Summary:<p><i>For a $1,000 laptop, Motorola is demanding that Microsoft pay a royalty of $22.50 for its 50 patents on the video standard, called H.264.</i><p>Interesting turn of events! So, everyone supporting patent-free codecs was saying that H.264 is dangerous. H.264 defenders were saying -- "no, you're okay -- we have reasonable licensing terms". Now, Google purchases the codec, gives a free patent grant, and then makes sure H.264 is what it is -- a patent-encumbered standard -- by requesting the allegedly unreasonable license terms, to push a patent-free codec.<p>Now imagine that Google will [ab]use this whole licensing thing to push for other H.264 patent holders to give a free patent grand similar to WebM.