Several international committees developing new technologies and standards have indicated that they intend to mimic the MPEG-2 patent pooling scheme set up earlier this year. Among them are the Digital Video Broadcast Group, the Digital Audio-Visual Council and groups working with the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) and MPEG-4. The trouble with complex technology such as video compression or digital video disks, is that numerous companies tend to work on the development of them, and you end up with several companies holding the patents to different parts of the technology. The concept of patent pooling took off a couple of months ago when MPEG LA (Licensing Administrator) gained approval from the US Department of Justice to create a patent-pool for MPEG -2 in which it would hold and control access to at least 800 MPEG-2 related US patents. The idea of MPEG LA was that anyone looking to build equipment that stores or transmits the compressed video data would go to one agent and get a single license to be jointly owned by the patent holders. The organization collects royalties from makers of set- top boxes, digital video disk players, camcorders and high- definition TV gear and then distributes them amongst its members based on the number of essential patents (each member owns) and the country the patents are in. According to a recent report in the Electronic Engineering Times Baryn Futa the chief executive officer of MPEG-LA has now agreed to work, with the MPEG-4 Patent Group, to develop a framework for intellectual-property issues in time for the next MPEG-4 meeting, set for late October in Fribourg, Switzerland.
