The MPEG Cartel and Microsoft Corporation both engage in abusive activities whereby patents are used anti-competitively and discriminatingly

MPEG LA is asking companies to prepare to attack the freely licensed WebM format and its underlying VP8 video codec from Google.

MPEG LA is blatantly trying to claim a monopoly on online video. The patent system is failing for software, and initiatives to “fix” the system are not working. A clear exclusion of software ideas from patentability is the only workable solution. VP8 is an attempt to free the software industry and all software developers from this patent troll.

VLC media player is a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, ...) as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols.It can also be used as a server to stream in unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6 on a high-bandwidth network.

I read through the FAQ and can't find out if Free and Open Source
developers and products need to license the MPEG-LA patents for
MPEG-4 Visual.

The Unified Patent Litigation System (UPLS) threatens Free software in Europe; Microsoft gets away with deceiving to pass this as law and it harms EU innovation in the process

MPEG LA CEO says it is looking at plans for a patent pool to "essential patent rights" for Google's recently open sourced VP8 video codec

Sullivan & Cromwell's Garrard Beeney wasn't at all surprised about the antitrust suit filed Friday against his client, the patent licensing company MPEG LA, by a German technology firm called Nero AG. Beeney told us that antitrust allegations are a pretty common tactic in the sort of licensing fee dispute MPEG LA and Nero are involved in.

Canonical ought to offer some form of disclosure about patent deals with the MPEG cartel