That section was updated not long after it was published, which must be about a year ago now with:
"Update: spatial intra prediction apparently dates back to Nokia’s MVC H.26L proposal, from around ~2000. It’s possible that Google believes that this is sufficient prior art to invalidate existing patents — which is not at all unreasonable!"
Which is a bit less worrying than your quote of "patent time-bomb waiting to happen." from two sentences above.
Also, on the number of patents which you number as "hundreds", MPEG-LA only has 164 non-expired patents in the US, about 120 of which can be dismissed out of hand as they apply to techniques or technology that WebM simply doesn't use (e.g. CABAC) which leaves only 44 US patents for Google to dodge, work-around, invalidate or come to an agreement with the owners of.
"Update: spatial intra prediction apparently dates back to Nokia’s MVC H.26L proposal, from around ~2000. It’s possible that Google believes that this is sufficient prior art to invalidate existing patents — which is not at all unreasonable!"
Which is a bit less worrying than your quote of "patent time-bomb waiting to happen." from two sentences above.
Also, on the number of patents which you number as "hundreds", MPEG-LA only has 164 non-expired patents in the US, about 120 of which can be dismissed out of hand as they apply to techniques or technology that WebM simply doesn't use (e.g. CABAC) which leaves only 44 US patents for Google to dodge, work-around, invalidate or come to an agreement with the owners of.