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Growth Market in Theora FUD
,----[ Quote ]
| A blogger named Hugo Roy posted a piece
| called An Open Letter to Steve Jobs in
| which he picked on Steve a bit about the
| openness of H.264. A few valid points were
| made, but most interestingly, Hugo then
| posted an email response he says came from
| Steve himself, which included the following
| inflammatory quote:
|
| A patent pool is being assembled to go
| after Theora and other âopen sourceâ
| codecs now. Unfortunately, just because
| something is open source, it doesnât
| mean or guarantee that it doesnât
| infringe on others patents.
|
| If this is true, it is bad news for Theora
| indeed. Can the Mozilla foundation afford
| to hang a giant "Kick Me" sign on the next
| version of Firefox? Can they afford to
| litigate against even a single patent
| lawsuit, much less this consortium Steve is
| quoted as knowing of?
`----
http://www.drdobbs.com/blog/archives/2010/05/growth_market_i.html;jsessionid=FDOGHWWIL331FQE1GHPCKHWATMY32JVN
Microsoft defends its move to H.264
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1604070/microsoft-defends-h-264
Canonical licenses H.264 â Theora out for the count? [Updated]
,----[ Quote ]
| Canonical are currently the only Linux
| company to license H.264/AVC, the patented
| non-free technology used to compress video
| and favoured by companies such as Apple &
| Microsoft for HTML5 Video.
|
| Neither RedHat, makers of Fedora, or
| Novell, makers of Suse, appear on the list
| of over 800 licensee's.
|
| Whatâs interesting is that the rival, if
| you will, to H.264 is the free and open
| codec Ogg Theroa which one would naturally
| assume would be the favoured choice for a
| Linux distributionâs parent to support.
`----
http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2010/05/canonical-licenses-h264.html
Why Is MPEG-LA Getting Into The Patent Trolling Game?
,----[ Quote ]
| Joe Mullin has a great blog post, looking
| in detail at MobileMedia, a recently
| launched "company" that fits all the
| traditional characteristics of a "patent
| troll" or "non-practicing entity" (if you'd
| prefer). It doesn't appear to do anything
| but hold patents, demand licensing fees and
| sue. So what's so interesting about this
| one? Well, it's a subsidiary of MPEG-LA,
| the company that manages some important
| digital video standards, and manages the
| patent pools related to them -- and both
| companies have the same CEO.
|
| [...]
|
| What I find interesting, of course, is that
| many patent system folks have said that
| patent pools are the "answer" to issues
| like non-practicing entities filing crazy
| lawsuits. And yet, here we have an example
| of one of the major patent pooling
| administrators apparently deciding it's
| more lucrative to get into the other side
| of the business instead...
|
| In the meantime, while all this has been
| going on, it's worth noting that Steve Jobs
| -- one of the targets in this lawsuit --
| has apparently been telling people that
| MPEG-LA is getting ready to sue open video
| codecs, such as Theora, for patent
| infringement. Of course, such threats have
| been made before and never carried out --
| but if MPEG-LA now thinks that suing for
| patent infringement (rather than just
| alerting the patent holders to possible
| infringement) is the way to go these days,
| perhaps the lawsuits above were an opening
| salvo.
`----
http://techdirt.com/articles/20100430/0232599255.shtml
Why Our Civilization's Video Art and Culture is Threatened by the MPEG-LA
,----[ Quote ]
| We've all heard how the h.264 is rolled
| over on patents and royalties. Even with
| these facts, I kept supporting the best-
| performing "delivery" codec in the market,
| which is h.264. "Let the best win", I kept
| thinking. But it wasn't until very recently
| when I was made aware that the problem is
| way deeper. No, my friends. It's not just a
| matter of just "picking Theora" to export a
| video to Youtube and be clear of any
| litigation. MPEG-LA's trick runs way
| deeper! The [street-smart] people at MPEG-
| LA have made sure that from the moment we
| use a camera or camcorder to shoot an mpeg2
| (e.g. HDV cams) or h.264 video (e.g.
| digicams, HD dSLRs, AVCHD cams), we owe
| them royalties, even if the final video
| distributed was not encoded using their
| codecs! Let me show you how deep the rabbit
| hole goes.
`----
http://www.osnews.com/story/23236/Why_Our_Civilization_s_Video_Art_and_Culture_is_Threatened_by_the_MPEG-LA
MPEG Issues Resolution on Type-1 (Royalty-Free) Standardization
http://www.robglidden.com/2010/04/mpeg-resolution-on-royalty-free-standardization/
It's Apple and Microsoft versus Google and Mozilla in a tag team match for the video codec in HTML5
,----[ Quote ]
| As I wrote about earlier, there has been a
| horse race going on about which video
| codecs will be supported by HTML5. With the
| stakes so high, the race is starting to get
| a bit rougher. Now it is turning into a tag
| team match, with Apple and Microsoft on one
| side and Google and Mozilla on the other.
|
| This past weekend both Apple (of the open
| standards according to Steve Jobs) and
| Microsoft (never afraid to assert an
| alleged patent claim) have supposedly put
| down the hammer that Ogg Theora (supported
| by Mozilla) and other open source video
| codecs may violate patents.
|
| [...]
|
| This sets up an interesting tag team match.
| On one side, the defenders of "open
| standards that we like" Apple and
| Microsoft. In the other corner, the open
| source champions Google and Mozilla. Hey
| maybe Adobe can be the guest referee? The
| winner of this match will determine what
| technology will underlie the video you
| watch on the web or your TV in the future.
`----
http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/60763
Will Apple put its lawyers behind the open codec patent attack?
,----[ Quote ]
| All this makes the pending decision in
| Bilski vs. Kappos, still unknown at this
| writing, so important. A decision that
| encourages Apple to proceed, especially
| against Google, may make for the biggest
| lawsuit of all time.
`----
http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=6398
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