MPEG Industry Forum

Following the recommendation of the Membership and Nominating Committee, Tim Schaaff of Apple Computer, Inc. is appointed as director.

As an odd number of Directors is required by the Statutes, a seventh Director will be sought by the current board. This Director preferably comes from Europe.
The following companies have applied for membership, since 28^th July 2000:
1. Digital Innovation Ltd. (applied before July 28^th, but was incorrectly listed in Newark resolutions)
2. Hantro Products Oy
3. Nogatech Ltd.
4. Apple Computer, Inc.
5. Philips Electronics
6. Hyundai Electronics Industries Co.
7. Fraunhofer Institute IIS-A
8. Vusix SA.
9. Hitachi, Ltd.
10. ParallelGraphics
11. Sun Microsystems
12. Mitsubishi Electric Corporation
13. ETRI
14. celvibe
15. comverse network systems
16. TANDBERG Television ASA
17. Scientific-Atlanta, Inc.
18. Oki
19. Siemens AG
20. Xilinx Inc.
21. Microsoft Corporation
22. Neomagic Corporation
23. Packetvideo
24. Philips Semiconductors
25. VideoSpheres Inc.
26. Cisco Systems
27. TOSHIBA
28. Gordon & Glickson LLC
29. Optivision, Inc.
30. mp4cast
31. SPaSE BV
32. SolidStreaming, Inc.
33. Vianet Technologies
34. THOMSON multimedia
35. Motorola/General Instrument
36. SHARP CORPORATION
37. Optibase
38. Sony Corporation
39. France Telecom
40. LightSurf Technologies, Inc.
41. Nippon Telephone and Telegraph Corporation
42. Intertrust Technologies International
43. ARM Ltd
44. International Business Machines Corporation
45. Nokia
46. Harmonic
47. NEC
The Membership and Nominating Committee has accepted all applicants that have paid their dues and signed the Statutes as new members.

A list of members will be made available on the public part of the M4IF website.
An offer for a secretariat has been received but the Board wants to further investigate alternative options. The BoD is mandated to seek alternatives, and to take a decision.
The preliminary budget, as attached to these resolutions, is approved. M4IF understands that, considering M4IF’s not-for-profit nature, a considerable surplus may imply that M4IF will need to pay taxes. The Board of Directors is requested to make a budget proposal that minimizes this risk.
M4IF approves the report from Patent Group WG1. M4IF understands that the current schedule for Simple and Core Profiles is:
1. Call of first patent holders meeting in November/December, called by MPEGLA. Access to this meeting is open to identified holders of essential patents
2. Start licensing by the beginning of 2001
M4IF, from the open straw poll taken on the reflector, understands that there is an interest in the Advanced Simple and Simple Scalable profiles. M4IF would welcome steps that would lead to the creation of licensing schemes for these profiles. M4IF notes that Advanced Simple will progress to FDIS in January 2001.

All available information will be published on M4IF’s web site, in the publicly available section.
M4IF approves the report from Patent Group WG2, and understands that the plan to go forward is as follows:
- Extend comment period to two weeks on evaluator and evaluation administrator
- The WG2 Proposal submitted to the Paris meeting has been accepted as a procedure with the following exceptions:
- Confidentiality statement in the “Terms and Procedures Letter for Review of Audio Patents” letter needs to be modified to reflect a Non-Disclosure Agreement between IP holders, Evaluation Administrator and Evaluator. WG2 chair will provide wording from potential Evaluator to this effect.
M4IF understands that an evaluation administrator will do the announcement as proposed in the WG2 report. All activities will take place outside of the context of M4IF.

The Forum emphasizes that taking part in this process, that was designed in the light of the goal¹of M4IF is, by nature, voluntary. The Forum welcomes other initiatives that will lead to similar joint licensing schemes.
(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.)
M4IF is pleased to learn that the work for establishing joint licensing schemes for Systems technology is well underway. The Forum thanks Olivier Avaro and the people from WG3 for making this possible.
M4IF welcomes the work in Patent WG 4, and recommends that discussions continue. The proposals of Ramzi Haidamus and Masahiro Iwadare were reviewd, but not enough time was available to fully discuss them.
M4IF approves the report from the Industry Focus Group, and notes that:
- A procedure will be devised to choose a logo from the proposed ones
- Studies on necessary bitstreams will continue
- Establishing a final procedure for licensing usage of logos on products will require legal advice
- A new activity has been initiated in the form of the Interoperability WG
M4IF is pleased to see that the organization of the Workshop and Exhibition on MPEG-4 is well underway. M4IF thanks IEEE CAS Society for sponsoring this event. M4IF members that are interested in sponsoring this event should contact Weiping Li ( [email protected]).
The responsibility for hosting the website will be transferred to M4IF as soon as possible.
The Forum charges the BoD with commissioning a redesign for its website. Discussions will take place on the Publicity Reflector.
The Forum thanks Videospheres for the hosting of the website so far, and Peter Haighton for his continued and daily work on the web site.

