MPEG-4 licensing deal finalized

16 July 2002 18:25 by dRD

After months of negotiations between patent owners and possible licensees, MPEG-4 licensing contract is finally ready. Joint licensing will be done through MPEG LA, just like MPEG-2 is done.

New terms seem to be much more relaxed for Net content publishers. Publishers have to pay $0.25 per subscriber or $0.02 per hour for MPEG-4 usage. Fees are also capped at maximum $1M per year. Also, small publishers with less than 50,000 subscribers, don't have to pay licensing fees at all. There are also several other licensing methods -- cable and satellite TV operators pay an annual lump sum for MPEG-4 licenses if they wish to use it (instead of now-standard MPEG-2).

Apple released its Quicktime 6 today, just hours before the MPEG LA's announcement. And yes, their new version is 100% MPEG-4 compatible. Encoder and decoder providers, such as Apple and DivXNetworks and various hardware manufacturers have the same $1M cap as web publishers do and they pay only if they sell/provide more than 50,000 units to public.