Nero burning MPEG-LA

[Jammrock]

http://www.osnews.com/story/23346/Nero_Files_Antitrust_Case_Against_MPEG-LA

It looks like all those threats that the MPEG-LA has leveled against Theora and Google (ala VP8 and the WebM project) has brought on a pre-emptive strike. Nero, who has a video codec of their own based on MPEG-4 (as I recall), is filing an anti-trust suit against the MPEG-LA.

Back in 1997, the MPEG-LA sought a promise from the US Department of Justice that it would not initiate any antitrust investigations against the licensing body. The DOJ expressed then that it currently had no intention of acting upon the MPEG-LA, but this lack of intention was conditioned on a number of things.

First, the MPEG-LA would engage with independent experts to ensure only essential patents would be placed in the MPEG-2 pool. They told the DOJ that the MPEG-2 pool constituted of 53 essential patents. Second, independent experts would "weed out nonessential patents" from the pool. Third, licensing terms would be "fair, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory".

Nero claims none of these safeguards were honoured, and here's where it gets juicy; "absolute power has corrupted the MPEG-LA absolutely", according to Nero. First of all, the so-called independent expert was anything but independent. The expert helped form the MPEG-LA, helped in drafting the first MPEG-LA licensing agreements, answers questions from licensees on behalf of the MPEG-LA, has attended business settlement meetings on behalf of the MPEG-LA, and has testified before US congress on behalf of the MPEG-LA. Heck, he is listed on the MPEG-LA website as "MPEG-LA's US patent counsel".

And so on... a very interesting read that should make the online video codec showdown very interesting. I wonder if Theora and Google will hop on to form a class action anti-trust suit.

[Dr Mordrid]

It's about eff'ing time someone did!!

MPEG-LA has been as overreaching as anyone the last few years.