Paris, France, November 2000 - The MPEG-4 Industry Forum has grown to 67 member companies, with 47 members joining since July 2000. Among its membership M4IF welcomes both major industrial players and relatively young companies. The Forum held its 5th meeting in Paris, France, on Monday 30 October. 90 People from 56 different companies attended the meeting. A list of members is attached below.

At the meeting, M4IF started an interoperability workgroup that will undertake technical work to make sure members' MPEG-4 products can work together end-to-end. This requires more than just conforming to the MPEG-4 standard; also the layers 'below' MPEG-4 need to be considered.

M4IF was pleased to be informed that the evaluation of essentiality of patents for MPEG-4 Visual and MPEG-4 Systems is progressing well. For Visual, this work concentrates on the Simple and Core Profiles. M4IF has identified, through a public poll on its information mail list, that the Simple Scalable and Advanced Simple Visual Profiles should be addressed next. Next to announcements that have been made for MPEG-4 Visual and Systems, M4IF almost completed its recommendation that should lead to a Call for Audio patents, which will be issued outside and independent of M4IF. Such a Call is the first step towards the creation of a joint licensing scheme for MPEG-4 Audio technology, again outside and independent of M4IF. M4IF welcomes all initiatives that lead to joint licensing schemes for MPEG-4 technology.

M4IF has issued a Call for Contributions to the Second Workshop and Exhibition on MPEG-4 (WEMP4) in San Jose, June 18-20, 2001. WEMP4 is organized with sponsorship from IEEE Circuits and Systems Society. As a successor to the very successful first Workshop and Exhibition on MPEG-4 in Geneva, May 2000, the second event will again include tutorials, academic papers and an MPEG-4 exhibition. M4IF expects the exhibition to be significantly larger than in the first edition, showing more MPEG-4 technology and products.

Timothy Schaaff of Apple Computer, Inc. was appointed as Director, bringing the Board's membership to 6 people. Mr. Schaaff is Apple's Vice President in charge of the Interactive Media Group. M4IF is very pleased to see him join the Board of Directors.

About The MPEG-4 Industry Forum

The goal of the Forum is "To further the adoption and widespread use of the MPEG-4 Standard, by establishing MPEG-4 as an accepted standard among application developers, service providers, content creators and end users."
M4IF is open to all parties that support the goal of M4IF, against of yearly fee of 2,000 US Dollars. The forum was established on May 29th 2000, as a not-for-profit organisation based in Switzerland. The M4IF carries out activities that are outside of ISO/IEC's scope, such as:

• Promoting the standard, and serving as a single point of information on MPEG-4 technology, products and services;
• Initiating discussions leading to the potential establishment of patent pools outside of M4IF, that should grant a license to an unlimited number of applicants throughout the world under reasonable terms and conditions that are demonstrably free of any unfair competition;
• Organization of MPEG-4 exhibitions and tutorials.
• Creating industrial focus around the standard - which part of the MPEG-4 toolbox to use in which market?

See http://www.m4if.org

Annex - membership list as of November 2000