Sony, Philips, Panasonic plan single Blu-ray licence
Published: 26 Feb 2009 09:34 GMT
Companies that wish to make Blu-ray devices will very soon have a less expensive and simpler licensing process, according to a joint announcement on Wednesday from Sony, Philips and Panasonic.
A new licence will be established by mid-2009 as a "one-stop shop" for device makers. The licence will include all necessary Blu-ray, DVD and CD patents for selling Blu-ray players. The licensing programme will be handled by a new licensing company to be led by Gerald Rosenthal, former head of intellectual property at IBM. It will be based in the US, but will have local branches in Asia, Europe and Latin America.
Instead of having to approach Blu-ray, DVD and CD holders individually and paying them separate royalties, the single licence should cut down the total cost of royalty payments by 40 percent, according to Sony.
The fees for the new licences will be $9.50 (£6.70) for a Blu-ray player and $14 for a Blu-ray recorder. Making Blu-ray Disc will cost 11 cents for read-only, 12 cents for recordable discs and 15 cents for rewritable discs.
The idea for a one-stop shop for Blu-ray has been floating around since a 2007 meeting of the 18 companies that hold Blu-ray patents. Licensing fees can be extremely lucrative for disc-format patent holders: several years ago licence fees for making a DVD player cost between $15 and $20.
This one-stop shop will help avoid the headache DVD licences created. To make a DVD player or disc, manufacturers have had to ink deals with three separate organisations that represented various patent holders. There is DVD 6c (Hitachi, Panasonic, JVC and six others); DVD 3c (Philips, Sony, Pioneer); and MPEG LA (representing encoders and decoders).
Former CNET News.com editor Michael Kanellos contributed to this report.
Credit: Sony, Philips, Panasonic to create single Blu-ray license from CNET News
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