James Delahunty
24 Feb 2007 17:40
MPEG LA has announced that the fourth meeting of essential Blu-ray patent owners, which includes 18 separate companies, was held in New York on February 6th and 7th. It aimed to create a joint license to provide fair, reasonable, non-discriminatory access to essential patents. The idea is to avoid the need to negotiate separate licenses with all different companies.
MPEG LA said that significant progress has been made in identifying licensing terms for Blu-ray Disc products such as players, recorders, drives, software, recordable discs and prerecorded discs. "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.
He added: "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."
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 standard and wishes to join the Blu-ray Disc Patent Portfolio License is invited to submit them for evaluation of their essentiality to the standard by MPEG LA’s patent evaluators.
More patent holder meetings are planned. 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.
Source:
Press Release