MPEG LA Extends Free H.264 License for Its Lifetime

MPEG LA has announced that it is extending the royalty free license for its H.264 video codec for the duration of the license. What this means is that websites can continue to use the codec for non-commercial applications for free.

"MPEG LA announced today that its AVC Patent Portfolio License will continue not to charge royalties for Internet Video that is free to end users (known as “Internet Broadcast AVC Video”) during the entire life of this License," the licensing body announced.

"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," the announcement explained.

The first deadline for free licensing was January 01, 2011. Earlier this year, MPEG LA extended that period until December 31, 2015, in response to criticism, notably from Mozilla who refuses to bundle the codec with its Firefox browser.

This second extension comes after Google open-sourced the VP8 codec it acquired along with On2. Google bundled the video codec with the open-source WebM web video format.

Mozilla and Opera both got behind the open-source alternative which would enable websites to use HTML5-based video without worrying about licensing or whether the videos would play in most web browsers.

There just two major players in the browser market that aren't supporting WebM, and show no intention of doing so in the future, Microsoft and Apple. This is understandable since both are rights holders in MPEG LA, the licensing body behind the H.264 format.

Google supports both formats in Chrome, but Mozilla and Opera won't implement H.264, partly due to licensing cost, both companies would have to pay rather significant royalties, but also to maintain the browser completely open-source, in the case of Mozilla.