In an attempt to resolve a potential cross-licensing nightmare, six developers of Digital Video Disk technology have now come together to agree on a Patent Licensing program – although four others holding essential patents are currently not part of the group. A failure to gain general agreement would significantly hold back the worldwide introduction of DVD. The six companies are Hitachi Ltd, Matsushita Electric Industrial Co, Mitsubishi Electric Co, Time Warner Inc, Toshiba Corp and the Victor Company of Japan Ltd. The companies have authorised Toshiba to execute the licensing program, with Matsushita and Hitachi helping on a regional basis. Licenses will be available for products compatible with DVD Forum formats, incurring royalties of 4% for DVD-Video players, DVD-ROM drives and decoders, with a minimum royalty of $4, and 7.5 cent per DVD disk. Pioneer Electronics Corp, Philips Electronics NV and Sony Corp have already set up their own combined patent effort (CI No 3,150), though the six say negotiations are continuing over a possible single DVD patent pool. There was no word as we went to press on the position of the other major patent holder, Thomson Multimedia SA.
