License / Patent ?

[mattdesl]

I’m not very well versed on this but I’ve just been informed about some of the H264 patents, and that distributing any H264 encoder could result in needing to pay royalties. Can you shed some light on how this relates to this library?

Thanks.

p.s. I meant to open this issue in your h264 project, apologies.

[lieff]

AFAIK patents applied to H264 usage in industrial scale, no matter which encoder used. But "royalties won't be charged for H.264 encoded Internet video that is free to end users".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Video_Coding#Licensing
I'm not specialist, may be x264 devs know more.

[leo-cydar]

For what it's worth, and IANAL, the Wikipedia page does go on to mention that the royalty-free clause applies only to internet video itself that is distributed freely, and that royalties still might be payable for by products that encode/decode content:

On August 26, 2010, MPEG LA announced that royalties won't be charged for H.264 encoded Internet video that is free to end users.[74] All other royalties remain in place, such as royalties for products that decode and encode H.264 video as well as to operators of free television and subscription channels.[75] The license terms are updated in 5-year blocks.[76]