such license applies only to those patent claims, both currently owned by Google and acquired in the future, licensable by Google that are necessarily infringed by this implementation of VP8
You're covered unless Google decides they don't want to license one patent claim or another. Getting screwed on patents with libvpx would be something of a perfect storm, IMO. Where are the submarine claims for theora?
I believe you've misread the license. Google is granting a license to all patents they own or will acquire in the future, required for VP8 as they released it.
If you modify your own version of VP8 so it infringes some other patent that wasn't infringed by the original, you don't automatically get a license for that other patent. In other words, you can freely make VP8 implementations without worrying about Google's VP8 patents, but you can't write your own patent license for any Google-owned patent you want by writing that patent into your own version of VP8.
What you're saying has nothing to do with what I said. I will concede, however, that I missed the bitstream license, which grants some protection to independent implementations. But as others have said, that is no guarantee.
Are you referring to this: You're covered unless Google decides they don't want to license one patent claim or another.?
Google is granting a license to all Google-owned and Google-acquired patents required by VP8. Google will be the largest user of VP8, so it is in their interest to acquire or defeat any VP8-related patents that may be discovered.
You're not covered until they admit they are infringing a patent and then license it on your behalf. That wouldn't make me feel any better. Meanwhile, you're either infringing a patent or under threat of lawsuit until Google does something about it.
That's paranoia, unless you happen to be the general counsel for a Fortune 100. Because the biggest user of libvpx isn't you or me, it's going to be Google, and they're the juiciest target of any patent infringement lawsuit regarding the implementation.
If the codec works well, then just frigging use it. Google released it because they want people to use it. If you insist on peace of mind, MPEG-LA will be more than happy to take your money.
You're probably right that it's paranoia, but I just don't see any promises from Google to shield from or take responsibility for infringement; they just suggest that they could license patents in the future.
It probably wouldn't stop me but I would only do so without any sort of expectations from Google.
None of the major codec players promise to shield from or take responsibility for infringement, at least not for normal licenses. Not MPEG-LA, not Microsoft, not IEEE, not Google, not Fraunhofer.
such license applies only to those patent claims, both currently owned by Google and acquired in the future, licensable by Google that are necessarily infringed by this implementation of VP8
You're covered unless Google decides they don't want to license one patent claim or another. Getting screwed on patents with libvpx would be something of a perfect storm, IMO. Where are the submarine claims for theora?