In a letter filed in a California court last month, a lawyer said Motorola, which is being acquired by Google Inc., had “demanded” the royalty for a license of its patents.

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Mozilla is set to announce that it has signed a new three-year agreement for Google to be the default search option in its Firefox browser.

It’s a critical renewal for the Silicon Valley software maker, since its earlier deal with the search giant has been a major source of revenue to date.

The companies said the specific terms of the commercial agreement are not being released. But, in 2010, Google contributed 84 percent of Mozilla’s $123 million in revenue.

A previous version of the arrangement had expired at the end of November. Mozilla said at the time that it was in “active negotiations” with Google.

The relationship has not been without some tension of late. Since the first search royalty deal was signed in 2008, Google’s own Chrome browser has become a significant competitor. Just last month, Chrome overtook Firefox in global usage for the first time, according to StatCounter. Both browsers — software which is used to navigate the Internet — have about 25 percent market share.

Mozilla also has partnerships with other search providers, including Microsoft’s Bing, Yahoo, Yandex, Amazon and eBay.

Here’s the full announcement Mozilla will soon put out:

Mozilla and Google Sign New Agreement for Default Search in Firefox

We’re pleased to announce that we have negotiated a significant and mutually beneficial revenue agreement with Google. This new agreement extends our long term search relationship with Google for at least three additional years.

“Under this multi-year agreement, Google Search will continue to be the default search provider for hundreds of millions of Firefox users around the world,” said Gary Kovacs, CEO, Mozilla.

“Mozilla has been a valuable partner to Google over the years and we look forward to continuing this great partnership in the years to come,” said Alan Eustace, Senior Vice President of Search, Google.

The specific terms of the commercial agreement are confidential and are not being released.

First it was LinkedIn, and now it is music-streaming service Pandora that has filed for an initial public offering.

In a document filed with the SEC today, the Oakland, Calif.-based company said it wants to raise $100 million. The underwriters are Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan, Stifel Nicolaus Weisel and William Blair & Company.

Pandora explained in the document that its service today is primarily a personalized radio station streamed over the Web and mobile phones, but in the future it has aspirations to do much more.

It wants to improve the service, develop new advertising products, build out its ad sales force, expand distribution to other consumer electronics and automobiles, and expand internationally. It also wants to add other types of content beyond music, such as radio formats, like talk radio or sports.

The company reported a loss of $328,000 on total revenues of $90.1 million in the nine months ended October 31, 2010. In the same period in 2009, it lost $18.6 million on revenues of $31.4 million.

A majority of its revenues comes from advertising, with a very small minority from subscriptions.

Pandora uses what it calls the Music Genome Project to draw correlations between different songs, so that when a user picks a particular station–based on an artist or a song–it finds the best matches to fit your taste, making the service insanely addictive.

The company’s tagline: “It’s a new kind of radio–stations that play only music you like.”

Generally, the advertising interruptions are limited, and subscriptions are available.

It hasn’t always been smooth sailing for the company, and has had to fight hard to keep down the royalty costs it must pay license holders. An IPO won’t put an end to those troubles, but it signals the company may be out of the woods.

The service has plenty of rivals, including companies like Rhapsody, and could be threatened by international competition from services like Spotify, which is still months out from entering the U.S.

In the filing, Pandora says the largest shareholders are Crosslink Capital, Walden Venture Capital, Greylock Partners, Labrador Ventures, the Hearst Corporation and GGV Capital.

Some other tidbits from the filing:

–80 million registered users in the U.S.

–800,000 songs from 80,000 artists in the collection.

–Streamed 3.9 billion hours in the fiscal year ended January 2011.

And an expected one too. MPEG LA CEO Larry Horn warned that this was coming. Here’s an excerpt from my conversation with him last May–the day after Google announced its WebM video format and release of the VP8 video codec as an open standard:

JP: Let me ask you this: Are you creating a patent pool license for VP8 and WebM? Have you been approached about creating one?

Larry Horn: Yes, in view of the marketplace uncertainties regarding patent licensing needs for such technologies, there have been expressions of interest from the market urging us to facilitate formation of licenses that would address the market’s need for a convenient one-stop marketplace alternative to negotiating separate licenses with individual patent holders in accessing essential patent rights for VP8 as well as other codecs, and we are looking into the prospects of doing so.

