I've linked above.

The story with Motorola and h.264 is very different - h.264 was designed to *infringe* on that patents (and other patents in the pool). This makes it difficult to fight it as MPEG-LA would have to invalidate Motorola's patents, which would then put a big question mark on the value of patents in the pool.

Reply Parent Score: 3

Neolander Member since:
2010-03-08

There would appear to be an assumption that WebM violates zero of the ~2500 H.264 patents. I would find that hard to believe.

I believe that people here fight the assumption commonly made by H.264 proponents that the problem does not exist on both sides.

Basically, software patents are like nuclear weapons : unless they are abolished, the best that can happen is that no one harms anyone out of fear from retaliation.

The difference, of course, is that flipping the switch on software patents is much, much easier than doing so for nukes, because it is simply a matter of rewriting laws, whereas bombs are physical objects.

Reply Parent Score: 2