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http://www.insanely-great.com/news.php?id=1300
MPEG Consortium Releases MPEG-4 License Terms
By Remy Davison, Insanely Great Mac
November 26th 2002
Road becoming clearer for MPEG-4.
The MPEG consortium, which comprises firms holding MPEG-4 technology patents, has
released the terms of its licensing scheme for MPEG-4, according to a story at ZDNet.
Disagreements over the licensing and royalty arrangements have dogged the technology,
although Apple included MPEG-4 support in its QuickTime 6.0 release this year.
The terms broadly follow the parameters proposed by MPEG LA last July. The proposal
established a $1 million per license. MPEG-4 users with fewer than 50,000
implementations are exempt from royalty payments.
MPEG-4 is based on the QuickTime file format, and delivers higher quality audio and
video compression standards. MPEG-4 audio, for example, offers superior quality at
lower bitrates to MP3, resulting in smaller, hier-quality files.
Sony is the major MPEG-4 patent holder. Apple has yet to comment on the license terms;
the company said that it had not yet looked at the licensing terms in detail.
A hard copy is available on request to interested persons from MPEG LA's webite.
Analysis: The faster MPEG-4 adoption takes off, the better for all of us. Not only
because it keeps QuickTime media out there, but also because its superior quality will
push adoption by hardware and software developers. Future iPods will probably play
MPEG-4 audio, as will many other devices, once the format gains critical mass. The
licensing/royalty terms have been the bug-bear, but the cap and the user threshold are
big steps in the right direction.
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