Evidently, the prospects were pretty good, because the group is moving forward with the patent pool, and if it’s able to pull one together, Google’s royalty-free video standard may not be royalty-free for much longer. Which raises a few questions: If VP8 isn’t royalty-free, who’s going to foot the bill? And is Google willing to indemnify partners who opt to use it?

Nokia has already announced the key piece of its strategy–a shift to Windows Phone for future smartphones. Now the company is set to talk about the financial implications of that and go through the rest of its strategy, which includes a mix of Symbian and even a dash of MeeGo.

The investor event is scheduled to start shortly and due to run until about 2 pm London time. Mobilized will have live coverage, providing our battery holds out. I’ll try to mention only the high points, however. Mobilized loves numbers, but it is awfully early for a whole lot of financial speak, especially for the U.S. insomniacs tuning in.

12:02 pm: Still waiting for things to get going. But if you really want something to do, we have plenty of earlier coverage, including the press conference and the YouTube video of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Nokia CEO Stephen Elop, as well as a chat with Elop on how he made his big decision.

12:05 pm: Okay, things are getting going as Elop takes the stage (the same one as the earlier press conference.

12:06 pm: Elop is reviewing things. Lots of talk of both challenges and gems. If you read his memo, or anything else he’s said recently, you have heard this.

Battle of devices to war of ecosystems, etc. Mobilized has this part memorized.

12:09 pm: Smartphone strategy is just one piece.

Reviewing the three alternatives that Elop considered–MeeGo, Android or some partnership with Microsoft.

As for Google, Elop says it is the case there are some advantages for that approach.

“There’s something happening there. There’s no denying that.”

However, Elop says the company was worried it would be late and be just one of many, and was not sure how it could leverage assets like its Navteq location-based services.

“Our sense was differentiation could be a pretty big challenge,” Elop says. “The risk for commoditization would increase dramatically.”

Feels profit would have eventually moved to Google, with handsets becoming a commodity.

“It felt a little bit like giving up and not enough like fighting back,” Elop says.

12:12 pm: As for Microsoft, Elop says both companies are bringing something to the table.

As expected, Elop is characterizing this as more strategic than just taking a license to Windows Phone. Talking about Nokia services like mapping, local advertising and other things that Nokia can bring to the table.

“It’s far more interesting than a simple licensing deal,” Elop says. This was the only strategy that makes it a three horse race with Google and Apple.

Elop says he is convinced that Nokia will be able to differentiate within the Windows Phone ecosystem on a sustainable basis.

12:15 pm: There were some challenges and potential disadvantages, he acknowledges.

Top among these is the fact that Windows Phone 7 is new on the market.

“It’s early,” he says. “Will it succeed?”

12:17 pm: Also, there is the issue of being locked in or a lack of control. Elop does not disclose terms but says the company has flexibility and “substantial control” over the future of the ecosystem.

“This is not your mother’s OEM deal with Microsoft,” Elop says.

12:17 pm: Elop says the deal is at the “term sheet” stage, noting that the companies have yet to sign the “definitive agreement.”

12:18 pm: Already the engineers are working through, and Elop says this deal will allow Nokia to move far faster than it has in recent years.

12:18 pm: He’s also making the cost-saving argument, saying Nokia can focus its investment, which he acknowledges hasn’t been getting the return it should.

Elop earlier acknowledged that the company expects significant cost savings from the move as well as substantial workforce reductions.

“Bottom line: Products that are more competitive,” he says.

12:22 pm: Operators are excited by a third viable option, Elop says.

“A two-horse race is not a satisfactory [situation] for operators,” Elop says.

Elop says that Microsoft-Nokia will be operator-friendly, as compared with Google and Apple.

12:24 pm: Elop talking about differentiation–a key concern of analysts and investors.

Elop talks about Windows Phone as offering differentiation form Apple and Google, but also insisting that Nokia has the assets and business terms it needs to stand out from other Windows Phones. He focuses on camera technologies and “unique relationship.”

Stresses again that this is not a standard handset maker agreement. But he also says that just because Nokia can change lots of things within Windows Phone, doesn’t mean it should.

Nokia, he says, must “resist the temptation to customize just for the sake of customization.”

12:27 pm: Now talking about Symbian. For those that missed it, Elop reiterates this is a transition strategy, but adds that the company still expects to sell 150 million more Symbian devices before that transition is complete.

