MPEG-LA (MPEG Licensing Administration) is a patent licensing company that administers patent pools for various media codecs, including H.264 and H.265.
MPEG-LA and WebRTC
The patent licensing costs associated with H.264 were a major point of contention during WebRTC’s standardization. Google pushed for royalty-free codecs (VP8, VP9) while others argued H.264’s hardware acceleration made it essential.
The deadlock was partially resolved when Cisco released OpenH264, paying MPEG-LA royalties on behalf of all users. This made H.264 effectively free for WebRTC developers while keeping the royalty-free VP8 as the other mandatory codec.
The AOMedia alliance (which created AV1) was specifically formed to develop next-generation codecs free from MPEG-LA’s patent pool requirements.
