MPEG LA Issues Second Call for Essential DVB-T Patents.

Business Editors

DENVER--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 15, 2000

MPEG LA today announced a second call for the submission of patents that are essential to the terrestrial digital television standard used in Europe, India, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand and other countries known as DVB-T.

MPEG LA has been asked to organize a joint patent licensing program by the parties (France Telecom SA, Koninklijke Philips Electronics, N.V., Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd., and Victor Company of Japan, Ltd. (JVC)) who were found to own patents that are essential to the DVB-T Standard in an initial evaluation earlier commissioned by the DVB Intellectual Property Rights Module of the DVB Project. Although many patents were evaluated in the initial call for submissions, MPEG LA's objective is to include as many DVB-T essential patents as possible in the joint patent licensing program and MPEG LA's independent patent experts understand there may be others. Any person or company that believes it has a patent that is essential to the DVB-T Standard (European Telecommunications Standardization Institute ("ETSI") document EN300744) is invited to submit them by October 11, 2000, for evaluation by MPEG LA's independent patent experts and inclusion in the joint patent licensing program being formed by MPEG LA.

The patents will be evaluated for essentiality by a team of patent experts led by Dr. Kenneth Rubenstein of Proskauer, Rose in New York, and Gottfried Schull of Cohaus & Florack in Dusseldorf. To be essential, a patent must be found to have one or more claims that are infringed by implementation or use of the DVB-T Standard, as specified in ETSI document EN300744. The joint patent licensing program is open to all holders of essential DVB-T patents, and the examination of patents will continue indefinitely. Patent owners whose patents are identified as essential join the program following a determination of their essentiality and are required to include all essential DVB-T patents that they own worldwide. MPEG LA is granted non-exclusive sublicensing rights under the essential patents for the purpose of providing fair, reasonable, nondiscriminatory worldwide access under one license and distributes collected royalties to the patent owners.

For each patent submitted, an evaluation fee of US $8,500 will be paid to MPEG LA, LLC, to cover costs of the patent expert's evaluation. Any patent holder submitting a patent is required to provide a copy of the patents, complete file histories and a claims chart showing the basis for the submitting party's view that the patent is essential to the DVB-T Standard to Dr. Kenneth Rubenstein at:

PROSKAUER ROSE LLP 1585 Broadway New York, NY 10036-8299 Tel.: [phone] Fax.: [phone] [e-mail]

Both the payment and a statement confirming the patent holder's agreement to abide by terms and procedures governing the patent submission process and its intention to join the licensing program upon successful evaluation must be received by MPEG LA. A terms and procedures letter and form of statement may be obtained from Lawrence A. Horn, Vice President, Licensing and Business Development, MPEG LA, LLC ([e-mail], phone [phone], fax [phone]).

MPEG LA, LLC

MPEG LA successfully pioneered one-stop technology standards licensing, starting with a portfolio of essential patents for the international digital video compression standard known as MPEG-2, which it began licensing in 1997. One-stop technology standards licensing enables widespread technological implementation, interoperability and use of fundamental broad-based technologies covered by many patents owned by many different patent holders. MPEG LA provides users with fair, reasonable, nondiscriminatory access to these essential patents on a worldwide basis under a single license. The MPEG-2 Patent Portfolio License now has more than 230 licensees and includes more than 275 MPEG-2 essential patents in 28 countries owned by 16 licensors. MPEG LA provides an innovative way to achieve easy, reasonable, fair, nondiscriminatory access to patent rights for other efforts as well, such as IEEE 1394 through its 1394 LA licensing program. MPEG LA is based in Denver, Colorado, USA, and operates out of offices in Chevy Chase, Maryland, USA, and London, England. For more information, please refer to http://www.mpegla.com and http://www.1394la.com

DVB Project

The Digital Video Broadcasting Project (DVB) includes over 280 member companies and organizations from over 35 countries worldwide. Members include broadcasters, manufacturers, network operators and regulatory bodies, committed to designing a global family of standards for the delivery of digital television.

DVB-compliant digital broadcasting and reception equipment for professional, commercial and consumer applications is widely available on the market, distinguished by the now instantly recognizable DVB Logo.

Numerous broadcast services using DVB standards are now operational, in Europe on satellite, cable and terrestrial systems, and also in North and South America, Africa, Asia, and Australasia.

The DVB-T Standard

The DVB-T system specification for terrestrial digital television was approved by ETSI in February 1997. DVB-T services in Europe have been launched in 1998 and are planned; actual deployment is already going in Australia, Singapore and India. As with the other DVB standards, MPEG-2 sound and vision coding forms the basis of DVB-T. Other elements of the DVB-T specification include:

-- A transmission scheme based on Coded Orthogonal Frequency Division
Multiplexing

-- (COFDM), which allows for the use of either 1705 carriers (usually known as
'2k'), or 6817 carriers ('8k'). Concatenated error correcting is used. The '2k'
mode is suitable for single transmitter operation and for relatively small
single frequency networks with limited transmitter power. The '8k' mode can be
used both for single transmitter operation and for large area single frequency
networks. The guard interval is selectable. The '8k' system is compatible with
the '2k' system.

-- Reed-Solomon outer coding and outer convolutional interleaving are used, in
common with the other DVB standards.

-- The inner coding (punctured Convolutional Code) is the same as that used for
DVB-S.

-- The data carriers in the COFDM frame can use QPSK and different levels of
QAM modulation and code rates, in order to trade bit rate against ruggedness.

-- Two-level hierarchical channel coding and modulation can be used, but
hierarchical source coding is not used, since its benefits do not justify the
extra receiver complexity involved.

-- The modulation system combines OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency Division
Multiplexing) with QPSK/QAM. OFDM uses a large number of carriers that spread
the information content of the signal. Used very successfully in DAB (Digital
Audio Broadcasting), OFDM's major advantage is that it thrives in a very strong
multipath environment.

IPR Policy of the DVB Project

The intellectual property rights policy of the DVB Project ensures that licenses to DVB essential patents are available on terms which are fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory. The DVB IPR policy also fosters the creation of patent pools for various DVB specifications. It has three principal elements:

-- Members of the DVB Project have agreed that they will license

to third parties their patents essential to DVB specifications

on terms that are fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory;

-- The IPRs associated with the DVB Common Scrambling Algorithm

are managed under a licensing scheme undertaken by ETSI

(European Telecommunications Standards Institute

http://www.etsi.org/broadcast/dvb.html), acting as custodian,

and for a nominal royalty; and

-- The DVB Project is fostering the creation of a voluntary

agreed-upon joint licensing program to include a critical mass

of patents essential to DVB specifications.

http://www.dvb.org/