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> DASH is not royalty-free

It is, the above is just a list that trolls are assembling to intimidate others. They have it on many thigns, including established royalty free codecs. If they sue someone with it and prove in court they actually own patents on DASH - then it will be another story. Until then - intimidation doesn't equal ownership.

In this industry, such intimidating tactics (very protection racket and mafia like) are commonplace. Check the story how Qualcomm and some others tried to intimidate Opus project.



You can't just dismiss it and hope that it is. The MPEG LA has been successful with their other patent pools. They've got a good chance of being successful with this one as well.

That's what happened to VC-1. Microsoft tried to release VC-1 on royalty-free terms but the MPEG LA formed a patent pool and then it was no longer royalty-free.


> You can't just dismiss it and hope that it is.

Probably not. The better way is to do a review and have ready rebuttals of fake patent claims. I didn't exactly look into how it was done for DASH, but its big users like YouTube and Netflix should have done it.

> The MPEG LA has been successful with their other patent pools.

And completely unsuccessful with many others. There was the same type of list put out by MPEG-LA trolls for VPx, and I remember there was research published that debunked it all. So there is zero trust in anything that MPEG-LA say, but surely having concrete defense is a good thing.


> There was the same type of list put out by MPEG-LA trolls for VPx

No. They didn't succeed in forming a patent pool for VP8 or VP9. It was one of their "pools in formation" but was never established. The DASH patent pool is beyond that stage.


Which doesn't make it any more valid. But I agree that big players like Google and others should spend resources on preventive defense and debunk all that in advance.

And if they'll fail, there should be some concerted effort to make a patent unencumbered alternative.


MPEG LA has been succesful similarly to why Netflix and the iTunes Store were succesful: make it easy and affordable to comply. On the other hand suing costumers who torrent movies was not succesful at all.


It's far from affordable, that's why HEVC failed miserably. Not everyone has deep pockets to pay for protection racket.




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