MPEG LA
MPEG LA, LLC is a firm based in Denver, Colorado that licenses patent pools covering essential patents required[1][2] for use of the MPEG-2,[3] MPEG-4 Visual (Part 2), IEEE 1394, VC-1, ATSC, MVC, MPEG-2 Systems, AVC/H.264 and HEVC standards.
MPEG LA is not affiliated with MPEG, the Moving Picture Experts Group.
Contents
History
MPEG LA started operations in July 1997 immediately after receiving a Department of Justice Business Review Letter.[4] During formation of the MPEG-2 standard, a working group of companies that participated in the formation of the MPEG-2 standard recognized that the biggest challenge to adoption was efficient access to essential patents owned by many patent owners. That ultimately led to a group of eight MPEG-2 patent owners -- Fujitsu, Panasonic, Sony, Mitsubishi, Scientific Atlanta, Columbia University, Philips and General Instrument—along with CableLabs and certain individuals, to form MPEG LA, which in turn created the first modern-day patent pool as a solution.
In June 2012, MPEG LA announced a call for patents essential to the High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) standard.[5]
In September 2012, MPEG LA launched Librassay®, which makes diagnostic patent rights from some of the world's leading research institutions available to everyone through a single license. Organizations which have included patents in Librassay® include Johns Hopkins University; Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research; Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center; National Institutes of Health (NIH); Partners HealthCare; The Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University; The Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania; The University of California, San Francisco; and Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF).[6][7]
On September 29, 2014, the MPEG LA announced their HEVC license which covers the patents from 23 companies.[8] The license is US$0.20 per HEVC product after the first 100,000 units each year with an annual cap.[9] The license has been expanded to include the profiles in version 2 of the HEVC standard.[10]
On March 5, 2015, the MPEG LA announced their DisplayPort license which is US$0.20 per DisplayPort product.[11]
Criticism
MPEG LA has claimed that video codecs such as Theora[12][13][14] and VP8[15][16][17] infringe on patents owned by its licensors, without disclosing the affected patent or patents.[18] They then called out for “any party that believes it has patents that are essential to the VP8 video codec”.[19] In April 2013, Google and MPEG LA announced an agreement covering the VP8 video format.[20] In May 2010, Nero AG filed an antitrust suit against MPEG LA, claiming it "unlawfully extended its patent pools by adding non-essential patents to the MPEG-2 patent pool" and has been inconsistent in charging royalty fees.[21] The United States District Court for the Central District of California dismissed the suit with prejudice on November 29, 2010.[22]
David Balto, who is a former policy director at the Federal Trade Commission, has used the MPEG-2 patent pool as an example of why patent pools need more scrutiny so that they do not suppress innovation.[23][24]
The MPEG-2 patent pool began with 100 patents in 1997 and since then additional patents have been added.[25][26] As of 2013 the number of active/expired patents in the MPEG-2 patent pool is over 1,000.[25][27] The MPEG-2 license agreement states that if possible the license fee will not increase when new patents are added.[28] The MPEG-2 license agreement states that MPEG-2 royalties must be paid when there is one or more active patents in either the country of manufacture or the country of sale.[29] The original MPEG-2 license rate was $4 for a decoding license, $4 for an encoding license and $6.00 for encode-decode consumer product.[30]
A criticism of the MPEG-2 patent pool is that even though the number of patents will decrease from 1,048 to 416 by June 2013 the license fee has not decreased with the expiration rate of MPEG-2 patents.[31][32][33][34] For products from January 1, 2002 through December 31, 2009 royalties were $2.50 for a decoding license, $2.50 for an encoding license and $2.50 for encode-decode consumer product license.[35] Since January 1, 2010, MPEG-2 patent pool royalties are $2.00 for a decoding license, $2.00 for an encoding license and $2.00 for encode-decode consumer product.[35] By 2015 more than 90% of the MPEG-2 patents will have expired but as long as there are one or more active patents in the MPEG-2 patent pool in either the country of manufacture or the country of sale the MPEG-2 license agreement requires that licensees pay a license fee that does not change based on the number of patents that have expired.[31][32][33][34][35]
H.264/MPEG-4 AVC licensors
-
This is a dynamic list and may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by expanding it with reliably sourced entries.
The following organizations hold one or more patents in the H.264/AVC patent pool.[36]
- Apple Inc.
- DAEWOO
- Cisco Systems Canada Co.
- Cisco Technology, Inc.
- Dolby Laboratories Licensing Corporation
- Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) of Korea
- France Télécom, société anonyme
- Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der angewandten Forschung e.V.
- Fujitsu Limited
- Hewlett-Packard Company
- Hitachi, Ltd.
- JVC Kenwood Corporation
- Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V.
- LG Electronics Inc.
- Microsoft Corporation
- Mitsubishi Electric Corporation
- NTT docomo
- Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation
- Panasonic Corporation
- Polycom, Inc.
- Robert Bosch GmbH
- Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.
- Sedna Patent Services, LLC
- Sharp Corporation
- Siemens AG
- Sony Corporation
- Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson
- The Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York
- Toshiba Corporation
- Vidyo, Inc.
- ZTE Corporation
HEVC licensors
-
This is a dynamic list and may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by expanding it with reliably sourced entries.
The following organizations hold one or more patents in the HEVC patent pool.[37]
- Apple Inc.
- Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) of Korea
- Fujitsu Limited
- Hitachi Maxell, Ltd.
- HUMAX Holdings Co., Ltd.
- Intellectual Discovery Co., LTD.
- JVC KENWOOD Corporation
- Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST)
- Korean Broadcasting System
- KT Corp.
- M&K Holdings Inc.
- NEC Corporation
- Newratek, Inc.
- Nippon Hoso Kyokai (NHK)
- Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT)
- NTT docomo
- Orange SA
- Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.
- Siemens AG
- SK Telecom
- Tagivan II, LLC
- The Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York
- Vidyo, Inc.
VC-1 licensors
-
This is a dynamic list and may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by expanding it with reliably sourced entries.
The following organizations hold one or more patents in the VC-1 patent pool.[38]
- Dolby Laboratories Licensing Corporation
- France Télécom, société anonyme
- Fujitsu Limited
- JVC Kenwood Corporation
- Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V.
- LG Electronics Inc.
- Microsoft Corporation
- Mitsubishi Electric Corporation
- Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation
- Panasonic Corporation
- Pantech Co., Ltd.
- Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.
- Sharp Corporation
- Siemens AG
- Sony Corporation
- Telenor ASA
- Toshiba Corporation
- ZTE Corporation
See also
References
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ 25.0 25.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ 31.0 31.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ 32.0 32.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ 33.0 33.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ 34.0 34.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ 35.0 35.1 35.2 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
