Do you remember WebM? It was the video compression technology Google spontaneously announced early last year as an open, free alternative to the H.264 codec, used by Apple in every video shown on the iPhone, iPod and iPad.
Despite the fact that Google said that this was completely free, and H.264 is technically subject to a number of royalty fees, uptake on WebM has been pretty slow. Steve Jobs himself thought it was such a non-starter that all he did was link to a screed against WebM that argued that it was just a slight variation on the H.264 codec, and well covered by MPEG-LA’s patent pool… something that was likely to get Google sued.
Well, here comes the lawsuit.
The MPEG-LA video group has said that 12 companies and organizations have had their technologies infringed by Google’s WebMP format. The collective, unnamed, was considering forming a patent pool to demand licenses, and MPEG-LA was “facilitating that discussion.”
Could one of those companies be Apple? We wouldn’t be surprised: Apple contributes to the patent pool that covers H.264, after all. Steve Jobs has previously alluded to patent pools being formed to go after another H.264 competitor, Ogg Theora.
As for Google, it’s not panicking just yet:
MPEG LA has alluded to a VP8 pool since WebM launched–this is nothing new. The Web succeeds with open, community-developed innovation, and the WebM Project brings the same principles to web video. The vast majority of the industry supports free and open development, which is why we formed the WebM CCL enabling member organizations to license patents they may have that are essential to WebM technologies to other members of the CCL. We are firmly committed to the project and establishing an open codec for HTML5 video.
Personally, I’m not willing to bet against Apple here. MP3 was a similarly proprietary, albeit free for most users, format, and Apple made it the industry standard. With Apple behind H.264 and MPEG-LA mobilizing, things look sticky for Google.
