MPEG LA previously announced it would not charge royalties for such video through December 31, 2015, and today’s announcement makes clear that royalties will continue not to be charged for such video beyond that time. Products and services other than Internet Broadcast AVC Video continue to be royalty-bearing.
MPEG LA’s AVC Patent Portfolio License provides access to essential patent rights for the AVC/H.264 (MPEG-4 Part 10) digital video coding standard. In addition to Internet Broadcast AVC Video, MPEG LA’s AVC Patent Portfolio License provides coverage for devices that decode and encode AVC video, AVC video sold to end users for a fee on a title or subscription basis and free television video services. AVC video is used in set-top boxes, media player and other personal computer software, mobile devices including telephones and mobile television receivers, Blu-ray Disc players and recorders, Blu-ray video optical discs, game machines, personal media player devices and still and video cameras.
For more information about MPEG LA’s AVC License or to request a copy of the License, please visit here.
Cade Metz reports for The Register, “This means that if you use H.264 solely for free web-video applications, you will never have to pay a fee to the MPEG-LA.”
“The move is an apparent response to Google’s WebM web-media format, which was open sourced in May under its own royalty-free license,” Metz reports. “At the heart of WebM is the VP8 video codec Google that acquired when it purchased video compression outfit On2 Technologies in a deal valued at $124.6 million. Google’s aim was to create a completely royalty-free alternative to H.264 for use with the fledgling HTML5 video tag, and the new WebM format was promptly embraced by Opera and Mozilla.”
Metz reports, “MPEG-LA… will continue to charge when H.264 is used with for-pay applications, [so] Odds are that Google, Mozilla, and Opera will push ahead with WebM… Whereas Opera and Mozilla have committed to WebM, Apple and Microsoft are sticking with H.264 — though Microsoft has said that Internet Explorer 9 users will be able to use WebM if they install it on their machines themselves. Apple’s Steve Jobs has made it clear he has no interest whatsoever in WebM, and we’re likely headed for a clash of the titans. After Google open sourced VP8, the MPEG-LA said it was “looking into” a patent-pool license for VP8, challenging Google’s effort to make it completely free, and Jobs has indicated that he won’t adopt open video codecs because they’re subject to patent attack. But Apple is part of the MPEG-LA’s H.264 patent pool — as is Microsoft. The chess game has only begun.”
Read more int he full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “iWill” for the heads up.]