[Theora] troll or truth ?

[Ralph Giles]

On Tue, Mar 22, 2005 at 10:27:18PM +0100, Ole Tange wrote:

> > a) Xiph never claimed that Theora is patent-free. It is not patent free.
> 
> So the quote: "Virtually every single patented algorithm used in mpeg*
> codecs is also used in theora." is correct.

It is not correct. If this were the case we could not claim theora was 
freely implementable, and there would indeed be no point to the project.

No, as Maik stated, there are no known patent claims on theora beyond 
the ones On2 has already granted a license on. Theora very carefully 
does things differently from the mpeg video codecs, just as vorbis 
does things differently from the audio codecs.

On2 is not a member of the MPEG consortium and has no patents listed in 
the MPEG LA licensing pool. The fact that they continue to do business 
selling competing video compression technology is good evidence that the 
holders of the MPEG video patents agree with this assessment.

HTH,
 -r