DOJ Anti-trust Investigation of MPEG-LA

thomst writes "The Wall Street Journal's Thomas Catan reports that the Department of Justice has launched an anti-trust investigation of MPEG-LA's purported efforts to prevent Google's VP8 codec from widespread adoption. According to the article, the California Stare Attorney General's office is also investigating MPEG-LA for possible restraint of trade practices."

Re:yea!

[DJRumpy]

Except there is no price being discussed. The article sums it up nicely at the end:

"All video codecs are covered by patents," Mr. Jobs wrote. "Unfortunately, just because something is open-source, it doesn't mean or guarantee that it doesn't infringe on others patents."

If MPEG-LA believes that VP8 infringes, then they are well within their rights to question it. The OpenSource folks, of which slashdot has a majority, seem to think that all patents are evil. I tend to think both sides have merit, and neither would do well without the other. If Google believes that simply questioning whether or not a patent infringes is anti-competitive, then they have a long road to haul. That said, it does seem like MPEG-LA is dragging this out longer than necessary. Although it's conceivable that they could still be gathering information at this stage, surely they have enough preliminary data at this point to make a legal case (or not).

I suspect this latest bruhaha is just to put pressure on MPEG-LA to put up or shut up.