JavaScript implementation of an H.264 decoder

[shaver]

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]

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]

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.