12:29 pm: Strategy is more than just smartphones. He wants the company to be a leading force in connecting the next billion people to the Internet via phones in emerging markets. “The market for feature phones is pushing down the price curve and that is an opportunity for Nokia.”

Nokia will do incremental work in that area–things like Nokia Money for people that don’t have a bank account or telephone. Another, Nokia Life Tools, helps connect, say, farmers to market information.

This area is still a target for innovation, he says, but it also faces competition from Chinese-made phones based on MediaTek chipsets.

Elop says that the company must also plan for the future so that it can be disruptive down the road. “As they say in Finland, it is time to shoot ahead of the duck,” he says.

That’s where MeeGo comes in–the mobile version of Linux that until recently was seen as Nokia’s future. Nokia said that team will ship a phone later this year and then see where the future is headed.

12:35 pm: Want to point out this New York Times article that said both Google and Microsoft were offering hundreds of millions of dollars in engineering and marketing support in order to woo Nokia.

12:36 pm: Elop now talking about cost cuts, including significant job reductions.

“We are not announcing how many and in what country,” Elop says, but adds that the company wants to move quickly on that front.

He says that he has made changes to the business to ensure speed, including leadership structure changes aimed at ensuring accountability. “If things go well today, I’ll be the CEO.”

Of note, the two of the three business unit leaders are women–Mary McDowell, who will lead lower-end phones, and Jo Harlow, who will head the smartphone business.

12:40 pm: Nokia looking for a new leader for its services and developer division. The acting head is Tero Ojanpera, but he will soon be looking for other opportunities within Nokia, Elop says.

Also of note, Louise Pentland, who is head of the legal and intellectual property unit, is being elevated to the top leadership team.

“We have one of the strongest patent portfolios out there” he says, adding that he would encourage all players to take a license to said patents. (hear that, Apple?)

New leader of North American sales unit to be named in coming days.

“We are creating a different industry,” Elop says in closing his introductory remarks.

12:44 pm: Elop Brings on CFO Timo Ihamuotila to go through the numbers.

12:46 pm: Ihamuotila acknowledged Nokia didn’t meet the targets it had set out to achieve at its last financial analyst day.

“Our execution did not cut it.” he says.

12:49 pm: Ah, Now on to the good stuff. CFO talking financial impact from Microsoft deal. Says should be good over the long term.

Slide shows royalty payments to Microsoft causing lower gross margins, but says sales and marketing support from Microsoft should lower operating expenses.

“We will receive substantial go-to market support from Microsoft,” he says, without giving numbers.

12:52 pm: Ihamuotila talking now about the company’s long-term targets for devices and services period “after the transition period.”

Device sales to grow faster than the market, with operating margins of 10 percent or more–but this is only after the transition period, which the company has said could last this year and next.

Significant uncertainties in this period.

Ihamuotila shows a slide showing Symbian sales slowly giving way to Windows Phone with lower-end mobile phones remaining about half of sales.

12:57 pm: Ihamuotila shows chart of how it expects to cut R&D with the company investing less in services, more in entry-level phones and far less on MeeGo, though still some. The investment in Symbian will be replaced by a far lower investment in Windows Phone R&D. Overall, R&D should be a fraction of what it was.

1:02 pm: Over long term, Ihamuotila says that the Microsoft deal should help significantly boost the company’s Navteq navigation business.

“We think this new strategy is the best way to maximize long-term value, both to our shareholders and to other stakeholders,” Ihamuotila says.

On to Q&A for financial analysts.

1:03 pm: Question on how Nokia will keep employees motivated, something else and when to expect the first Windows Phone.

“Thanks for the one question” Elop quips, before addressing them in turn.

Elop says that the key is on focused innovation so they see the fresh opportunities (at least for the ones who don’t get cut by the large workforce reductions also promised).

He also pointed to his sharply worded memo, which he said was designed to convey the message that “Here is the truth, we’re making decisions and we’re moving forward.”

Won’t give date on first Windows Phone, but says again that the move will allow a substantially faster pace than the company was on with Symbian.

1:07 pm: Elop is asked about some of the challenges with Microsoft and Nokia each responsible for different pieces of software and services, as opposed to Google and Apple, where things are more integrated.

“We wanted to drive operational simplicity,” Elop says, adding that the companies talked about other arrangements, though not a full-on acquisition. The companies, Elop says, decided not to go with the operational complexity of a joint venture.

