MPEG LA announced today that the fourth meeting of essential
Blu-ray Disc(TM) patent owners, currently consisting of 18 companies,
was held in New York on February 6-7 for the purpose of creating a
joint license providing fair, reasonable, non-discriminatory access to
essential patents, as an alternative to negotiating separate licenses.
Significant progress has been made in identifying licensing terms for
Blu-ray Disc(TM) products such as players, recorders, drives,
software, recordable discs and prerecorded discs. Participating
companies include CyberLink Corporation; Dell Inc.; Hewlett-Packard
Company; Hitachi Ltd.; Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V.; LG
Electronics Inc.; Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd.
(Panasonic); Mitsubishi Electric Corporation; Pioneer Corporation;
Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.; Sanyo Electric Co., Ltd.; Sharp
Corporation; Sonic Solutions; Sony Corporation; TDK Corporation;
Victor Company of Japan, Ltd.; and Warner Home Video Inc.
"The participation of this group of diverse companies in the
development of a joint license bodes well for offering an efficient
way to address intellectual property licensing needs for advanced
optical devices, discs and related implementations," said MPEG LA CEO
Larry Horn. "The group especially appreciates the input and views
received from interested parties, including potential licensees, in
all related industry sectors. MPEG LA welcomes the opportunity to
facilitate any and all efforts to assist users with their advanced
optical disc technology choices in order to give consumers the benefit
of innovative information and entertainment applications."
Additional patent holder meetings are planned, and work on the
joint license will continue. Meanwhile, MPEG LA welcomes additional
owners of essential patents to participate in the creation of a joint
patent license for the benefit of the marketplace. Any party that
believes it has patents that are essential to the Blu-ray Disc(TM)
standard and wishes to join the Blu-ray Disc(TM) Patent Portfolio
License is invited to submit them for evaluation of their essentiality
to the standard by MPEG LA's patent evaluators. Further information,
along with terms and procedures governing patent submissions, can be
found at http://www.mpegla.com/pid/bluray/. While only issued patents
that are essential to the Blu-ray Disc(TM) standard will be included
in the license, in order to participate in the license development
process, patent applications with claims that their owners believe are
essential to the Blu-ray Disc(TM) standard and likely to issue in a
patent also may be submitted for an evaluation of essentiality.
MPEG LA, LLC
MPEG LA is the world leader in alternative technology licenses,
enabling users to acquire worldwide patent rights necessary for a
technology standard or platform from multiple patent holders in a
single transaction as an alternative to negotiating separate licenses.
Wherever an independently administered one-stop patent license would
provide a convenient marketplace alternative to assist users with
implementation of their technology choices, the licensing model
pioneered and employed by MPEG LA may provide a solution. By balancing
patent users' interest in reasonable access with patent owners'
interest in reasonable return, MPEG LA creates the opportunity for
adoption of new technologies and fuels innovation. MPEG LA's initial
licensing program for MPEG-2 digital video compression helped produce
the most widely employed standard in consumer electronics history, and
the MPEG LA(R) Licensing Model has become the template for addressing
other technologies. Today MPEG LA manages licensing programs
consisting of essential patents in 57 countries. MPEG LA is an
independent licensing administrator; it is not related to any
standards agency and is not an affiliate of any patent holder. For
more information, please refer to http://www.mpegla.com.
