(I've been watching the emails fly around with great interest, but there has been a rather significant volume. You'll have to forgive me if the following question has already been answered.)<br><br>It seems to me that the argument keeps coming back to the fact that
H.264/AAC has patent protection available while Theora/Vorbis does not. Thanks to the efforts of the MPEG-LA, Nokia, Apple, and even Microsoft can sleep well at night.<br><br>However, this raises a question in my mind. MPEG-LA is the administrator of a variety of patent portfolios. Not just the MPEG sphere of patents, but also IEEE 1394 and DVB-T. They are also working to add patent portfolios for VC-1, ATSC, DVB-H, and Bluray. Which means that they are well-equipped to provide patent administration and indemnification for a wide variety of formats.
<br><br><b>Has anyone asked MPEG-LA if they'd be willing to provide indemnification for Vorbis/Theora?</b> While I understand that there is no actual patents to license at this time, a fee to MPEG-LA (enough to cover possible patents in the future + MPEG-LA's standard profit margin) for protection against submarine patents could very well solve this impasse.
<br><br>Any thoughts?<br><br>Jerason Banes<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Dec 11, 2007 3:40 PM, Ian Hickson <<a href="mailto:ian@hixie.ch">ian@hixie.ch</a>> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
In the absence of IP constraints, there are strong technical reasons to<br>prefer H.264 over Ogg. For a company like Apple, where the MPEG-LA<br>licensing fee cap for H.264 is easily reached, the technical reasons are<br>
very compelling.</blockquote><div> <br></div></div><br>