1:10 pm: Elop says Nokia has opportunities to differentiate from other Windows Phone devices, but adds it is in Nokia’s interest for there to be other strong handset players supporting Windows Phone.

“We’ve got to make Windows Phone successful,” he says.

Nokia’s mapping technology, he says, will benefit rivals like Samsung and HTC. “We’re willing to make those trades,” Elop says.

1:11 pm: Elop is asked why he feels comfortable with a “bet the farm” strategy on Microsoft, a company he clearly knows well.

Elop points out that it was harder to see how Microsoft would rapidly be successful without someone like Nokia.

“But this is now different,” he says, adding that this is now an ecosystem that Microsoft and Nokia are jointly helping to build.

Mapping and local advertising were not part of the ecosystem before the Nokia-Microsoft partnership.

As for impact of the transition, it’s hard to say, Elop says. Symbian is strong in some places where Apple and Google are present today.

1:14 pm: Asked whether Nokia will remain profitable during the transition. “It’s hard to say financially, and I am not going to provide any further specific guidance.”

1:17 pm: Elop won’t say when the first Windows Phone will ship, but lots and lots by next year at various price points.

“We’ll be shipping in volume in 2012,” he says.

1:20 pm: Another two-parter! 1) Why will Symbian be supported if it is transitioning away? 2) Why does Nokia think it will be able to have double-digit operating margins using someone else’s platform?

Elop: They recognize Symbian is key to Nokia being able to transition, but he agrees that consumers will have to want the Symbian phones Nokia builds. CFO also notes that less than half of Symbian phones are sold through carriers.

As for question on margins, CFO says the company has opportunities for higher margins around services and advertising.

1:23 pm: Asked about how the company is confident Windows Phone can get to lower prices, Elop says that was a key consideration, down to which chipsets will be supported, etc.

Between the two companies there was a lot of work to get a high degree of confidence.

“That was a critical evaluation,” he says.

That said, Elop agrees there is a smartphone market below Windows Phone that Nokia will manage with an evolution of today’s Series 30 and Series 40 operating systems.

1:31 pm: Elop: Some of the hardware designs that would have run MeeGo or Symbian will be repurposed for Windows Phone. Some devices may come out with similar models for both Windows Phone and Symbian.

1:32 pm: Question again on who pays whom in Microsoft-Nokia. Is there a lump payment from Microsoft?

Elop doesn’t answer and instead refers to slide that shows opportunities on both sides. Saying value going both ways. As for Microsoft’s payments, “That is a significant part of the conversation,” Elop says.

1:35 pm: Two good questions: Can Windows Phone be put on any current devices? What happens to QT development layer that Nokia bought and had sought to unify developer approach?

Elop: It’s not as simple as plugging in and downloading on to current phones, though some technologies can be repurposed.

QT continues to be the development for Symbian and lone MeeGo device. Also could have a role on low-end devices.

However, Elop says, “We are not proposing a QT on Windows Phone” approach. Adding another development environment could fork the ecosystem, which is not good for Nokia or Windows Phone, he says. Development environment for Windows Phone will be Silverlight and XNA–Microsoft’s current tools.

1:38 pm: Asked about branding, he says in some cases you will see both Microsoft and Nokia brands. Examples could include Nokia Search powered by Bing or Bing maps powered by Nokia, though he says those are examples and not final choices.

1:39 pm: Asking about tablets, questioner points out that Nokia had an early lead in tablets, but Apple “stole the show.”

“We are not announcing today a specific tablet strategy,” he reiterates, saying that Microsoft creates opportunities.

Elop notes that there are rumors of Windows Phone and Windows that could power tablets.

“We could do that,” he says. “We might do that.”

Also an opportunity for Nokia to step back into the game using its own software.

1:41 pm: Elop wrapping up.

“We have set a new course for Nokia,” he says, adding that despite what has been written, Nokia is still an incredibly powerful company, though perhaps not in North America. “Today we are diving forward” he says. “We have a strong partner in Microsoft who is incented as are we in making this successful.”

Investor guy closes by reminding there were forward-looking statements. He’s still going as people leave the room.

