Petteri Pyyny
9 Jul 2001 8:22
MPEG LA, a company that currently grants joint licenses for MPEG-2 format (format used in DVD and SuperVCD movies as well as in most Digital TV broadcasts), announced that 19 companies holding essential licenses for MPEG-4 have made substantial progress on their way to develop a joint patent licensing for MPEG-4 format.
The problem currently blocking legal use of MPEG-4 video format is the number of companies holding patents of the technology -- one who wishes to develop an application utilizing MPEG-4 has to apply for separate patent licenses from various companies. Same case was with MPEG-2, but MPEG LA consortium managed to create a joint patent licensing and began granting licenses for MPEG-2 developers in 1997.
DivX ;-) "format" is probably the best known MPEG-4 variation, based on hacked Microsoft MPEG-4 CODEC (basically DivX ;-) as a ""format"" -- it's not a real format -- is illegal) forcing it to bundle with MPEG-1 audio layer III (better known as MP3).