MPEG LA announced today that the first meeting of
essential Blu-ray Disc(TM) patent owners, consisting of 17 companies,
was held in Los Angeles on July 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.
Participating companies included 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; Sony Corporation; TDK Corporation; Victor Company of
Japan, Ltd.; and Warner Home Video Inc.
"This extraordinary effort, and the substantial progress made in
this initial meeting, by so many diverse companies 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. "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."
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 opportunity-enabling 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. 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 patent rights necessary for a particular
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 alternative to assist users with implementation
of their technology choices, the MPEG LA(R) Licensing Model may
provide a solution. MPEG LA is not related to any standards agency and
is not an affiliate of any patent holder. 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 licenses portfolios of
essential patents for the MPEG-2, MPEG-2 Systems, IEEE 1394, DVB-T,
MPEG-4 Visual (Part 2), and AVC/H.264 (also known as MPEG-4 Part 10)
standards. In addition to Blu-ray Disc(TM), MPEG LA is facilitating
the development of alternative patent portfolio licenses for VC-1,
ATSC, DVB-H, digital rights management (DRM) technologies including
OMA DRM 1.0 and 2.0., and RFID. MPEG LA also actively seeks to adopt
its alternative patent licensing model in other industries including
biotech and pharmaceutical. For more information, please refer to
http://www.mpegla.com.