MPEG LA announced today that the first meeting of essential HD DVD
patent owners, currently consisting of 16 companies, was held in Los
Angeles on September 11 for the purpose of creating a joint license
providing fair, reasonable, non-discriminatory access to essential
patents, as an alternative to negotiating separate licenses. Initial
participating companies include LG Electronics Inc.; Microsoft
Corporation; Mitsubishi Electric Corporation; NEC Corporation; Samsung
Electronics Co., Ltd.; SANYO Electric Co., Ltd.; Sonic Solutions; TDK
Corporation; Thomson Licensing; Toshiba Corporation; Victor Company of
Japan, Ltd.(JVC); and Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Inc.
"MPEG LA applauds the extraordinary cooperation of so many diverse
companies working together to come up with an efficient way for users
of the multitude of patents employed in HD DVD devices, discs and
related implementations to address their licensing needs," said MPEG
LA CEO Larry Horn. "And the substantial progress made in this initial
meeting bodes well for achieving it."
MPEG LA, on behalf of essential patent owners, welcomes the input
and views of interested parties, including potential licensees, in all
related industry sectors. The objective is for the license to reflect
both relevant conditions in the marketplace and the value of the
licensed technology in order to strike a balance between patent users'
interest in reasonable access to this advanced optical disc technology
and patent holders' interest in a reasonable return on their research
and development investment that enables a joint license to be offered
for the convenience of the marketplace as an alternative to
negotiating separate licenses.
Additional patent holder meetings are planned, and work on the
joint license will continue. MPEG LA welcomes any party that believes
it has patents which are essential to the HD DVD standard to submit
them for evaluation of their essentiality by MPEG LA's patent
evaluators and participate in the joint license creation process if
determined to be essential. Further information, along with terms and
procedures governing patent submissions, can be found at
http://www.mpegla.com/pid/hddvd/. While only issued patents that are
essential to the HD DVD 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 HD DVD 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 owners in a
single transaction as an alternative to negotiating individual
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.
