The MPEG-4 Industry Forum will be established as a not-for-profit organization. The country of establishment is now determined to be Switzerland.
The forum approves the Statutes as proposed. The attorney that will establish the Forum may suggest changes to adapt the Statutes to current Swiss law.
The Temporary Steering Committee (TSC) appointed at the 1st meeting (Leonardo Chiariglione, Rob Koenen, Takuyo Kogure) is complemented with Ajay Luthra.
The Forum will be established according to the Statutes on Monday the 29th of May, exact location to be announced. The meeting participants charge the Temporary Steering Committee with establishing the Forum.
According to the Statutes, the Board of Directors must consist of at least 5 and at most 11 Directors.
The TSC has approached candidates for the position of Director, but is seeking further input. Those who intend to join the Forum are kindly invited to nominate candidates for this position to the TSC by way of sending an email to [email protected]
This nomination should include name, affiliation, position of the nominee, name and affiliation of the nominating party, and a motivation.
A decision on the Board of Directors is taken at the next meeting; the TSC will make a recommendation to the Forum, based on the nominations.
The MPEG-4 Industry Forum approves the report from the Patent Working Group.
The work on licensing will initially be focused on individual Profiles. The so-called 'menu approach' then means that users can choose their own combinations of Audio, Visual and Systems Profiles.
However, it is likely that often-used combinations will appear, and one-stop licensing for these combinations would be very desirable.
In any case, it is highly desirable that, for particular application domains, similar licensing models can be applied across Audio, Visual and Systems.
Therefore, the different patent entities that will emerge are encouraged to try and harmonize the respective approaches.
It is understood that the work will concentrate on the essential patents to implement the normative elements of the standard needed for a certain Profile.
The Forum agrees with the proposed Workgroup structure, which consists of:
- WG1 (Visual) - Masayuki Miyanaga,
- WG2 (Audio) - Schuyler Quackenbush,
- WG3 (Systems and DMIF) - to be provided
- WG4 (study on licensing models for software/downloadable MPEG-4 technology) - Barry Haskell.
- Work Group 1 will carry out the plan mentioned in resolution 8.
- Work Group 2 will select the most important Audio profile(s) to address, and define a scheme similar to the one in resolution 8.
- Work in Work Group 3 will start when the discussions on Systems tools in the Industry Focus Group have come to a conclusion. These discussions will be lead by Olivier Avaro.
- Work Group 4 will discuss ideas with respect to dealing with royalties on patents that are applied in downloadable software MPEG-4 technology. Work Group 4 will organize a workshop in Geneva, on Monday the 29th of May. The workshop time will be coordinated with the establishment of M4IF on the same day.
The Forum agrees with the following procedure as proposed by WG1:
- Announcement that a patent pool will be initiated, and that those who believe to hold essential patents are invited to submit their claims to an evaluator (April 2000);
- Submission of these patents to said evaluator (May 2000);
- Evaluation of these patents by said evaluator (June-July 2000);
- Preparing a patent management group by holders of essential patents (July to September 2000);
- Start of licensing (October 2000)
Note: these dates do not imply any deadline for submissions of patents.
M4IF WG1 will do the announcement mentioned under item a). Further activities will take place outside of the context of M4IF.
The Forum recommends Ken Rubenstein as the evaluator in the above process. This recommendation was made because of the experience of Mr. Rubenstein in similar efforts, the fact that he was suggested during the first meeting in Maui, December 1999, the fact that he was recommended several times in email discussions on the WG1 reflector, and the fact that he was recommended by the chair of WG1.
The Forum emphasizes that taking part in this process, that was designed in the light of the goal1of M4IF is, by nature, voluntary.
(1to further the adoption of the MPEG-4 Standard, by establishing MPEG-4 as an accepted and widely used standard among application developers, service providers, content creators and end users.)
The Forum approves the report of the Industry Focus Group.
The Forum approves the report of the Publicity Group.
The Forum is very pleased with the current look and functionality of its Web site. When the Forum is officially established and the Forum has a budget, a designer may be hired to make the site look even more attractive.
The M4IF thanks Peter Haighton and Telexis Corp. for their considerable efforts in hosting the M4IF web site free of charge, and for persuading the address administrator to finally change the DNS information.
The Forum is pleased to see that the MPEG-4 Tutorial, the MPEG-4 Paper Sessions and Exhibition (to be held in conjunction with ISCAS, from May 28 to May 31, 2024 in Geneva, Switzerland) are well prepared. The Forum is content to learn that the available exhibition space will be fully occupied. The Forum thanks Fernando Pereira, Thomas Sikora and Weiping Li for their organizing efforts.
The meeting policy agreed in Maui is confirmed, as adapted in the following way:
- The Forum will physically meet approximately 3 times a year. In the first year of operation, more meetings are anticipated.
- After formal establishment of the Forum, two more meetings will be open to non-Forum members.
- After that, meetings are restricted to members of the Forum.
- A meeting fee may be asked from participants to cover meeting expenses.
The Forum will establish a logo policy. The following applies:
- The logo is intended for use with MPEG-4 conformant products
- A certification procedure applies. The exact procedure of certification is to be determined. It may include one or more of the following:
- Self-certification using test suites and bit streams provided by M4IF ;
- independent verification by a third party;
- interoperability tests;
- other ways of establishing conformance, to be determined.
- The logo will not depend on patent licenses;
- Both members and non-members of M4IF may be equally entitled to use the logo.
- Some way of expressing Profiles/Level-combinations must be defined. In any case, this information will need to be provided for inclusion on the M4IF web site. The possibility of including this information as part of the Logo will be further discussed.
f) Discussions will continue on the Industry Focus Reflector ([email protected])
A mail reflector will be set-up for asking and answering technical questions related to MPEG-4. M4IF members can subscribe to this mail reflector. The address of this reflector will be announced on the general M4IF reflector. Until the 4th meeting of M4IF, this list is open for parties that intend to join the Forum, but have not yet joined.
Companies that have MPEG-4 products and services are encouraged to send information and relevant links to Peter Haighton, [email protected] so that it can be included on the M4IF products page (http://www.m4if.org/products/index.html)
These resolutions will be published on the private part of the Forum's Web Site, accessible by people who hold the current user name and password.
The Press Release, to be written by Rob Koenen, is approved for distribution and publication on the Forum's web site, together with a list of the companies that were present at the meeting.
Meeting participants that are not yet subscribed to the general M4IF reflector are invited to fill out the subscription form at M4IF's web site.
The date and the place for the third meeting are as follows:
| Date: | May 30th |
| Time: | 9:00 - 17:00 |
| Place: | Geneva, CH, co-located with the 52nd MPEG meeting |
| Host: | t.b.d. |
| Meeting fee: | t.b.d. |
| Date: | ? |
| Time: | ? |
| Place: | ? |
| Host: | ? |
| Meeting fee: | ? |
The new information for entering the private area of the web site is:
- Name: ********
- Password: ********
(case sensitive)
The password can be disclosed to people that were at one or moreof the two M4IF meetings
The Forum thanks Johan van Werven and Charlotte Meyling for their professional support in organizing this meeting.
