Microsoft’s mobile mate accuses Google of ‘attempting to force adoption of proprietary technology”
Nokia has raised a serious roadblock for Google’s plans to release the V8 mobile codec as a patent-free, open standard for web-based video. The flagging Finnish mobile company, now heavily tied to Microsoft, has submitted a protest to the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the international body responsible for administering many web standards.
Nokia is claiming that VP8 violates 64 of its patents, with a further 22 pending patent applications touching on the standard. Linux calendar 16 May 2013 Android Magazine 28 - 31 May 201306 June 2013 04-05 June 2013 Since its purchase of On2 Technologies in 2010, Google has been trying to drive forward the VP8 codec as a patent-free alternative to the licensed H.264 codec currently used for most online video. While the use of H.264 has no direct effect on the licensing of video content itself, any organisation distributing software which decodes and plays H.264 video is still required to license the technology.
Google and many other organisation believe that this acts as a serious barrier to the freedom of content on the web. The H.264 codec is subject to an army of different patents, which have been pooled by the various owners and are now licensed by an organisation called MPEG LA. Having built the VP8 codec into its WebM project, Google initially found itself in dispute with MPEG LA, which claimed the codec infringed on many of the H.264 patents.
Google’s legal team declared that the company had reached “a serious milestone” last month, when it entered into an undisclosed settlement with MPEG LA, granting licence to “techniques that may be essential to VP8 and earlier-generation VPx video compression technologies under patents owned by 11 patent holders.” Importantly, the agreement also allowed Google to sub-license the agreement to companies developing software using VP8 and its next-generation codecs.
This latest announcement from Nokia is another serious setback for Google and VP8, with Nokia openly refusing to consider any licensing of the relevant patents to VP8 and Google’s WebM project. “We are now witnessing one company attempting to force the adoption of its proprietary technology, which offers no advantages over existing, widely deployed standards such as H.264 and infringes Nokia’s intellectual property,” claimed a Nokia spokesperson, justifying the decision on the FOSS Patents blog.
Nokia has raised a serious roadblock for Google’s plans to release the V8 mobile codec as a patent-free, open standard for web-based video. The flagging Finnish mobile company, now heavily tied to Microsoft, has submitted a protest to the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the international body responsible for administering many web standards.
Nokia is claiming that VP8 violates 64 of its patents, with a further 22 pending patent applications touching on the standard. Linux calendar 16 May 2013 Android Magazine 28 - 31 May 201306 June 2013 04-05 June 2013 Since its purchase of On2 Technologies in 2010, Google has been trying to drive forward the VP8 codec as a patent-free alternative to the licensed H.264 codec currently used for most online video. While the use of H.264 has no direct effect on the licensing of video content itself, any organisation distributing software which decodes and plays H.264 video is still required to license the technology.
Google and many other organisation believe that this acts as a serious barrier to the freedom of content on the web. The H.264 codec is subject to an army of different patents, which have been pooled by the various owners and are now licensed by an organisation called MPEG LA. Having built the VP8 codec into its WebM project, Google initially found itself in dispute with MPEG LA, which claimed the codec infringed on many of the H.264 patents.
Google’s legal team declared that the company had reached “a serious milestone” last month, when it entered into an undisclosed settlement with MPEG LA, granting licence to “techniques that may be essential to VP8 and earlier-generation VPx video compression technologies under patents owned by 11 patent holders.” Importantly, the agreement also allowed Google to sub-license the agreement to companies developing software using VP8 and its next-generation codecs.
This latest announcement from Nokia is another serious setback for Google and VP8, with Nokia openly refusing to consider any licensing of the relevant patents to VP8 and Google’s WebM project. “We are now witnessing one company attempting to force the adoption of its proprietary technology, which offers no advantages over existing, widely deployed standards such as H.264 and infringes Nokia’s intellectual property,” claimed a Nokia spokesperson, justifying the decision on the FOSS Patents blog.
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