Linked by Thom Holwerda on Thu 7th Mar 2013 20:47 UTC
"Google and MPEG LA announced today that they have entered into agreements granting Google a license to techniques that may be essential to VP8 and earlier-generation VPx video compression technologies under patents owned by 11 patent holders. The agreements also grant Google the right to sublicense those techniques to any user of VP8, whether the VP8 implementation is by Google or another entity. It further provides for sublicensing those VP8 techniques in one next-generation VPx video codec. As a result of the agreements, MPEG LA will discontinue its effort to form a VP8 patent pool." The word that stood out to me: the auxiliary verb 'may', which has a rather low epistemic modality. To me, this indicates that this is not so much a clear-cut case of VP8 infringing upon patents, but more a precautionary move on Google's part.
Thread beginning with comment 554595
To view parent comment, click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
To view parent comment, click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
RE[4]: Comment by Nelson
by jared_wilkes on Thu 7th Mar 2013 23:13
in reply to "RE[3]: Comment by Nelson"
Member since:2011-04-25
Member since:2010-10-05
There's nothing stopping a public company to give out something for free, even if they had to pay for it, as long as they can convince shareholders that this will generate revenue or reduce costs in the long run.
E.g. whatever the cost of VP8 license was to Google can be much cheaper than H.264 rate for running YouTube.
Member since:
2010-10-05
We don't know how much it cost for Google (if anything), but it's free for everyone using the license:
http://blog.webmproject.org/2013/03/vp8-and-mpeg-la.html
http://www.webmproject.org/license/additional/