Re:H.266/Versatile Video Coding (VVC)
by clouddrover on Monday July 06, 2020 @10:32AM
(#23748277)
> The situation with AV1 is "we are in middle of minefield and nobody got mine-clearing gear".
That's true of every new video codec. It didn't stop the use of H.264 or VP9 or even HEVC.
Multiple companies have now rolled out AV1 into production. We'll see what happens.
When I wrote that I didn't know about retaliation clauses in AV1 patent pool license. That said, a huge chunk of patents involved in all MPEG standards (AVC, HEVC, etc.) meant that if you tried to go after them, you might have lost licenses necessary elsewhere, so it's all a question of risk analysis for someone who wants to torpedo AV1 with a patent.
What's wrong is claiming that AV1, VP9, VP8 are "patent-free". They are not.
They can be reasonably sure they do not infringe known patents from certain Patent Pools and patents declared as part of MPEG-LA bundles. They can't provide reasonable data that they do not infringe on any submarine patent, something that killed 3 attempts by MPEG-LA to provide a royalty-free codec for the web - all that was required to kill it was a note from a company that they "might" have patents covering things they tried to release, or that they decided not to allow royalty-free license for their known patent.
Meanwhile patent search is complex enough that it's unreasonable to impossible to make a statement that you definitely don't infringe any unless you keep clear of anything invented within last ~20 years.