M4IF sets the following mandates for its working groups:

Patent WG1	To liaise with MPEG LA and Dr. Rubenstein in order to be kept informed on the progress in the creation of joint licensing mechanisms for MPEG-4 Visual Technology To keep monitoring industry interest in the different MPEG-4 Visual Profiles, and to recommend further action when appropriate.
Chairman	Masayuki Miyanaga ([email protected])
Email list	[email protected]
End date	6^th General M4IF meeting
Subscriptions	send mail to Doug Hovland [[email protected]]

Patent WG2	To carry out the plan of action as documented in resolution 6
Chairman	Schuyler Quackenbush ([email protected])
Email list	[email protected]
End date	6^th General M4IF meeting
Subscriptions	Send mail to Doug Hovland [[email protected]]

Patent WG3	To monitor industry needs with respect to Systems Technology To discuss which parts of Systems technology are in most demand To recommend further action when appropriate
Chairman	Olivier Avaro ([email protected])
Email list	[email protected]
End date	6^th General M4IF meeting
Subscriptions	Send mail to Doug Hovland [[email protected]]

Patent WG4	To continue developing the document on potential licensing models, notably adding new licensing models not yet covered, using the documentation made available at the Paris meeting
Chairman	Ramzi Haidamus [[email protected]]
Email list	[email protected]
End date	6^th General M4IF meeting
Subscriptions	Send mail to Doug Hovland [[email protected]]

Publicity WG	To continue preparation of the MPEG-4 Exhibition in June 18-20, 2001, San Jose, CA, USA To choose a logo for M4IF (if cost is involved, this requires agreement of the BoD) using a straw vote procedure on M4IF’s website
Chairman	Weiping Li for mandate a) [[email protected]] Tim Schaaff for mandate b) [[email protected]]
Email list	[email protected]
End date	6^th General M4IF meeting
Subscriptions	Send mail to [email protected] Subscribe: subscribe m4if-publicity Unsubscribe: unsubscribe m4if-publicity

Industrial Focus WG	To further implement the logo policy, starting with the following profiles: Visual: Simple Audio: Speech Following the considerations of resolution 9 To establish which bitstreams are missing from ISO/IEC 14496-4 to fully exercise Simple Visual, and to recommend parties (universities) that could be commissioned to create such bitstreams if any are needed To seek other sources of bitstreams for conformance testing
Chairmen	Michael Casey [[email protected]] Jae-Seob Shin [[email protected]]
Email list	[email protected]
End date	6^th General M4IF meeting
Subscriptions	[email protected]

Interoper-ability WG	To define a workplan for the Interoperability WorkGroup, by November 14^th To start carrying out the workplan
Chairmen	Lazar Bivolarski ([email protected])
Email list	To be announced on general M4IF reflector, discussions will start on the IFG reflector
End date	6^th General M4IF meeting
Subscriptions	To be announced on general M4IF reflector

The following procedures shall apply to the work in Workgroups:
1. Work Groups are installed for a limited period of time, typically the period between two General meetings.
2. Work Groups may be re-instantiated at a General meeting.
3. Discussions in the Work Group shall focus on the mandates
4. Discussions shall take place on the designated mail list.
5. Work Group meetings can only be held:
  - If announced at a General meeting, or
  - If announced at least two weeks before the meeting on the general membership reflector, and if consensus on place and time is reached.
6. Work Groups shall report to the General meeting. A meeting report shall be made available to the website administrator at least 4 working days before the General meeting. The report shall be posted on the members-only part of M4IF’s website at least 3 days before the General meeting.
7. Participation in email Work Group discussions is open to members of M4IF. The Board of Directors may decide to invite non-members to take part in the work, if this is in M4IF’s interest. This rule will start to be enforced when the reflectors move to the m4if domain.
Attendance of M4IF meetings is restricted to members of M4IF. The Board of Directors may decide to invite other people if this is in M4IF’s interest. Non-member companies can be invited by the BoD to attend one meeting as an observer.
Meeting documents shall be made available to the website administrator at least 4 working days before the General meeting. These documents shall be posted on the members-only part of M4IF’s website at least 3 days before the General meeting.

The Forum takes note of the following preliminary financial report of the 4^th (Newark) meeting:

Expenses
room rental and catering	3,003.00	USD
Income
participant’s fees	2,360.00	USD
Deficit
	(643.00)	USD

The deficit of the Newark meeting will be paid out of M4IF’s bank account.

The date and place for the 6^th meeting are as follows:

Date:	Thursday 22 February
Time:	9:00 - 18:00
Place:	Tokyo or Seoul
Host:	t.b.d.
Meeting fee:	t.b.d.

M4IF tentatively plans to organize a cocktail reception on the evening before the meeting.

The tentative date and place for the 7^th meeting are as follows:

Date:	Thursday 21 June
Time:	9:00 - 18:00
Place:	San Jose
Host:	t.b.d.
Meeting fee:	t.b.d.

M4IF tentatively plans to organize a cocktail reception on the evening before the meeting.

If the discussions in WG2 cannot be satisfactorily resolved on the email list, an extra meeting may be needed. The Board will announce this meeting at least 30 days in advance
All mail lists will be transferred to the m4if domain name. Initially, the administration of these lists will be done by the chairmen of the group, or by someone on their behalf. Later, the secretariat will take over this task. When this has happened, a mail list for members will be created, [email protected]
M4IF encourages companies with MPEG-4 products or product plans to send hyperlinks to information to Peter Haighton [[email protected]].
The new information for entering the private area of the web site is:
- Name: ********
- Password: *********
The password can be disclosed to employees of M4IF member organizations exclusively.
These resolutions, with the exception of the username/password for access to the members-only information, will be published on the public part of M4IF’s website.
All meeting documentation will be made available on the private part of M4IF’s web site as of Thursday 2 November. This will include a meeting report, to be approved at the next meeting; this report will be made available at a later date.
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.
The Forum thanks Olivier Avaro for his support in organizing the meeting. The Forum thanks Patrick Bonnier and France Télécom for making available a projection system to M4IF for use during the meeting.