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MPEG LA
MPEG LA was an American company based in Denver, Colorado that licensed patent pools covering essential patents required for use of the MPEG-2, MPEG-4, IEEE 1394, VC-1, ATSC, MVC, MPEG-2 Systems, AVC/H.264 and HEVC standards.[1][2][3] Via Licensing Corp acquired MPEG LA in April 2023 and formed a new patent pool administration company called Via Licensing Alliance.[4] HistoryMPEG LA started operations in July 1997 immediately after receiving a Department of Justice Business Review Letter.[5] 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 various MPEG-2 patent owners to form MPEG LA, which in turn created the first modern-day patent pool as a solution. The majority of patents underlying MPEG-2 technology were owned by three companies: Sony (311 patents), Thomson (198 patents) and Mitsubishi Electric (119 patents).[6][7] In June 2012, MPEG LA announced a call for patents essential to the High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) standard.[8] 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).[9][10] On September 29, 2014, the MPEG LA announced their HEVC license which covers the patents from 23 companies.[11] The license is US$0.20 per HEVC product after the first 100,000 units each year with an annual cap.[12] The license has been expanded to include the profiles in version 2 of the HEVC standard.[13] On March 5, 2015, the MPEG LA announced their DisplayPort license which is US$0.20 per DisplayPort product.[14] In April 2023, in what is thought to be the first time that two pool administrators have merged into one, Via Licensing Corp acquired MPEG LA and formed a new patent pool administrator called Via Licensing Alliance. Via President Heath Hoglund will serve as president of the new company. MPEG LA CEO Larry Horn will serve as a Via LA advisor.[15] CriticismMPEG LA has claimed that video codecs such as Theora[16][17][18] and VP8[19][20][21] infringe on patents owned by its licensors, without disclosing the affected patent or patents.[22] They then called out for “any party that believes it has patents that are essential to the VP8 video codec”.[23] In April 2013, Google and MPEG LA announced an agreement covering the VP8 video format.[24] 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.[25] The United States District Court for the Central District of California dismissed the suit with prejudice on November 29, 2010.[26] 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.[27][28] The MPEG-2 patent pool began with 100 patents in 1997 and since then additional patents were added.[29][30] The MPEG-2 license agreement states that if possible the license fee will not increase when new patents are added.[31] The MPEG-2 license agreement stated 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.[32] The original MPEG-2 license rate was US$4 for a decoding license, US$4 for an encoding license and US$6.00 for encode-decode consumer product.[33] A criticism of the MPEG-2 patent pool is that even though the number of patents decreased from 1,048 to 416 by June 2013 the license fee did not decrease with the expiration rate of MPEG-2 patents.[34][35][36] For products from January 1, 2002, through December 31, 2009 royalties were US$2.50 for a decoding license, US$2.50 for an encoding license and US$2.50 for encode-decode consumer product license.[37] Since January 1, 2010, MPEG-2 patent pool royalties were US$2.00 for a decoding license, US$2.00 for an encoding license and US$2.00 for encode-decode consumer product.[37] H.264/MPEG-4 AVC licensorsThe following organizations hold one or more patents in MPEG LA's H.264/AVC patent pool.
HEVC licensorsThe following organizations hold one or more patents in the HEVC patent pool.
VC-1 licensorsThe following organizations hold one or more patents in the VC-1 patent pool (as of November 26, 2024[update]).[44]
See alsoReferences
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