Comment by cogman10

You can't patent something that's in use. Prior art is a defense to a patent claim/lawsuit.

But that's not my main point. My main point is that we are going down a fitting path with codecs which makes it hard to come up with general patents that someone might stumble over. That makes patents developed by the MPEG group far less likely to apply to AOM. A lot of those more generally applicable patents, like the DCT for example, have expired.