Image by fczuardi via FlickrIt's so ridiculous, I don't know if I should be outrages, crying or simply laughing my pants off.Apparently, the MPEG LA has not found any patents that can be used against WebM. So they are starting to call out any company to look for possible patents that could have been, or get, violated. That's right, they also listen to patents that are not currently applied, but under review.
Now, I'm not a lawyer, but is this crap legal? May I stir up companies to act against a competitor, in this form? Whatever the answer is, it's a weak sign from the MPEG LA and shows that they currently have nothing. It's also not a clever move to come down to this level of fighting. Not only is this a sign that the H.264 codec is far from being superior to WebM and fear that people will use Google's free and open codec, instead of the encumbered MPEG one, no, it's also a dangerous move. Chances are that On2, which were complete bought by Google, or other services that Google bought, have some patents that gets violated from H.264. Maybe Google could establish a patent-pool against H.264. VP8 is the codec that WebM uses and made by On2 Technologies before acquired by Google. The make video codes since 1995.
Whatever, the FUD from the MPEG LA looks like SCO 2.0. Everyone should be encouraged to use WebM as the codec of choice. It's free, it's open, and it's the future. A patent-pool from MPEG LA is not.
