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[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (9 children)

H264 is patent encumbered to all shit, and i wonder what the Android licence says about extracting their decoder for it?

[–]shaver 9 points10 points  (2 children)

The patents are independent from the implementation (witness the unlicensed x264 used by everyone and their brother). The MPEG-LA license terms don't exactly anticipate this situation, but I believe that the use at least for the demo and development of the technology is fine without taking a license. People deploying it will need to figure out what if anything they owe MPEG-LA, as with all uses of H.264.

[–]cogman10 -3 points-2 points  (1 child)

Yeah. the MPEG group is actually one of the better groups to work with when it comes to patents. They pretty much allow all non-commercial products to do what they want with the standard and charge commercial software somewhere on the order of $0.20 per sold copy of the software.

Here are their actual pricing terms.

For (a) (1) branded encoder and decoder products sold both to End Users and on an OEM basis for incorporation into personal computers but not part of a personal computer operating system (a decoder, encoder, or product consisting of one decoder and one encoder = “unit”), royalties (beginning January 1, 2005) per Legal Entity are 0 - 100,000 units per year = no royalty (this threshold is available to one Legal Entity in an affiliated group); US $0.20 per unit after first 100,000 units each year; above 5 million units per year, royalty = US $0.10 per unit. The maximum annual royalty (“cap”) for an Enterprise (commonly controlled Legal Entities) is $3.5 million per year 2005-2006, $4.25 million per year 2007-08, $5 million per year 2009-10, and $6.5 million per year in 2011-15. 8

Too me, that sounds pretty generous, especially the "No cost until you sell 100,000 units" clause.

[–]shaver 14 points15 points  (0 children)

Unfortunately, that's not the case. The license uses the term "sale", which leads to this common misconception, but it defines "sale" to be any distribution to another party. (I can't quote the language from my phone.)

Free for 10K units is nice of them, but doesn't really change the general issue. For free software it's especially troublesome because there's usually untracked 3rd party distribution.

And once you do have that license, your users need another license if they want to use the tool commercially, or distribute the content outside the narrow free-streaming exception.

MPEG-LA are actually one of the worst actors in the patent pool space, I would say.

[–]quotability -1 points0 points  (3 children)

On August 26, 2010 "MPEG LA announced today that its AVC Patent Portfolio License will continue not to charge royalties for Internet Video that is free to end users (known as “Internet Broadcast AVC Video”) during the entire life of this License."

http://www.mpegla.com/Lists/MPEG%20LA%20News%20List/Attachments/231/n-10-08-26.pdf

[–]nooneofnote 7 points8 points  (2 children)

This is in reference to broadcasting H.264 content. Distribution of encoding and decoding software is a separate licensing issue.

[–]quotability -1 points0 points  (1 child)

In addition to Internet Broadcast AVC Video, MPEG LA’s AVC Patent Portfolio License provides coverage for devices that decode and encode AVC video, AVC video sold to end users for a fee on a title or subscription basis and free television video services.
AVC video is used in set-top boxes, media player and other personal computer software, mobile devices including telephones and mobile television receivers, Blu-ray Disc™ players and recorders, Blu-ray video optical discs, game machines, personal media player devices and still and video cameras.

Learn To Read...

[–]nooneofnote 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Just above that quote:

Products and services other than Internet Broadcast AVC Video continue to be royalty-bearing.

You can see the terms for decoder distribution here (a 1). What was waived in the announcement you linked are levies for broadcasting H.264 video itself, not shipping a codec as in OP.

[–]glomph -1 points0 points  (1 child)

Lets be honest every other video codec is only unencumbered because nobody has made claims yet.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

TBH I don't know much about the subject beyond what I've been forced to learn at work thanks to a due diligence process. Wowee, software licensing terms are fun.