MPEG Industry Forum

Meeting:	9th M4IF meeting, Fairfax, VA, USA, May 2002
Document:	m4-out-20016
Source:	Plenary Meeting
Title:	Resolutions of the 9th (Fairfax) MPEG-4 Industry Forum Meeting
Status:	Final
Purpose:	Output of meeting

Resolutions of the 9th (Fairfax) Special MPEG-4 Industry Forum meeting on Licensing

M4IF, noting that it is now 3.5 years after MPEG-4 Version 1 was approved by WG11, urges the licensors to come with licensing terms within a matter of weeks.
M4IF notes that there is much concern of what the market understands to be the proposed licensing scheme for notably MPEG-4 Visual, and urges licensors to listen to and address these concerns.
M4IF urges parties that wish to use MPEG-4, but do not like the proposed licensing terms, to engage in a discussion with the licensors through their representatives:
- MPEG LA as the Licensing Agent for Visual
- MPEG LA as facilitator of the Systems Patent Holder Group,
- Dolby as the facilitator for the Audio Patent Holder Group
- Dolby as the Licensing Agent for the AAC Group that has started to license its MPEG-4 AAC patents
M4IF points to the "Summary of the MPEG-4 Licensing Situation by the President" (m4-out-20017) for an account of what was discussed during the meeting. M4IF notes that the goal of these discussions was not to reach a consensus, but to document the situation.
In order to facilitate deployment of MPEG-4 Structured Audio and Face/Body Animation, it will be necessary to assess the patent situation. M4IF resolves to have a "Call for Existence of Patents Essential to the Implementation of MPEG-4 Structured Audio and Face/Body Animation" at the June M4IF meeting. If such a Call results in statements by parties that believe that such essential patents may exist, M4IF will recommend that there be a third-party process to:
1. Determine if there are such essential patents, and, if so
2. Establish a joint licensing scheme for each of these two pieces of technology
This process will be like the processes that lead to the establishment of the Visual, Audio and Systems Patent Holder Groups. M4IF will not be involved in either the determination of essentiality or the discussions between such patent holders.
M4IF recommends that discussions on M4IF's potential roles in:
- getting rapid access to licenses for MPEG-4 part 10 and AFX/Multi-user worlds, and
- facilitating a royalty-free baseline,
continue on a new discussion list, Patent WG5 ([email protected]), to be chaired by a chairperson to be found among the M4IF members taking part in the JVT process. Jan van der Meer ([email protected]) will chair the discussions until such a chair has been identified. M4IF is prepared to fulfill any role in this process that could advance the process, and is consistent with its Statutes.