COMPLETE COVERAGE:

• Nokia’s Stephen Elop Talks to Mobilized About the Big Microsoft Deal (Video)
• Massive Layoffs Expected at Nokia
• Nokia’s Microsoft Partnership: Does the New Strategy Add Up?
• Live From the Nokia-Microsoft Press Conference: It’s a Windows Phone World After All
• More From Nokia: Forecast Gets Cloudy, Plus Expected Executive Changes
• Nokia-Microsoft: What Steve Ballmer and Stephen Elop Have to Say in Their Joint Letter
• Nokia Confirms Microsoft Partnership With YouTube Video
• R&D Spending: Nokia Vs. Apple Shows Size Doesn’t Matter
• Not Seeing Much Return on That Massive R&D Spend, Are You, Nokia?
• Nokia: Big and Slow

That’s what Google did today, announcing that its Chrome browser will ship without native support for H.264, the video specification on which the Web is arguably standardized (certainly it’s the one prefered by folks like Apple and Microsoft). Instead it will support WebM, Google’s open-source, royalty-free codec, and Theora, another open compression developed by the Xiph.org Foundation.

“We are changing Chrome’s HTML5 video support to make it consistent with the codecs already supported by the open Chromium project,” Google said in a post to the Chromium blog. “Specifically, we are supporting the WebM (VP8) and Theora video codecs, and will consider adding support for other high-quality open codecs in the future. Though H.264 plays an important role in video, as our goal is to enable open innovation, support for the codec will be removed and our resources directed towards completely open codec technologies.”

A ballsy move on Google’s part and one that will certainly spark off the video codec contretemps once more. Sadly, it’s going to make the the HTML 5 transition even more messy than it already is. Right now, video can be encoded in H.264 and served up to pretty much any browser or mobile platform–using a Flash wrapper if necessary. But once Google ends support for H.264, video producers will have to encode their content a second time to play natively in Chrome.

Which seems unfortunate. Particularly because Google is billing its decision as a move to free, open standards and away from proprietary ones like H.264 that must be licensed. By ending support for H.264, Google is actually encumbering video producers with additional costs. Said SmugMug CEO Don MacAskill, “I’m left with two choices: Gulp and double my costs on an unknown tech, or return to Flash as primary solution. Ugh. Thanks, Google.”

But Flash isn’t free and open standard, either. If Google’s goal is to “enable open innovation” shouldn’t it be dumping Flash from Chrome as well? Evidently, that’s not part of the master plan which includes Adobe as a WebM partner …

PREVIOUSLY:

• Google’s “Royalty-Free” WebM Video May Not Be Royalty-Free for Long
• Google Open Sources VP8 Video Codec. Will Apple, Microsoft and Intel Use It?

Among the phones that Sony alleges are infringing on its technology are the Accolate, Encore, enV Touch, Glance, Lotus Elite, Neon, Quantum and Rumor Touch.

The latest legal challenge adds to an already crowded docket of wireless competitors making patent-related claims. Just a partial list of the court battles has Nokia against Apple, Motorola against Microsoft, Apple against HTC and Oracle against Google.

Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith predicted last month that the various players will probably agree on some sort of appropriate royalty streams covering modern smartphones. in the meantime, it looks like the lawyers for all the cellphone makers will remain gainfully employed in 2011.

At a dinner with reporters on Monday night, Microsoft top lawyer Brad Smith said that the company also sees a chance to make money from its vast pool of smartphone-related patents. He wouldn’t quantify the revenue opportunity, but conceded it doesn’t expect to be able to get as much per phone as it does when someone uses its software.

That said, the overall market opportunity from patents might still be bigger, especially when you consider Microsoft’s paltry share of the phone market today.

Smith declined to put a total dollar figure on the patent opportunity or say how much it might equate to on a per-phone basis.

“We would be hard-pressed to get more for patents than we get for software,” he said. However, Smith also agreed that the patent revenue could eventually be vastly larger than what Microsoft has made to date by licensing Windows Mobile and now Windows Phone 7.

“We’d still rather sell software,” he said, but added, “either way, it gives us an opportunity to recoup [our] costs.”

At the moment, there is chaos in the phone patent arena, with Apple suing HTC, Microsoft suing Motorola and Oracle suing Google, to list just a partial court docket. However, Smith said he would not be at all surprised to see things shake out in the next couple of years into a manageable patent licensing arrangement, not unlike the one that exists with the radio portion of a cellphone today.

About $20 per modern phone goes to patents, with the lion’s share of that going to Qualcomm. On the smartphone side, Smith said Microsoft and Apple hold the lion’s share of the intellectual property.

