Hmm shoot in foot much ?
Two names on that list is really weird, Samsung and Cisco cause as apparent from the AVC/H.264 licensors list below they are on both sides of that fight...
But as everybody with a brain know the MPEG-LA AVC/H.264 is the pooled patents on video compression of a virtual whos whos in video from Apple to Sony to Panasonic. Whos on the WebM buddy list... mostly open source projects so deeply indentured to google they might as well buy them (AMD, Cisco Systems, Logitech, MIPS Technologies, Matroska, Mozilla, Opera, Samsung, Texas Instruments, and the Xiph.org Foundation).
So lets look at the rest AMD, Cisco, Logitech, MIPS Tech, Samsung, Opera, Texas Industries....
Obviously Cisco and Samsung have some legs to stand on in video patents wise (they are on the H.264 list), and AMD with their ATI branch could have some chops there too, but Logitech and Opera ? What on earth do they have in video compression patents ?
And another thing, as the list below shows, would everybody please shut the funk up with naming Apple and Microsoft as the main patent contributors its just not true.
While i could understand how Samsung might consider their google buddies closer than their TV making competitors I have one question.... Even though it would be quite interesting to see Samsung make a TV with a digital TV tuner without a MPEG-LA license as almost all digital broadcast and cable signals use mpeg4 compression...
Furthermore, why are LG, Sony AND Ericsson not on the google buddylist ? (mayhaps they like their spot on the MPEG-LA list better)...
Sony makes the nerdalicious Google TV box Sony/Ericsson and LG makes android phones.
And strangely missing from both lists.... Nvidia.
Moan and bitch all you want about patents but they are not going away.
/J
PS! before anybody writes a single letter about patents consider this, patents DO NOT COVER IDEAS, they cover METHODS, think about that for a minute. If you can do something described in a patent in a way that is not the way the patents describes then you can implement that method to all you want...
AVC/H.264 licensors:
Apple Inc.
Cisco Systems Canada IP Holdings Company
DAEWOO Electronics Corporation
Dolby Laboratories Licensing Corporation
Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute
France Télécom, société anonyme*
Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft zur Foerderung der angewandten Forschung e.V.
Fujitsu Limited
Hewlett-Packard Company
Hitachi, Ltd.
Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V.
LG Electronics Inc.
Microsoft Corporation
Mitsubishi Electric Corporation
NTT DOCOMO, INC.
Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation
Panasonic Corporation
Polycom, Inc.
Robert Bosch GmbH*
Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.
Sedna Patent Services, LLC
Sharp Corporation
Siemens AG
Sony Corporation
Tandberg Telecom AS
Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson
The Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York
Toshiba Corporation
Victor Company of Japan, Limited