Google’s New Open Source Video Standard May Never Be Free
Every widely implemented standard for online video is now covered by a raft of patents, including the new VP8 codec from Google, say multiple sources.
Last
week, Google announced an “open and free” video
format, VP8, with the goal of creating a video standard that anyone
can use without paying royalties. That seems unlikely, however, if you believe
recent statements by Steve Jobs and the company implicated in potentially
shackling VP8 developers with licensing fees justified
by multiple patents on the underlying technologies.
Here’s Jobs’s
note, in full, from before the announcement by Google:
>>
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From: Steve Jobs
To: Hugo Roy
Subject: Re: Open letter to Steve Jobs:
Thoughts on Flash
Date: Fri, 30 Apr 2010 06:21:17 -0700
All
video codecs are covered by patents. A patent pool is being assembled to go
after Theora and other “open source” codecs now. Unfortunately, just
because something is open source, it doesn’t mean or guarantee that it doesn’t
infringe on others patents. An open standard is different from being royalty
free or open source.
Sent
from my iPad
<<
While
Theora, a pre-existing open source standard, isn’t the same thing as VP8, an in-depth
technical analysis of VP8 concludes that the two have a great deal
in common.
Larry
Horn, CEO of MPEG LA, the industry consortium / patent pool-holding firm that
already collects licensing fees on the h.264 codec, confirmed that his company was forming a pool
of patents related to VP8.
The
notion that any technology companies hold any patents that cover the technology
behind VP8 runs directly counter to
statements made by Google product manager Mike Jazayeri, who told The Register “We have done a pretty through analysis of VP8 and On2 Technologies prior
to the acquisition and since then, and we are very confident with the
technology and that’s why we’re open sourcing.”
The
problem for Google and VP8 is that it may not even matter who turns out to be
the victor of this verbal fencing match: if developers or investors are
convinced there’s even a possibility that apps or services that use VP8 might
eventually be liable for licensing fees (or legal damages) owed to MPEG LA,
that alone could force them to either pay up or bow out of using the standard
all together.
Google
has the resources to fight any industry consortium in court, and it might just
get the chance, as the company has declared that it will make all of YouTube
available in VP8. But, as John Paczkowski pointed out, unless it’s ready to
indemnify everyone else who uses the standard against future licensing or legal
fees, its claim that VP8 is not only open source but free to use may prove
meaningless.
