

Introducing the WebM Community Cross-License Initiative - yanw
http://blog.webmproject.org/2011/04/introducing-webm-community-cross.html

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dmaz
Nice to see Samsung and LG on board with this, they're two of the AVC/H.264
patent holders.

<http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/Licensors.aspx>

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noahl
So presumably there is an implied threat that if anyone else owns patents that
apply to WebM and tries to sue someone over it, one of these companies will be
able to retaliate?

I imagine that group of companies has enough patents to attack anyone who
works in video, but that wouldn't help against a patent troll.

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randall
This is more about staring down Apple and MPEGLA, who both have commented that
they think WebM is broadly patent encumbered.

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msbarnett
Wouldn't the need for a patent cross-licensing initiative seem to confirm that
WebM _is_ broadly patent encumbered?

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kenjackson
Yes. They've basically just formed an MPEG-LA like patent pool with no
royalty. This is effectively what MPEG-LA requested, except of course they
running the pool.

This is a good move on Google's part, although I am still skeptical that
during this process they may hit patents that are already in one of the MPEG-
LA pools.

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tintin
Via this page:
[http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/graphics/videoformatsuppor...](http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/graphics/videoformatsupport/default.html)
I installed the player for IE9. Strange thing is, the right top movie (WebM)
looks a little nicer in Opera, Chrome and Firefox. The blue text on white it
very crisp in IE9 and smooth in the other browsers.

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kierank
They've dealt with one of the criticisms which was only libvpx was given a
patent licence. The other major criticism was that they are still in control
of VP8, unlike H.264 which was developed and is in control by a multitude of
different organisations.

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kkowalczyk
iPad was also developed and controlled by one organization, and yet it's a
smashing success.

Argument by correlations are weak. In your case, the argument is "standards
controlled by a single organization are worse than those created by multiple
organizations hence WebM is worse than h264". It's a weak argument because you
can compare WebM and h264 directly on any quality you want, you don't have to
use a proxy of how it was developed.

Not to mention that the premise ("standards controlled by a single
organization are worse than those created by multiple organizations") is
easily shown to be false: there are plenty of bad standards developed by
multiple parties and plenty of good standards developed by small groups.
That's the origin of the "design by committee " pejorative. h264 is good not
because it was developed by many companies but rather despite it.

~~~
kierank
I didn't say anything about how the quality of a standard was affected by
whether it was developed by committee or not.

Google claims that VP8 is "open", yet they are in full control of it. This is
unlike H.264 which is not controlled by any single person. libvpx is the main
reference for the standard that is VP8 including bugs. An open standard would
have allowed these bugs to be corrected before launch.

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extension
Without royalties, what is the incentive for these companies to be part of the
pool? Especially those already in the h.264 pool. I don't think I understand
why this worked.

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kkowalczyk
None of them, except Google (presumably), has patents on those technologies in
the first place, so they would get no royalties.

This is a clever defense of companies that use WebM against someone else (like
mpeg la) trying to form a patent pool for it and attack them. They would score
big if they convinced some of the h264 patent holders to join them.

~~~
extension
So these companies are agreeing to cross-license patents that they don't have?
What's the point? How would this help defend against those who do have
patents?

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ChuckMcM
It has been interesting to see the evolution of rent-seeking behavior. Some of
the downsides are becoming more apparent (poor adoption rates for less obvious
ideas).

The MPEGLA site has this caveat " _Up to and through date of last patent
expiration_ " and I'm wondering if anyone knows that date? I couldn't find the
definitive list of patents in the license product on any of the 'open' pages.

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OpieCunningham
_The MPEGLA site has this caveat " Up to and through date of last patent
expiration" and I'm wondering if anyone knows that date? I couldn't find the
definitive list of patents in the license product on any of the 'open' pages._

On each pool, there's a prominent link for the patent list applicable to the
pool. For example, the patent list for the AVC pool is here:
[http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/PatentList.asp...](http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/PatentList.aspx)

It's not secret, or 'closed'.

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ChuckMcM
Thanks for the link. Now I just need to grep the international patent
databases for issue dates, add the jurisdictional expiration date, and voila.

I wish the MPEG LA folks would do that in their documents.

