

MPEG Plus or Patent Pool Lite? MPEG Mulls Royalty-Free Proposals - yuhong
http://www.robglidden.com/2011/12/mpeg-plus-or-patent-pool-lite-mpeg-mulls-royalty-free-proposals/

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nitrogen
Two questions: was this move spurred by increased adoption of the non-MPEG
WebM, and did they consider (or even mention) using WebM or Theora as a
royalty-free baseline instead of an amalgamation of MPEG1, MPEG2, and JPEG?

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keeperofdakeys
MPEG takes the position that Theora and WebM infringe on patents, and have
been (publicly) attempting to find patents that infringe (notice they haven't
actually put forward any such patents). In fact, the biggest reason Apple,
Microsoft, and other large tech companies don't back Theora and WebM are
because of the fear of submarine patents; patents that people aren't aware of
that cover Theora and WebM. The situation isn't helped by the fact that Theora
and WebM are broadly comparable to codecs developed by MPEG.

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dchest
You are confusing MPEG
(<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moving_Picture_Experts_Group>) and MPEG LA
(<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPEG_LA>). The latter one is evil.

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keeperofdakeys
Yes I was, things seem a lot clearer now. So, from what I understand,
researchers (and companies) make standards through MPEG and ISO. Companies
holding patents for the included technologies then put their patents into the
MPEG LA patent pool (in a way totally unrelated to MPEG). Is that about right?

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dchest
Yes.

