INTRODUCTION

MPEG LA's MPEG-4 Visual Patent Portfolio License provides fair, reasonable, nondiscriminatory access to essential MPEG-4 (Part 2) Visual patents owned by many patent holders as an alternative to negotiating separate licenses.

The MPEG-4 Visual Patent Portfolio License includes essential patents owned by British Telecommunication plc; Canon Inc.; CIF Licensing, LLC; Competitive Technologies, Inc.; DAEWOO Electronics Corporation; France Télécom, société anonyme; Fujitsu Limited; GE Technology Development, Inc.; Hitachi, Ltd.; KDDI Corporation*; Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V.; LG Electronics Inc.; Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd.; Microsoft Corporation; Mitsubishi Electric Corporation; Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation; Oki Electric Industry Co., Ltd.; Pantech&Curitel Communications, Inc.; Robert Bosch GmbH; Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.; SANYO Electric Co., Ltd.; Sedna Patent Services, LLC; Sharp Corporation; Siemens AG; Sony Corporation; Telenor ASA; Toshiba Corporation; and Victor Company of Japan, Limited. MPEG LA's goal is to provide worldwide access to as much MPEG-4 Visual essential intellectual property as possible; new Licensors and essential patents may be added at no additional royalty during the current term.

To align with the real-world flow of MPEG-4 commerce, reasonable royalties are apportioned throughout the MPEG-4 Visual value chain. The License employs annual limitations to provide cost predictability, threshold levels below which certain royalties will not be charged in order to encourage early-stage adopters and minimize the impact on lower volume users, and licensing options that require no royalty reports. The License enjoys wide marketplace acceptance.