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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]
 | |
| Company type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Licensing administration |
| Founded | 1996 |
| Defunct | May 2, 2023 |
| Headquarters | , US |
Key people | Larry Horn |
| Products | Patent licenses |
| Website | www |
Via Licensing Corp acquired MPEG LA in April 2023 and formed a new patent pool administration company called Via Licensing Alliance.[4]
MPEG 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]
MPEG 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]
The following organizations hold one or more patents in MPEG LA's H.264/AVC patent pool.
| Organization[39] | Active patents | Expired patents | Total patents[38] |
|---|---|---|---|
| Panasonic Corporation | 1,054 | 416 | 1,470 |
| Godo Kaisha IP Bridge | 1,033 | 267 | 1,300 |
| LG Electronics | 871 | 130 | 1001 |
| Dolby Laboratories | 1014 | 414 | 1428 |
| Toshiba | 59 | 336 | 395 |
| Microsoft | 95 | 145 | 240 |
| Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (including NTT Docomo) | 234 | 4 | 238 |
| Sony | 77 | 77 | 154 |
| Fraunhofer Society | 208 | 16 | 224 |
| 5 | 134 | 139 | |
| GE Video Compression | 136 | 0 | 136 |
| Fujitsu | 92 | 14 | 106 |
| Mitsubishi Electric | 44 | 56 | 100 |
| Tagivan II LLC | 82 | 0 | 82 |
| Samsung Electronics | 17 | 46 | 63 |
| Maxell | 54 | 2 | 56 |
| Philips | 6 | 41 | 47 |
| Vidyo | 41 | 2 | 43 |
| Ericsson | 1 | 33 | 34 |
| Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) of Korea | 10 | 25 | 35 |
| Siemens | 12 | 39 | 51 |
| The Trustees of Columbia University in New York City | 0 | 26 | 26 |
| Polycom | 2 | 20 | 22 |
| Robert Bosch GmbH | 0 | 22 | 22 |
| Apple | 7 | 2 | 9 |
| JVC Kenwood | 3 | 5 | 8 |
| Orange S.A. | 13 | 7 | 20 |
| Sharp Corporation | 5 | 0 | 5 |
| Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) | 1 | 4 | 5 |
| Cisco Systems | 3 | 1 | 4 |
| ZTE Corporation | 0 | 2 | 2 |
| Cisco Technology | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Cable Television Laboratories, Inc. | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| Hewlett-Packard Company | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| Beijing Xiaomi Mobile Software Co. | 5 | 1 | 6 |
| B1 Institute of Image Technology | 6 | 0 | 6 |
| Newracom, Inc. | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| NEC | 5 | 1 | 6 |
| Vestel Elektronik Sanayi ve Ticaret A.S. | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Total (All Manufacturers) | 5197 | 2291 | 7488 |
The following organizations hold one or more patents in the HEVC patent pool.
| Organization[41] | Active patents | Expired patents | Total patents[40] |
|---|---|---|---|
| Samsung Electronics | 3,550 | 4 | 3,554 |
| M&K Holdings[42] | 907 | 0 | 907 |
| Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (including NTT Docomo) | 878 | 2 | 880 |
| JVC Kenwood Corporation | 628 | 0 | 628 |
| Infobridge Pte. Ltd.[43] | 572 | 0 | 572 |
| SK Telecom (including SK Planet) | 380 | 0 | 380 |
| KT Corp | 289 | 0 | 289 |
| NEC Corporation | 219 | 0 | 219 |
| Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) of Korea | 208 | 0 | 208 |
| Canon Inc. | 180 | 0 | 180 |
| Tagivan II | 162 | 0 | 162 |
| Fujitsu | 144 | 1 | 145 |
| Kyung Hee University | 103 | 0 | 103 |
| Apple | 69 | 0 | 69 |
| Intellectual Discovery Co. | 67 | 0 | 67 |
| Maxell | 60 | 0 | 60 |
| IBEX PT Holdings | 58 | 0 | 58 |
| Vidyo | 41 | 0 | 41 |
| Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) | 38 | 0 | 38 |
| HUMAX Holdings | 32 | 0 | 32 |
| Kwangwoon University | 24 | 0 | 24 |
| Siemens | 13 | 8 | 21 |
| Korean Broadcasting System | 20 | 0 | 20 |
| Orange S.A. | 20 | 0 | 20 |
| BBC | 19 | 0 | 19 |
| The Trustees of Columbia University in New York City | 0 | 16 | 16 |
| Sejong University | 13 | 0 | 13 |
| Korea Aerospace University | 12 | 0 | 12 |
| Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology | 10 | 0 | 10 |
| Sungkyunkwan University | 8 | 0 | 8 |
| Nippon Hoso Kyokai (NHK) | 7 | 0 | 7 |
| Sky Media Tech, Inc. | 3 | 0 | 3 |
| Digital Insights Inc. | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| Alpha Digitech | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| MIT | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Newracom (Newratek) | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| Total (All Manufacturers) | 8738 | 32 | 8770 |
The following organizations hold one or more patents in the VC-1 patent pool (as of October 8, 2023[update]).[44][45]
| Organization | Active patents | Expired patents | Total patents[45] |
|---|---|---|---|
| Microsoft | 262 | 204 | 466 |
| Panasonic | 5 | 117 | 122 |
| LG Electronics | 11 | 85 | 96 |
| Samsung Electronics | 4 | 92 | 96 |
| Dolby Laboratories | 9 | 95 | 104 |
| Philips | 0 | 77 | 77 |
| Hitachi | 0 | 60 | 60 |
| Mitsubishi Electric | 0 | 52 | 52 |
| Sony | 0 | 28 | 28 |
| JVC Kenwood | 0 | 25 | 25 |
| Toshiba | 0 | 21 | 21 |
| Fujitsu | 0 | 20 | 20 |
| Telenor | 0 | 19 | 19 |
| Siemens | 2 | 16 | 18 |
| AT&T Intellectual Property | 0 | 16 | 16 |
| Sun Patent Trust | 0 | 12 | 12 |
| Sharp Corporation | 0 | 8 | 8 |
| Orange S.A. | 0 | 7 | 7 |
| Nippon Telegraph and Telephone | 0 | 4 | 4 |
| Pantech | 0 | 4 | 4 |
| ZTE | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| Total (All Manufacturers) | 293 | 963 | 1256 |
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