[theora-dev] [OT] Just saying hi!

[Carsten Haese]

On Wed, 2003-02-26 at 04:37, Christoph Lampert wrote:
> I'm particularly interested in how you manage to keep everything free of
> patents, in particular since I know that there are patents (claimed) on
> such trivial stuff like motion vector prediction and decision when to
> encode and when to skip a block. 

There is a little technicality that I'd like to point out, even though
it makes no difference as far as developing and using Theora is
concerned. VP3, the codec that Theora is based on, is actually not
strictly patent free. However, quoting from the "VP3 Legal Terms"
section on http://www.theora.org/cvs.html:

"On2 represents and warrants that it shall not assert any rights
relating to infringement of On2's registered patents, nor initiate any
litigation asserting such rights, against any person who, or entity
which utilizes the On2 VP3 Codec Software, including any use,
distribution, and sale of said Software; which make changes,
modifications, and improvements in said Software; and to use,
distribute, and sell said changes as well as applications for other
fields of use."

In short, On2 have effectively neutered the VP3 patents, so even though
VP3 is technically patented, it is not subject to patent licensing.

As far as what methods and/or technologies these patents encompass, I
have no idea. Maybe Dan can elaborate on this.

Best regards,

Carsten Haese
Ogg Traffic Editor, Xiph.Org Foundation
http://www.vorbis.com/ot

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