Washington: The US Department of Justice (DoJ) is investigating MPEG-LA – the patent pool organization backed by Apple, Microsoft, and others – over the organization’s effort to undermine the royalty-free V8 codec Google introduced last year, according to a report citing people familiar with the matter.
The Wall Street Journal reports that the DoJ has launched a formal antitrust probe into whether MPEG-LA or its members are trying to stunt the growth of VP8 by creating legal uncertainty around the open source technology.
Google and Microsoft declined to comment on the report. Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In May, after Google open sourced the V8 codec under a royalty-free license and rolled it into a new web media format known as WebM, MPEG-LA.
Chief Executive Larry Horn said the organization was looking into the formation of a patent-pool license for VP8 and WebM. And last month, the organization made an official public call to patent holders, asking them to submit patents that may be essential to Google’s codec.
MPEG-LA did not immediately respond for comment. But when we spoke to the organization after its call to patent holders, it told us it is merely acting on behalf of its members.
“The VP8 patent call means that we plan to facilitate a discussion among companies that own patents essential to VP8 to determine if they want to create a patent pool license,” the organization admitted.
“While the purpose of the patent call is to begin creating a VP8 license, it is the decision of the patent owners whether or not a license for VP8 will be offered,” it said
Speaking with The Journal, MPEG-LA neither confirmed nor denied the DoJ investigation, and Larry Horn reiterated that it is merely offering a service to its members.
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