“I think there is a good chance the industry will work through the patent issues over the next several years,” he said.

While Smith said he can’t speak for Apple, he said that Microsoft is actively interested in licensing its patents, noting the company’s agreement with Taiwanese cellphone maker HTC (a company that makes Android devices, as well as those running Microsoft’s mobile operating system).

“By entering into an agreement with HTC, we effectively signaled we are open for business when it comes to licensing,” Smith said.

Smith noted that Motorola and HTC, together, account for most of the Android market. This is probably the most fertile patent ground for Microsoft, since Apple and Microsoft have a patent-swap deal that covers some technologies and also both hold a fair bit of intellectual property in the area.

The generally affable Smith was not all sunshine and rainbows, however: “If we can’t get a reasonable royalty then we will seek an injunction.”

Of course, even if the monetary impact from licensing patents for phones could rival that of selling software, it lacks the strategic benefits Microsoft gets from having its operating system on phones.

Windows Phone 7 devices carry not only Microsoft’s operating system, but also versions of Office, Bing, Zune and Xbox Live.

The computing world is increasingly shifting to one in which key software runs not just on computers, but on a panoply of mobile devices as well. Microsoft itself has talked about the notion of “three screens and a cloud,” with the phone being one of those all-important three screens.

Smith says he expects the phone patent spat to spill over into the tablet arena as well, with similar issues at stake, although he expects any royalty amount to be higher for tablets than it is for smartphones.

“The world would have a new free format unencumbered by software patents,” the Free Software Foundation enthused in an open letter to Google (GOOG) earlier this year. “Viewers, video creators, free software developers, hardware makers–everyone–would have another way to distribute video without patents, fees, and restrictions.”

A new era of Web video without the patent-encumbered formats that have defined the Internet to date. That seems ideal. But like many ideals, it may prove to be unattainable. As a number of observers have already noted VP8 isn’t free from patent liability. And now that Google has open-sourced it as part of WebM, that liability is likely to become an issue.

And quickly, too.

Indeed, Larry Horn, CEO of MPEG LA, the consortium that controls the AVC/H.264 video standard, tells me that the group is already looking at creating a patent pool license for VP8. Here’s an excerpt from my email exchange with him:

JP: Let me ask you this: Are you creating a patent pool license for VP8 and WebM? Have you been approached about creating one?

Larry Horn: Yes, in view of the marketplace uncertainties regarding patent licensing needs for such technologies, there have been expressions of interest from the market urging us to facilitate formation of licenses that would address the market’s need for a convenient one-stop marketplace alternative to negotiating separate licenses with individual patent holders in accessing essential patent rights for VP8 as well as other codecs, and we are looking into the prospects of doing so.

It would seem, then, that VP8 may end up subject to the same licensing issues as H.264. If MPEG LA does create a patent pool license for the standard, the free lunch Google promised yesterday may not be free after all.

Google certainly has the market muscle to guarantee broad acceptance of WebM and the VP8 codec–if it’s a royalty-free standard. But what if it’s not truly royalty free? Who’ll foot the bill? And is the company willing to indemnify its partners from patent litigation to push WebM?

For what it’s worth, Google seems to believe that it has done its due diligence here and has the necessary patent clearance for VP8. Said Google product manager Mike Jazayeri: “We have done a pretty thorough analysis of VP8 and On2 Technologies (VP8′s developer) prior to the acquisition and since then, and we are very confident with the technology and that’s why we’re open sourcing.”

Question is, was that analysis thorough enough?

I’ve asked Google for comment on Horn’s remarks and will update here if I’m given one.

So it’s no surprise that the company announced an open-source, royalty-free HTML5 video format based on VP8 at its I/O conference Wednesday. What is surprising is the level of industry support Google has already rounded up.

Dubbed WebM, the format uses the VP8 codec for video and Vorbis codec for audio and is offered under a pretty permissive BSD-style license that makes it quite a bit more attractive than H.264, a rival format with pretty steep licensing fees.

Google is pushing the format hard. The company has convinced Mozilla and Opera to add WebM support to their browsers (Chrome support is obviously a given) and it has begun encoding all YouTube videos 720p or larger in the format.

Google has also lined up some 40 software and hardware vendors to support WebM. Among them: Oracle (ORCL), AMD (AMD), ARM (ARM), Nvidia (NVDA), Qualcomm (QCOM) and Brightcove. Also on the list: Adobe (ADBE), which plans to use VP8 for Flash.

