• The Wall Street Journal, Friday, March 4, 2011 12 PM

The Justice Department is reportedly investigating whether a group representing some top tech firms, including Microsoft and Apple, is trying to stifle a Google-backed free alternative technology for delivering online video. Sources tell The Wall Street Journal that the Justice Department has launched a formal antitrust probe into MPEG LA and its members, and whether they're trying to cripple an alternative format called VP8 that Google released last year -- "by creating legal uncertainty over whether users might violate patents by employing that technology."

As The Journal explains, video-streaming services like Netflix and Google's YouTube currently pay patent royalties to MPEG, which has amassed patents covering widely used video formats owned its members, including Apple and Microsoft. "If antitrust regulators find out that a major Google competitor like Apple or Microsoft is trying to sabotage Google's open video efforts by eagerly contributing patents to an MPEG-LA pool -- well, that wouldn't look so good," paidContent concedes.

"At stake in the matter are the financial and legal requirements to digital video, which is getting ever more important as the Internet and the Web rise to prominence as a medium for content," writes CNet.  More specifically, "At stake is whether [the MPEG LA-backed] H.264, which is widely used and for which decoding software is built into many products, prevails over VP8, which Google is offering for free, but which has seen little adoption," the Guardian points out.

"The bigger issue at hand is whether MPEG LA and its H.264 licensees, which include Apple, actually want to start such a cat-and-mouse game," according to GigaOm. "The mere threat of a patent pool or possible patent litigation could be enough to keep people from embracing [Google's alternative technology.]"

Read the whole story at The Wall Street Journal »