A one-stop-shop HEVC Portfolio License covering essential HEVC patents...

A one-stop-shop HEVC Portfolio License covering essential HEVC patents owned by 23 companies and entities is now available from MPEG LA, the consortium said Monday. “The market is ready for an HEVC License,” MPEG LA CEO Larry Horn said in a statement (http://bit.ly/1vq4gH8). MPEG LA’s objective “is to provide worldwide access to as much HEVC essential intellectual property as possible,” it said. “Therefore, MPEG LA welcomes any party that believes it has patents that are essential to the HEVC standard to submit them for an evaluation of their essentiality by MPEG LA’s patent experts and inclusion in the License if determined to be essential.” The license is royalty-free for a licensee that ships under 100,000 units HEVC-compliant products annually, said an MPEG LA license summary (http://bit.ly/YD51lm). A royalty of 20 cents per unit is assessed at volumes over 100,000, the summary said. The annual royalty cap is $25 million for “present coverage during the first License Term,” which runs through the end of 2020, it said. The license is renewable for successive five-year periods “for the life of any Portfolio patent on reasonable terms and conditions,” it said. Royalty rates or annual caps won’t increase by more than 20 percent at each five-year renewal, it said.