Have the patents for H.264 MPEG-4 AVC expired yet? - Meta
meta.wikimedia.org

If I’m interpreting this correctly, many MP4 patents are going to expire next year. 🎉

  • Spectacle8011@lemmy.comfysnug.space
    1·
    3 months ago

    Even if all High Profile patents in Europe expire next year, this means absolutely nothing for US-based companies/orgs or companies/orgs that trade in the US, which still has patents that won’t expire until 2027 according to this article. Even then, this means absolutely nothing because there is no such thing as a H.264 decoder/encoder that only supports the High Profile spec (aside from OpenH264, which already circumvents the patents for companies/orgs that want to use it, but is still lacking). x264 supports H.264 features from later specifications, and the patents for those things likely won’t expire until after 2030.

  • TriflingToad@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    1·
    3 months ago

    I am once again reminded that if you format literally anything into a Wikipedia article I will read it with full trust. “hmm surely there is a valid reason for there to be a cat with coins on this article about video file patents”

    • DarkCloud@lemmy.world
      1·
      3 months ago

      Someone will most likely patent hack it in order to reclaim it, then try to patent troll about it… Because corporate people are jerks.

      • woelkchen@lemmy.world
        1·
        3 months ago

        Someone will most likely patent hack it in order to reclaim it, then try to patent troll about it… Because corporate people are jerks.

        How? If the tech is older than 25 years, it’s prior art no matter what. MP3 is fully free for the same reasons.

        • DarkCloud@lemmy.world
          1·
          3 months ago

          Happened recently with a 1995 patent by a Stratasys, on a stronger technique for 3D printing using a brick infill method.

          Someone re-parented a variation to prevent it being public domain until 2040.

          • woelkchen@lemmy.world
            1·
            3 months ago

            Someone re-parented a variation to prevent it being public domain until 2040.

            So the variation cannot be used. That’s irrelevant for a file format. Some company could, for example, patent a more efficient encoding technique but the resulting file format is still public domain. So at worst an open source encoder would need to be slightly inefficient because it uses the traditional technique.