MPEG LA to Challenge WebM's Open Source Status

The inevitable has happened, the MPEG LA is reaching out to stakeholders for the forming of a VP8 patent pool. VP8 is part of WebM, an open video format released by Google. WebM and the VP8 codec come with an open-source license and are supposed to be patent free.

However, the licensing group behind VP8's major rival, H.264, is now looking to find patents that cover VP8 technology and asking companies holding those patents if they want to form a patent pool for licensing.

Essentially, it's a war declaration against Google which has released VP8 to offer an alternative to the patent-encumbered H.264. The stake is online video based on HTML5.

Currently, there are three main codecs used by HTML5 video, the very widespread H.264, which is mostly free to use, but requires software makers or websites to pay in certain cases, the open-source but technologically inferior Ogg Theora and the new VP8, part of the WebM format.

Companies such as Mozilla and Opera refused to include support for H.264, because of ideological but also monetary reasons, and only supported Theora. Microsoft and Apple stood behind H.264 leading to a stalemate.

VP8 was supposed to fix all that, both Firefox and Opera now support WebM, as well as Google Chrome and Chromium. Google recently took an extra step and dropped support for H.264 from its browsers.

WebM's main advantage is its open source license, enabling developers, publishers and anyone else to use the codec as they see fit, for free, in any situation.

But MPEG LA believes that at least some parts of VP8 are covered by patents from its member companies and is now looking to form a patent pool which would license the codec for use. Essentially, this would put VP8 on par with H.264 as far as the license requirements go.

Google thinks it's in the clear and believes it can fight this, but it remains to be seen if the courts think the same, if it gets to that.

"The vast majority of the industry supports free and open development, and we’re in the process of forming a broad coalition of hardware and software companies who commit to not assert any IP claims against WebM. We are firmly committed to the project and establishing an open codec for HTML5 video," Google said in a statement.