On Thu, May 20, 2010 at 06:28, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
This is pretty far off topic, but letting fud sit around is never a good idea.
Sure, VP8 looks very interesting. I hope it takes off and we get a "good enough" patent-free codec that's more modern than Theora.
On the patent part— Simply being similar to something doesn't imply patent infringement, Jason is talking out of his rear on that point. He has no particular expertise with patents, and even fairly little knowledge of the specific H.264 patents as his project ignores them entirely.
I don't know anything about the patents involved, but his comments in e.g. the "Intra Prediction" section are very specific, he cites "H.264’s spatial intra prediction is covered in patents". He's clearly done some research and is pointing out a very specific patent-covered feature in H.264 that's very similarly implemented in VP8.
Google is putting their billion dollar butt on the line— litigation involving inducement to infringe on top of their own violation could be enormous in the extreme.
They're already paying the H.264 patent fees, any infringements of those are likely to involve a few million dollars/year of patent fees. Not their "billion dollar butt".
Hardly putting their butt on the line, that would be promising to cover any downstream patent infringement. Which they're explicitly not doing.