The article refutes the assertion that Theora is infringing on patents held in the MPEG LA patent pool. The MPEG LA has been shaking a stick over Theora's head, but has yet to point out which specific patent(s) Theora is indeed infringing.
In fact, noone has come forward with a specific patent that has been shown to infringe after scrutiny and noone has yet sued Firefox for shipping this so-called infringing codec.
The tone of the article is basically a "put up or shut up" directed at the MPEG LA members. When someone is trying to spread FUD about your product, there's not much else you can do except ask that they stop talking and start showing evidence. Since they've been unwilling to do so for some time, it's natural to conclude that this is nothing more than sabre-rattling to try and drum up some extra MPEG LA licensees.
Do people familiar with the state of the art in codecs seriously think that MPEG LA doesn't have patents they could reasonably claim are infringed by Theora? That isn't the impression I had.
Noone, either familiar with the state of the art in codec or not, has come up with a reasonable set of patents that Theora's ancestor codec from 2001, VP3, could have possibly been infringing. Individuals are free to believe whatever they like, but there hasn't been any evidence of infringement beyond the MPEG LA's CEO making vague assertions.
The MPEG LA has a financial interest in keeping the patent situation around Theora murky, which they've clearly done well.
How did you get this impression? One of the ffmpeg guys had been hinting about this for a while and finally posted in a LWN thread to point out 3 Nokia patents he thought Theora infringed.
You could argue that the ffmpeg guys should be the ones to know best about MPEG patents that Theora infringes since they implement those codecs and as this example shows they are happy to jump to conclusions even when two of the patents clearly couldn't apply for the very basic reason of being filed after VP3 was made public. So the fact that they've not named names could be seen as a positive sign, but as with all things patents, proves nothing.
In fact, noone has come forward with a specific patent that has been shown to infringe after scrutiny and noone has yet sued Firefox for shipping this so-called infringing codec.
The tone of the article is basically a "put up or shut up" directed at the MPEG LA members. When someone is trying to spread FUD about your product, there's not much else you can do except ask that they stop talking and start showing evidence. Since they've been unwilling to do so for some time, it's natural to conclude that this is nothing more than sabre-rattling to try and drum up some extra MPEG LA licensees.