

Google licenses VP8 patents from MPEG-LA - av500
http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20130307006192/en/Google-MPEG-LA-Announce-Agreement-Covering-VP8

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wmf
This 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>

~~~
danbmil99
Precisely 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.

~~~
nl
There is no such thing as "dead to rights" in a patent war over algorithms. It
would come down to the jury, and it would be a gamble (as the disagreement
amongst people _who should know_ about whether VP8 infringes or not shows).

The risk for MPEG-LA in _not_ agreeing is that the patent pool would collapse
- if Google isn't in then why should anyone else remain in the pool?

I do agree that this agreement seems to be pretty good for Google though.
Their ability to sub license VP8 has the potential to undermine royalties for
H264 to the patent pool.

BTW, MPEG-LA isn't a patent troll by any conventional definition.

Firstly, MPEG-LA _doesn't_ patent anything itself, they are merely an
organisation to pool related patents amongst member organisations.

Secondly, the member organisations are mostly (all?) the opposite of patent
trolls, too: they hold patents in the field because they are _actively
producing software in the field_. That is the opposite of the typical non-
practising-entity patent troll model.

Thirdly, if you do accept software patents then the patent pool model is
actually quite a nice way to manage them. It means people who want to work in
the field only have to deal with one entity and gain protection from patent
claims from any other company in the field. (Note: I _don't_ accept software
patents at all - just pointing out that while they exist this isn't a bad way
to do them).

I have no real opinion on VP8 vs H264, but I do know that the patent situation
is much more complex than you seem to believe.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
>The risk for MPEG-LA in _not_ agreeing is that the patent pool would collapse
- if Google isn't in then why should anyone else remain in the pool?

I think you have it kind of backwards. This whole thing is inside baseball.

Start with the patent system. It's really easy to get a narrow patent. It's
far too easy to get an overly broad and totally obvious patent. It's _really
easy_ to get a narrow patent.

So what happens when all the industry players come together to create a
standard for a video codec? They all offer up their "technologies" for
inclusion in the standard, because if it gets included and they have a patent
then they get royalties. Some of these are the ridiculously overbroad and
obvious patents everyone is accustomed to complaining about. But here's where
the narrow patents come in: Narrower patents tend to be stronger. It's harder
to find invalidating prior art if the claims are more specific. Plus, more is
better, and narrow patents are easier to get. So what they do is they all file
for specific patents on exactly what they intend to put in the standard, so
that all the major industry players each have several strong patents that
cover the standard they're creating. The incentive that they each have
individually to do this is obvious, and the others allow it because they want
to do it too and they implicitly expect reciprocity.

It's basically a method for implicit collusion. They each include a bunch of
patented stuff in the standard primarily for the purpose of increasing the
amount of royalties they get from anyone who uses it. Since each of the major
players does the same thing, the royalties between one another largely cancel
out, but if there are any minor players or any new competitor attempts to
enter the market, now they've got to pay a bunch of royalties to all the
incumbents to use the standard whereas the incumbents don't have to pay any
royalties to them because the newcomer wasn't around at the time to have put
their patented technologies in the standard. It serves as a pretty effective
method to thwart competition, and it's really hard for the antitrust
authorities to prove anything illegal is going on.

So enter Google/On2 and VP8. They don't like all this. "Promote competition in
markets complementary to your own" is business 101. So they specifically
design a codec that doesn't infringe the H.264 patents and release it free to
the world. Obviously this means one less barrier to competition in those
markets -- it's exactly the same strategy as giving away Android for free. You
can't allow a cartel to form in a complementary market or eventually they'll
find a way to lock up all your customers behind a toll booth and squeeze all
the margins out of your market.

This doesn't make MPEG-LA happy. They're in the toll booth business. If people
start using VP8 or its successors then the whole antitrust-resistant implicit
collusion scheme is going to fall apart. So they try to figure out how to stop
it, but what can they do? When you sell hammers, you start seeing nails
everywhere. So they threaten to create a patent pool for VP8. The point of the
pool was never to actually license patents to people who wanted to use VP8.
VP8 is somewhat worse than H.264 on account of having to avoid some of the
ridiculously broad and obvious patents. If you have to license patents then
you might as well just use H.264. Which was the real point of the pool for
VP8. Make sure there doesn't exist a decent royalty-free codec so that people
can't use it instead of H.264.

