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.
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
10 responses to “MPEG-LA Mobilizing To Sue Google Over WebM Patent Violations”
While I agree with the spirit of this article, what does Apple have to do with mp3? Just because the iPod supports it doesn’t mean Apple endorses it. On the contrary, Apple promotes AAC which is a competing format. In fact, mp3 was wildly popular way before the iPod existed.
Unless it was a typo and you meant to say mp4?
Apple did not make mp3 an industry standard. Â You guys seriously need to stop drinking all the Apple kool-aid and actually write REAL news stories here. Â I know this is cult of mac but lately you have gone off the deep edge. Â When Apple first came out with their stuff, they tried to shove AAC down everyones throats, and quickly realized that it would not work, and they adapted MP3. Had Apple iPods not supported Mp3 files, I do not think iPod would have succeeded in the market place. Â Mp3 was WIDELY adopted, well before Apple ever decided to support it in their software and on their devices.
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Not entirely true. The iTunes playback software has ALWAYS supported MP3. SoundJam was initially an MP3 player even before Apple bought it, and that functionality was never removed. Apple really started pushing AAC when iTMS came around, and it’s true, Apple has never sold MP3s, but always AACs. But even the earliest iPods could play MP3. It’s not like Apple ever tried to kill the MP3 format, they just offered their own alternative alongside it.
The usual idea is that you would use NFC to set up the link between the two devices and then do an automatic hand over to a different protocol for doing the actual transfer of data – eg Bluetooth,iphone 5