Read more.Windows 7 sales are also under threat.
Read more.Windows 7 sales are also under threat.
Hmm, like the article says, this looks suspiciously like Motorola doing "tit for tat" against Microsoft. I've also got to wonder why no one's suggested some form of arbitration - after all, if Microsoft is complaining that Motorola's not licensing under EU's FRAND terms, then surely someone from the EU should surely be well placed to decide if Moto's terms are unfair and/or discriminatory?
Just wish two good tech companies could "grow a pair" and stop acting like a pair of toddlers.
US$4bn does sound like a lot of dinero for one lil' ole media license - irrespective of how many 100,000's of Windows7 copies and Xbox's it goes into. Doesn't Apple have some interest in H.264 in which case it'd be interesting to hear their view of this.
Didn't they try taking someone to court before and failed to get anywhere, would be interesting to see if they are charging all the TV manufacturers and broadcasters 4bn per year to use the codec.
I'm thinking that this could have more than a little to do with HTML5.
MPEG LA of which microsoft is a member, control the licensing of h.264 and have threatened that they own patents that the Google owned WebM infringes. (They haven't actually said which patents) Both formats, along with OGG are competing to be the format of choice for HTML5 video, one side saying web formats should be open source while the other is saying that there are patents that ogg and webm infringe and patent trolls are waiting for widespread adoption before they start suing (so what, pick h.264 at least you'll know who'll be billing you? ). IE and Safari only support h.264 ootb (Apple is also a member of MPEG LA) while Chrome is dropping support for h.264.
Maybe if h.264's patents can be made to look a little unstable it will lose to ogg or webm and youtube will be spared a hefty licensing fee?
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