But VP8 was specifically designed to avoid all known patents, so setting up a
pool for it turns out to be harder than it sounds. On the other hand, software
patents are so broken that you can generally find a few bad ones that maybe
possibly read on any given thing, at least to the point that you can tie it up
in litigation for years. So that's what I imagine happened here: MPEG-LA
probably knew they wouldn't be able to win in the end, but they had the
ability to cause trouble, which can be leveraged into a tidy settlement.

~~~
nl
I'm not sure why you think I have it backwards. That's precisely the point -
if MPEG-LA couldn't get Google to license the patent pool then other patent
holders in the pool might jump ship too.

Imagine if you are patent-holder-X, present scenario: We want to transpose the
MacGuffin, but that is covered by the patents held by ZZZ Corp. But that's ok,
because ZZZ Corp is in the MPEG-LA patent pool, and the patent is covered by
our license so we'll just do it. Happy days at ZZZ Corp

Scenario if Google didn't pay the license: We want to transpose the MacGuffin,
but that is covered by the patents held by ZZZ Corp. So lets see what VP8 does
instead... hmm.. we can do that. And now we don't need out MPEG-LA license, so
lets drop paying that.

Meanwhile at ZZZ Corp: no we aren't getting any revenue from MPEG-LA for out
patent on transposing MacGuffin. But look: Apple and Microsoft and Adobe all
transpose the MacGuffin exactly how the patent explains to do it. If we drop
out of the patent pool now, and then file a new derivative patent on fast
MacGuffin transposing, then everyone will have to pay us fees themselves, or
not implement the new, faster MacGuffin transpose.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
>That's precisely the point - if MPEG-LA couldn't get Google to license the
patent pool then other patent holders in the pool might jump ship too.

But there is no pool for VP8. I'm not aware of anyone being able to articulate
a specific patent that VP8 is alleged to infringe. The point of a patent pool
for VP8 could never be to actually license anyone because the only reason to
use it over H.264 is if it's royalty-free. The point of _threatening to
create_ the pool is to cause FUD as to its royalty-free status. The "license"
Google just bought is them paying MPEG-LA to shove off and stop spreading FUD
about VP8.

------
ChuckMcM
This 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
Pretty sure the handful of people who use VP8 aren't going to cause a PR
problem for MPEG LA or its members.

~~~
nitrogen
It'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>

~~~
taligent
Give us all a break. I am just as 'invested' in this as anyone else is.

I am critical of VP8 because I believe in companies like Google, Apple,
Microsoft etc working together to define standards in the common interest of
the consumer. Google's entire behaviour with VP8/H.264 as well as their FRAND
abuse goes entirely against this.

Standards are good for everyone.

~~~
nitrogen
_Standards are good for everyone._

Royalty-free standards are even better. Given the state of the video codec
world at the time of Google's On2 acquisition, purchasing a codec that was
explicitly designed to avoid MPEG-LA patents seems like the only viable path
they could have taken to a royalty-free codec for the web. And remaining
royalty free is essential to the very concept of the World Wide Web.

Developing a new royalty-free standard would only invite participants to try
to include as many encumbered concepts as possible to derail the royalty-free
aspect, or to delay ratification and implementation for as long as possible to
preserve the revenue from their royalty-bearing codecs.

Having a standard that is designed by committee should not be an end in
itself, but only a means to an end, and if other means are more expedient,
then the other means should be used.

~~~
danbmil99
Exactly. Having been involved in the H264 process (as well as On2/VPx), I saw
first-hand how the big guys abused the process at every turn. Their attitude
was not "we're doing this for everyone", but rather, "cool, with this patent
pool thing we can collude on pricing and it's totally legal!"

Then they spent the rest of the time jockeying to get their allies into
position to ratify their precious patent-protected IP into the standard so
they could reap the royalties and remain in a position of control.

To their credit, the people who actually ran the standards process attempted
to thwart this behavior (they even tried to produce a "royalty free
baseline"), but the powers that be were just too entrenched and committed to
their predatory ways for it to succeed.

I was there, I saw.

------
TazeTSchnitzel
Now if only Google would actually remove H.264 support from Chrome.

~~~
Already__Taken
A 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
As far as I remember, Firefox only supports H.264 on Windows. So it's not
quite supported by _all_ browsers.

~~~
taligent
Firefox supports H.264 on Mac via the QuickTime plugin.

~~~
av500
Firefox supports H.264 on Linux via the Flash plugin

~~~
gcp
Flash has historically always been used to deliver H264 to Firefox, though.
That's not quite the same as the browser supporting it in <video>.

------
shmerl
This 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
Looks like they just payed the bullies instead of fighting them.

~~~
shmerl
Google 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
On2's patents:

[http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-
Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sec...](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)

MPEG's patents (pdf, sorry):

[http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/avc/Documents/avc-
att1.p...](http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/avc/Documents/avc-att1.pdf)

enjoy

~~~
shmerl
This doesn't help sorry, since it doesn't say which patents are supposedly
affecting VP8, and which Google has supposedly licensed.

------
0x09
There's also a post on the webm project blog about it:
<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
And what did the complimentary Google Glasses actually show?

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danbmil99
This is an excellent development -- it takes almost all the remaining FUD out
of VP8.

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Millennium
Way to legitimize the FUD, Google.

~~~
wmf
They've already spent over $100M on VP8; I guess they figured it wasn't worth
spending more to fight 11 companies to the death.

~~~
shmerl
It could be beneficial if they'd bust their patents in the process.

~~~
DannyBee
You have no concept of how much this would cost :)

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josteink
Invent your own technology and then license the patents for it from someone
else.

Hmmm... Why doesn't that seem right?

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samspenc
I 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>

------
rayiner
This is an educational take on VP8 that considers both patent issues and
technical issues: <http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/archives/377>

------
holloway
What 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
There 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.

