Current HEVC Licensing Situation - Is it Getting Better or Is It Too Late?

[mikeiz]

Recently Huawei, LG, and Technicolor joined HEVC Advance showing some consolidation of patent pools. I'm not sure about the validity of the Velos patent pool from what I've read. How many companies are still outside any of these patent pools? How are companies handling this? Do they sign licensing agreements with these companies outside the pool individually, or do they take their chances?

[videoh]

Hey Mike, just a little heads up so you don't get in trouble. Cross-posting is not allowed. See #8 here.

https://forum.doom9.org/forum-rules.htm

Cue the DG-deranged!

[mikeiz]

Got it. Thanks.

[ksec]

I say In terms of Licensing ( and not technical ), it properly is too late in the game for those NOT currently have any HEVC licensing deal.

VVC / H.266 is only few months from finalising, and judging from Initial Reference Encoder it seems to offer Lots of potential. Much more so than the H.264 to H.265 jump. Everyone is putting all the energy into it.

MC-IF is formed to avoid the mistake of HEVC licensing, and as far as I can tell. It has everybody on board ( Apart from Google ). By everybody I mean all the three patent pool in HEVC and others that were missing from those three pools.

It is purely my assumption, that should you have a licenses with MC-IF, it would have included everything in HEVC. Given VVC is built on top of HEVC.

And that is of course assuming MC-IF could get a deal together. Having everyone in the same organisation doesn't mean they will play well together.

My view is that the licensing terms should not include any cost per bandwidth / streaming, and software implementation should be free. This will allow the widest possible adoption with Software Decoder, and an image format based on VVC. Instead collect royalty on Hardware encoder and decoder unit. The world ships 1 billon smartphones with HEVC hardware. Assuming no Caps per companies that would have equate to $1B annually VVC royalty on a $1 per devices. And that is Smartphone alone, there are hundreds of millions from PC to gadget that features Hardware encoder and decoder.

On a consumer level, you are likely paying somewhere around $3 for VVC in your final retail purchase price, That is everything from VVC's Patent IP, Actual Hardware Encoder and Decoder IP, Die Size cost on SoC, plus the usual ~50% margin from Smartphone companies.

Personally I would be very happy to pay $3 for VVC.

[oibaf]

It looks like B1 Institute of Image Technology, INC. on 2024-01-25 terminated licensing to Via Licensing HEVC Patent Pool. Page 42 of https://www.via-la.com/wp-content/up...ry-25-2024.pdf

[hajj_3]

via-la now have the ability to license hevc and vvc as a joint licensing pool: https://www.via-la.com/hevc-vvc-tcl-2024/

[oibaf]

Dolby Laboratories to acquire GE Licensing in $429m deal

Technology company Dolby Laboratories has announced a definitive agreement to acquire GE Licensing from GE Aerospace in an all-cash deal valued at $429m.

The inclusion of GE Licencing’s video codec technology patents such as HEVC and VVC will complement and expand Dolby's existing intellectual property portfolio.

[hajj_3]

Originally Posted by oibaf

Dolby Laboratories to acquire GE Licensing in $429m deal

they are in the same patent pools so i doubt this will have any effect. GE probably just wanted some short-term income.

[oibaf]

Dolby's HEVC EPO patent found invalid

On May 22, 2024, the European Patent Office revoked the original claims of EP 3767950, owned by Dolby International AB. The original claims of EP‘950 were identified as essential to the Access Advance Patent Pool.

https://www.unifiedpatents.com/insig...-found-invalid

Another ETRI HEVC patent revoked in EPO

On June 6, 2024, the European Patent Office announced the revocation of all claims of EP 2672708. The EP ‘708 patent is owned by the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI). The patent is related to patents that have been declared essential to Access Advance and SISVEL’s AV1 and VP9 patent pools.

https://www.unifiedpatents.com/insig...revoked-in-epo