This came up a few weeks ago.[1]  MPEG-LA&#x27;s patent portfolio isn&#x27;t that strong any more.  MPEG-LA has a long list of patents, but most of them have expired. The key patents on video compression involved motion estimation, and those expired this year.  MPEG-LA got their twenty years of patent protection, and it&#x27;s over.<p>The remaining patents are mostly on things you don&#x27;t need for Internet video. US #6,181,712, has to do with multiplexing two unrelated video streams into one. Broadcasters and cable systems do this, but Internet video does not. US #6,160,849 only applies to compression of interlaced video, which nobody uses on line. US #7,627,041 is about dealing with missing header data due to transmission noise. US #5,878,080 is about backwards-compatible multichannel (&gt;2 channels) audio, also seldom used on-line. US #6,185,539 is for video with overcompressed extra-low-quality audio. So is US #6,009,399.<p>As I pointed out last time, it&#x27;s time for a hard look at this patent situation. You can probably do a patent-free MPEG-4 video decoder and encoder for Internet video now. You might have to leave out some newer features nobody uses.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=10042469" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=10042469</a>
[2] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;scratchpad.wikia.com&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;MPEG_patent_lists" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;scratchpad.wikia.com&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;MPEG_patent_lists</a>