Google Could Run Into Patent Issues Over WebM

Google is likely to face fire from as many as 12 separate companies. The issue seems to be with the WebM Media format for audio and video that was designed for the HTML5 format. Currently, most video streaming services use H.264 standard, which isn’t royalty-free and that’s probably the reason as to why it hasn’t been integrated into the HTML5 web format so far.

Google has been pushing WebM as the future of streaming media and one of the key points is that the format is royalty-free. MPEG LA, the firm responsible for licensing patents first put out an invitation for patent submissions for the VP8 specification, back in February. According to an interview with Streamingmedia.com, it turns out that 12 companies have responded to the call and submitted patents that are necessary for the VP8 standard.

Rough waters up ahead...

How things pan out for Google is yet to be seen? Some of the other companies supporting WebM are Adobe, Opera and Mozilla. Google was the one that actually bought On2 for a sum of $106 million. While the firms that file the patents could sue the users of the WebM, it’s Google, who’ll probably stand their ground, if it comes to that. Some of the other larger companies although supportive, have not implemented WebM in their products.