An impressive lineup of supporters, though there are three notable omissions: Apple (AAPL), Microsoft (MSFT) and Intel (INTC). Will those companies come around and back the standard as well? Given enough industry support for VP8 playback through HTML5, they may have to. I’ve asked them and will update here if I hear back.

UPDATE: Intel tells me it will support WebM and V8, not because it particularly favors them but because it plans to support most video formats.

“We’re supportive of multiple formats,” a company spokesman told me. “We don’t support one format to the exclusion of another format.”

UPDATE: Interesting. There’s speculation that WebM may violate some H.264 patents. “VP8 is simply way too similar to H.264,” developer Jason Garrett-Glaser concludes after an exhaustive analysis of the format. “[A] pithy, if slightly inaccurate, description of VP8 would be “H.264 Baseline Profile with a better entropy coder”. Though I am not a lawyer, I simply cannot believe that they will be able to get away with this, especially in today’s overly litigious day and age. Even VC-1 differed more from H.264 than VP8 does, and even VC-1 didn’t manage to escape the clutches of software patents. Until we get some hard evidence that VP8 is safe, I would be extremely cautious. Since Google is not indemnifying users of VP8 from patent lawsuits, this is even more of a potential problem.”

Today, the Finnish cellphone giant, which has been struggling to develop a worthy competitor to the iPhone, filed suit against Apple, claiming the popular smart phone infringes upon a number of Nokia patents.

Specifically at issue here: 10 patents covering various wireless data, speech coding, security and encryption technologies. Nokia claims that every iPhone model shipped since 2007 has violated them.

“The basic principle in the mobile industry is that those companies who contribute in technology development to establish standards create intellectual property, which others then need to compensate for,” said Ilkka Rahnasto, vice president of legal & intellectual property at Nokia (NOK). “Apple is also expected to follow this principle. By refusing to agree appropriate terms for Nokia’s intellectual property, Apple is attempting to get a free ride on the back of Nokia’s innovation.”

To that point, Nokia says it has entered into license agreements with about 40 companies for these patents. Only Apple (AAPL) has refused. The obvious endgame here, then, is to force the iPhone maker to change its mind.

“We believe that Nokia is not seeking an injunction; rather, we believe that the company has been in talks with Apple concerning a patent royalty payment for over a year,” Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster said in a bulletin to clients. “With today’s announcement, it appears that the companies have not come to a resolution and Nokia is attempting to hasten the process. Nokia is likely looking to obtain a patent royalty of 1-2 percent ($6 to $12) on every iPhone sold in compensation for its IPs concerning GSM, 3G and WiFi technologies on mobile devices.”

Interesting that news of the suit comes just days after Apple announced its most successful financial quarter ever at a time when Nokia is posting nasty losses.

I’ve asked Apple for comment and will update here if I’m offered one.

“We are no longer planning to pursue the acquisition as there has been no progress since we withdrew our offer as of Oct. 22, 2008,” the company said in a filing with the Korea Exchange. The announcement comes after the two companies inked a new seven-year NAND flash-memory license agreement, one that will see Samsung paying about half the royalty amount it paid previously.

That’s the word from Nokia, which vehemently denied reports this morning that it is just months away from launching its first mobile phone based on Google’s mobile OS. “There is no truth to this story whatsoever,” the company said in a statement. “It is a well known fact that Symbian is our platform of choice for smartphones.”

Indeed. It was a just a little over a year ago that Nokia (NOK) invested some $410 million in the platform, establishing the Symbian Foundation and releasing the Symbian OS as a royalty-free open mobile platform. It seems unlikely that the company would jeopardize that effort by rolling out an Android touchscreen phone at its annual conference. Even more unlikely when you consider that Symbian is by far the world’s leading smartphone software platform. It might not have as much buzz as Google’s (GOOG) Android or Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone 3.0 or Palm’s (PALM) new webOS, but Symbian still claims 47 percent of the mobile OS market.

Apparently, it isn’t. Ellis writes that contract pricing in the current quarter looks on track to fall 22 percent, “worse than our SanDisk royalty model [of] down 10 percent.” As a result, Ellis says product gross margin for the fourth quarter of this year and for all of next year could be 1 to 3 percentage points lower than the Street’s modeling.

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