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Carlo demonstrates that On2 must clearly have analysed the patent context for VP8 since so many of the “sub-optimal choices” called out by H.264 partisans reflect avoidance of patented ideas. This lends weight to Google’s confidence over WebM, as well as highlighting the way software patents hinder innovation (although I recently heard an advocate declare they stimulate innovation by forcing this sort of working-around; ridiculous!)
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Thus making the reason WebM is a Good Thing as plain as the nose on your face, just as long as MPEG-LA can be totally shut out of taxing it.
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If you wondered why end users, and not just developers, need protection from MPEG-LA’s patent pool, read this and discover that your publication of H.264 video on your web site might mean you owe MPEG-LA $100,000. We really do need an alternative, safe patent pool with a $0 charge for those promoting freedom instead of fees.
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So Sun’s secrets were gifted to an insider trader as pillow talk? Great, that makes it so much better. Can’t say I instantly feel “Moffat is the least culpable person charged” on that basis.
☞ WebM Data Points
Posted on May 25, 2010 by Simon Phipps
Wild Webmink 
[…] threat to the WebM open source project, I was pleased when TweetDeck flagged Simon Phipp’s WebM Data Points counter-balancing post on his Wild Webmink site earlier […]
[…] ☞ WebM Data Points IBM’s Moffat, Chiesi Were `Intimate,’ U.S. Says So Sun’s secrets were gifted to an insider trader as pillow talk? Great, that makes it so much better. Can’t say I instantly feel “Moffat is the least culpable person charged” on that basis. (tags: IBM Sun Insider Corruption Acquisition) […]
Not that I don’t hope WebM truly is going to be free of copyright issues, but are you saying you’d seriously advocate NO patents being issued for ANYTHING? Because the thing about patents that encourages innovation isn’t forcing people to waste time, it’s incentivizing doing work with getting paid.
No patents for software, certainly. The benefit to society is disproportionately small compared to the value of the monopoly.
As to patents in other areas, I think they are applicable where the original problem patents addressed exists. That means tangible and innovative inventions where there is a high capital cost for the physical environment involved in creating the invention that must be recovered by the inventor.
Even there, in today’s world of 3D printers we may well need to revisit and rebalance the system for patents on physical things.Right now, the business world treats patents as an absolute, inviolable and permanent property right, not as a temporary period to permit cost recovery followed by public release of the invention.