See also Monty Montgomery (original author of Ogg and founder of Xiph.org) commenting on this Slashdot post:<p><a href="http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/04/30/237238/Steve-Jobs-Hints-At-Theora-Lawsuit" rel="nofollow">http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/04/30/237238/Steve-Jobs-Hin...</a><p>----<p>"Thomson Multimedia made their first veiled patent threats against Vorbis almost ten years ago. MPEG-LA has been rumbling for the past few years. Maybe this time it will actually come to something, but it hasn't yet. I'll get worried when the lawyers advise me to; i.e., not yet.<p>"The MPEG-LA has insinuated for some time that it is impossible to build any video codec without infringing on at least some of their patents. That is, they assert they have a monopoly on all digital video compression technology, period, and it is illegal to even attempt to compete with them. Of course, they've been careful not to say quite exactly that."
It looks like this poster does not know the difference between Christopher "Monty" Montgomery (aka xiphmont) and Gregory Maxwell. While Gregory is a prominent Ogg developer, Monty is the one who designed the Ogg container and the Vorbis audio format, the lead developer of most things Oggish, and the one who engaged in a recent debate about the quality of the Ogg container.
Intellectual property legal threats kill competition and ingenuity. It is getting to a point where major corporations hold so many patents and intellectual property rights that the chances of other developer(s) potentially infringing on any one of thousands of held IP "rights" is seemingly likely. As an software developer I unfortunately do not have a retainer staff of IP lawyers available nor does the start-up company that I work for. Apple and other large IP holders use their IP as a weapon to drive off competition and kill ingenuity.<p>Developers in countries other than the United States have an advantage in that they do not have as much to worry about United States corporate legal threats.