Significant Progress Made Toward Creation of Joint Blu-ray Disc(TM) Patent License.

Fourth Meeting of Patent Holders Held

CHEVY CHASE, Md. -- MPEG LA announced today that the fourth meeting of essential Blu-ray Disc(TM) patent owners, currently consisting of 18 companies, was held in New York on February 6-7 for the purpose of creating a joint license providing fair, reasonable, non-discriminatory access to essential patents, as an alternative to negotiating separate licenses. Significant progress has been made in identifying licensing terms for Blu-ray Disc(TM) products such as players, recorders, drives, software, recordable discs and prerecorded discs. Participating companies include CyberLink Corporation; Dell Inc.; Hewlett-Packard Company; Hitachi Ltd.; Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V.; LG Electronics Inc.; Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. (Panasonic); Mitsubishi Electric  Corporation; Pioneer Corporation; Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.; Sanyo Electric Co., Ltd.; Sharp Corporation; Sonic Solutions; Sony Corporation; TDK Corporation; Victor Company of Japan, Ltd.; and Warner Home Video Inc.

"The participation of this group of diverse companies in the development of a joint license bodes well for offering an efficient way to address intellectual property licensing needs for advanced optical devices, discs and related implementations," said MPEG LA CEO Larry Horn. "The group especially appreciates the input and views received from interested parties, including potential licensees, in all related industry sectors. MPEG LA welcomes the opportunity to facilitate any and all efforts to assist users with their advanced optical disc technology choices in order to give consumers the benefit of innovative information and entertainment applications."

Additional patent holder meetings are planned, and work on the joint license will continue. Meanwhile, MPEG LA welcomes additional owners of essential patents to participate in the creation of a joint patent license for the benefit of the marketplace. Any party that believes it has patents that are essential to the Blu-ray Disc(TM) standard and wishes to join the Blu-ray Disc(TM) Patent Portfolio License is invited to submit them for evaluation of their essentiality to the standard by MPEG LA's patent evaluators. Further information, along with terms and procedures governing patent submissions, can be found at http://www.mpegla.com/pid/bluray/. While only issued patents that are essential to the Blu-ray Disc(TM) standard will be included in the license, in order to participate in the license development process, patent applications with claims that their owners believe are essential to the Blu-ray Disc(TM) standard and likely to issue in a patent also may be submitted for an evaluation of essentiality.

MPEG LA, LLC 

MPEG LA is the world leader in alternative technology licenses, enabling users to acquire worldwide patent rights necessary for a technology standard or platform from multiple patent holders in a single transaction as an alternative to negotiating separate licenses. Wherever an independently administered one-stop patent license would provide a convenient marketplace alternative to assist users with implementation of their technology choices, the licensing model pioneered and employed by MPEG LA may provide a solution. By balancing patent users' interest in reasonable access with patent owners' interest in reasonable return, MPEG LA creates the opportunity for adoption of new technologies and fuels innovation. MPEG LA's initial licensing program for MPEG-2 digital video compression helped produce the most widely employed standard in consumer electronics history, and the MPEG LA([R]) Licensing Model has become the template for addressing other technologies. Today MPEG LA manages licensing programs consisting of essential patents in 57 countries. MPEG LA is an independent licensing administrator; it is not related to any standards agency and is not an affiliate of any patent holder. For more information, please refer to http://www.mpegla.com.