Re: [rtcweb] VP8 vs H.264 - the core issue

[Basil Mohamed Gohar <[e-mail]>]

On 10/23/2013 04:55 PM, cowwoc wrote:
> Harald,
> 
>     I think it is premature to imply that VP8 is royalty free. I have
> nothing against the codec (it's great) but it's my understanding that
> Google can't guarantee that someone else won't exercise IPR rights
> against VP8 in the future. The best we can say is that H264 requires
> royalties today and VP8 *might* require royalties in the future. H264
> has a slight advantage in this space in that we have well-understood
> licensing terms.
> 
>     I just wanted to put that out there so there are no confusions in
> the future.
> 
> Gili

Actually, this is exactly the kind of FUD that has stifled the adoption
of VP8 and, before it, Theora and Vorbis, as universally-available
multimedia format.  It serves only to confuse the issue further, as I
will explain below.

For starters, there is no evidence whatsoever that there is a viable IPR
concern with VP8, but there exist baseless allegations.  In fact, what
little doubt that there might have been one was settled by the agreement
signed between Google and MPEG-LA [1] a short while ago, which resulted
in MPEG-LA withdrawing their attempt a forming a patent pool for VP8
altogether.  An attempt, I might add, that had little public activity
save for its initial announcement once VP8 was being concerned for
international standards.  In fact, the extremely generous terms of the
agreement lend credence to the fact that there was little that existing
that would have been enforceable.

Furthermore, the fact that there is an existing licensing structure for
H.264 give exactly zero assurances of protections from IPR claims,
because not all licensors of H.264 technology are a member of the
MPEG-LA patent pool agreement, and there have been numerous patent cases
related to H.264 and other technologies thought to be covered by RAND
and FRAND terms.

Finally, the current patent and IPR landscape, at least in the US, and
widely in other portions of the world, eliminates the possibility of
something *never* being under a patent threat, due to the presence of
patent trolls that actively wait for adoption as well the sheer
magnitude of patents and the very ease with which patent legislation can
be brought up (including for those already "covered" by existing patent
pools, e.g., H.264).

So, in actuality, H.264 holds no advantage over VP8 in this regard, and
the claim that VP8 is a liability to use is not evidenced by any actual
unique tangible threat to date.

[1] http://blog.webmproject.org/2013/03/vp8-and-mpeg-la.html

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