First Meeting of Blu-ray DiscTM
Patent Holders Held
Progress Made, Input Welcomed in
Creation of Joint Patent License
Denver, Colorado USA '“ 20 July 2006 -
MPEG LA announced today that the first
meeting of essential Blu-ray DiscTM 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 DiscTM standard and wishes to join the Blu-ray DiscTM
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 DiscTM 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 DiscTM standard and likely to
issue in a patent also may be submitted for an
evaluation of essentiality.
Source: MPEG LA
