MPEG LA

MPEG Licensing Administration, LLC
Industry Licensing Administration
Founded 1996 (1996)
Headquarters Denver, Colorado, United States
Key people
 Larry Horn
Products Licenses
Website www.mpegla.com

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.

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]

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]

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]

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Revolutionizing Intellectual Property Rights Management". Retrieved 2010-04-13.
  2. ↑ Loli-Queru, Eugenia (2010-05-01), Why Our Civilization's Video Art and Culture is Threatened by the MPEG-LA, OSNews
  3. ↑ Clendenin, Mike (2007-03-12), Chinese set-top box makers, MPEG LA face off over patent fees, EE Times
  4. ↑ "MPEG LA Business Review Letter". Retrieved 2013-05-13.
  5. ↑ "MPEG LA Announces Call for Patents Essential to High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC)" (PDF) (Press release). Denver, CO: MPEG LA. 2012-06-26. Retrieved 2013-05-13.
  6. ↑ "MPEG LA's Librassay® Removes Patent Barriers to Diagnostics for Personalized Medicine" (PDF) (Press release). Denver, CO: MPEG LA. 2012-09-27. Retrieved 2013-05-13.
  7. ↑ "MPEG LA Continues to Expand Librassay® with Addition of WARF" (PDF) (Press release). Denver, CO: MPEG LA. 2013-02-21. Retrieved 2013-05-13.
  8. ↑ "MPEG LA Offers HEVC Patent Portfolio License". Yahoo Finance. 2014-09-29. Retrieved 2014-09-29.
  9. ↑ "HEVC Patent Portfolio License Briefing" (PDF). MPEG LA. 2014-09-29. Retrieved 2014-09-29.
  10. ↑ "MPEG LA Expands HEVC License Coverage". Yahoo Finance. 2015-03-19. Retrieved 2015-03-20.
  11. ↑ "MPEG LA Introduces License for DisplayPort". Business Wire. March 5, 2015. Retrieved March 5, 2015.
  12. ↑ Ozer, Jan (2010-03-04), Ogg, MPEG LA, and Submarine Patents, StreamingMedia.com
  13. ↑ Metz, Cade (2010-04-30), Steve Jobs: mystery patent pool to attack Ogg Theora, The Register
  14. ↑ Blankenhorn, Dana (2010-05-02), Behind the open codec FUD attack, ZDNet
  15. ↑ Metz, Cade (2010-05-20), Google backs open codec against patent trolls, The Register
  16. ↑ Metz, Cade (2010-05-21), Google open video codec may face patent clash, The Register
  17. ↑ Fulton, Scott M. (2010-05-21), Patent pool may be in the works for 'free' VP8 codec, Betanews
  18. ↑ Blankenhorn, Dana (2010-05-24), FUD pushing back hard against Google WebM, ZDNet
  19. ↑ MPEG LA Announces Call for Patents Essential to VP8 Video Codec, Denver, CO: MPEG LA, 2011-02-10, retrieved 2010-02-12
  20. ↑ "Google and MPEG LA Announce Agreement Covering VP8 Video Format" (PDF) (Press release). Denver, CO: MPEG LA. 2013-03-07. Retrieved 2013-05-13.
  21. ↑ Holwerda, Thom (2010-05-24), Nero Files Antitrust Case Against MPEG-LA, OSNews
  22. ↑ NERO AG v. MPEG LA, L.L.C. (PDF), United States District Court for the Central District of California, 2010-11-24, retrieved 2013-06-05
  23. ↑ David Balto (2013-05-09). "Patent Pools May Create Anticompetitive Effects, New Report Finds". Business Wire. Retrieved 2013-07-03.
  24. ↑ David Balto. "Barriers to Competition on the Innovation Superhighway: How the Lack of Antitrust Scrutiny of Patent Pools Deters Competition" (PDF). The Law Offices of David A. Balto PLLC. Retrieved 2013-07-03.
  25. 1 2 Larry Horn (2002-08-19). "Alternative approaches to IP management: One-stop technology platform licensing" (PDF). Journal of Commercial Biotechnology. Retrieved 2013-06-23.
  26. ↑ "Attachment 1" (PDF). MPEG LA. 1997-06-08. Retrieved 2013-06-23.
  27. ↑ "MPEG-2 Attachment 1" (PDF). MPEG LA. 2013-05-17. Retrieved 2013-06-23.
  28. ↑ Josh Lerner; Jean Tirole (2008-04-01). "Public Policy toward Patent Pools" (PDF). National Bureau of Economic Research. Retrieved 2013-06-23.
  29. ↑ "MPEG-2 License Agreement". MPEG LA. Retrieved 2013-06-26.
  30. ↑ Franklin Douglas (2005-03-18). "MPEG licensing basics". EE Times. Retrieved 2013-06-23.
  31. 1 2 "Patent Pools May Create Anticompetitive Effects, New Report Finds". Business Wire. 2013-05-09. Retrieved 2013-06-06.
  32. 1 2 Steve Pociask (2013-05-13). "Consumer tech rip-off from patent pools". The Daily Caller. Retrieved 2013-05-19.
  33. 1 2 Bret Swanson (2013-04-30). "MPEG-LA Shows Need to Rebuild IP Foundations". Forbes. Retrieved 2013-05-19.
  34. 1 2 Steve Forbes (2013-03-18). "America's patent system is all wrong for today's high-tech world". Fox News Channel. Retrieved 2013-06-05.
  35. 1 2 3 "MPEG-2 License Agreement". MPEG LA. 2013-05-13. Retrieved 2013-05-19.
  36. ↑ "AVC/H.264 Licensors". MPEG-LA. Retrieved 2013-05-19.
  37. ↑ "MPEG LA Offers HEVC Patent Portfolio License" (PDF). MPEG LA. Retrieved 2014-10-15.
  38. ↑ "VC-1 Licensors". MPEG-LA. Retrieved 2013-05-19.
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