All US MPEG-2 Patents Expired
On February 13, 2018, the last US patent from a large patent pool that describes a group of standards for the digital encoding of MPEG-2 video and audio signals expired. The latest patent belonged to Thomson Licensing ( US 7,334,248 ). See the full list of all MPEG-2 patents .
MPEG-2 is still widely used in broadcasting around the world and in television production due to its low hardware requirements for video processing compared to more modern video codecs, such as proprietary H.264 (AVC) or H.265 (HEVC) .
Now, out of about a thousand MPEG-2 patents, only seven remain active, operating in Malaysia and the Philippines:
GE Technology Development, Inc.
MY 118172-A
MY 1289941
MY 141626-A
PH 1-1993-47458
')
Sony Corporation
MY 118444
Thomson licensing
MY 118734-A
PH 1-1995-50216
More modern video codecs H.264, H.265, as well as free ones like VP8, are gradually replacing MPEG-2, but this process is not going as fast as the copyright holders would like. The good old MPEG-2 still has a huge scope. Unlike more advanced standards, it boasts wide compatibility with all old hardware and software. MPEG-2 is supported literally everywhere, and also remains part of the DVD-Video standard, which remains popular despite the distribution of streaming services on the Internet. The popularity of MPEG-2 even now, in 2018, is also explained by the low requirements for computing resources of equipment for encoding and decoding.
The MPEG-2 standard is used for ATSC (North America and South Korea) and DVB-T (Australia, India, most of Europe and Africa) broadcasting, although in recent years some countries have been gradually switching to MPEG-4 digital broadcasting. AVC. Nevertheless, television equipment for live video broadcasting is still massively using MPEG-2 due to the low coding delay in a fraction of a second compared to more efficient codecs.
So, from February 13, 2018, manufacturers of devices with content processing encoded by MPEG-2 - TVs, DVD players, TV tuners and professional equipment - are not required to pay license fees to MPEG Licensing Administration (MPEG LA, LLC). This company is based in Denver (Colorado) and was created specifically to collect patent deductions from all global companies that use the MPEG-2, MPEG-4 Visual (Part 2), IEEE 1394, VC-1, ATSC and AVC / H standards. 264. Now the company is working in the direction of combining LTE patents.
MPEG LA acts in the interests of owners of intellectual property on video codecs. The largest of these are eight companies: Fujitsu, Panasonic, Sony, Mitsubishi, Scientific Atlanta, Columbia University, Philips and General Instrument.
MPEG LA has been collecting license fees for MPEG-2 since 1997. Now this business has come to an end, but the patents for the remaining codecs are still relevant: for a license for ATSC, H.264 still need to be paid. In addition, MPEG LA has recently expanded its business to protect intellectual property. In the interests of new customers, she began collecting licensing fees even for the technology of genetic editing of CRISPR and other patented technologies (see the list on the left).
Thus, from now on, you can legally use MPEG-2 video codecs in your programs and freely distribute them, sell hardware that supports MPEG-2 encoding — all without paying $ 2 for each copy of an encoder or decoder. Theoretically, now these programs and equipment should be cheaper by two or three dollars.
For example, the Raspberry Pi has hardware support for MPEG-2 in the Broadcom VideoCore IV GPU, but to use it now you need to buy a license key worth £ 2.40 (191 rubles) . In theory, now the license key is required only for residents of Malaysia and the Philippines.
In addition, many Linux distributions (for example, Fedora) refused to distribute proprietary codecs due to patent restrictions. If necessary, they could be installed from third-party repositories. In principle, now after the expiration of the patents, nothing prevents the Linux distributions from including MPEG-2 codecs. The same situation was with the MP3 codecs, patents on which expired in May 2017 - and soon the codecs appeared in the Fedora distribution .
MPEG-2 is still widely used in broadcasting around the world and in television production due to its low hardware requirements for video processing compared to more modern video codecs, such as proprietary H.264 (AVC) or H.265 (HEVC) .
Now, out of about a thousand MPEG-2 patents, only seven remain active, operating in Malaysia and the Philippines:
GE Technology Development, Inc.
MY 118172-A
MY 1289941
MY 141626-A
PH 1-1993-47458
')
Sony Corporation
MY 118444
Thomson licensing
MY 118734-A
PH 1-1995-50216
More modern video codecs H.264, H.265, as well as free ones like VP8, are gradually replacing MPEG-2, but this process is not going as fast as the copyright holders would like. The good old MPEG-2 still has a huge scope. Unlike more advanced standards, it boasts wide compatibility with all old hardware and software. MPEG-2 is supported literally everywhere, and also remains part of the DVD-Video standard, which remains popular despite the distribution of streaming services on the Internet. The popularity of MPEG-2 even now, in 2018, is also explained by the low requirements for computing resources of equipment for encoding and decoding.
The MPEG-2 standard is used for ATSC (North America and South Korea) and DVB-T (Australia, India, most of Europe and Africa) broadcasting, although in recent years some countries have been gradually switching to MPEG-4 digital broadcasting. AVC. Nevertheless, television equipment for live video broadcasting is still massively using MPEG-2 due to the low coding delay in a fraction of a second compared to more efficient codecs.
So, from February 13, 2018, manufacturers of devices with content processing encoded by MPEG-2 - TVs, DVD players, TV tuners and professional equipment - are not required to pay license fees to MPEG Licensing Administration (MPEG LA, LLC). This company is based in Denver (Colorado) and was created specifically to collect patent deductions from all global companies that use the MPEG-2, MPEG-4 Visual (Part 2), IEEE 1394, VC-1, ATSC and AVC / H standards. 264. Now the company is working in the direction of combining LTE patents.
MPEG LA acts in the interests of owners of intellectual property on video codecs. The largest of these are eight companies: Fujitsu, Panasonic, Sony, Mitsubishi, Scientific Atlanta, Columbia University, Philips and General Instrument.
MPEG LA has been collecting license fees for MPEG-2 since 1997. Now this business has come to an end, but the patents for the remaining codecs are still relevant: for a license for ATSC, H.264 still need to be paid. In addition, MPEG LA has recently expanded its business to protect intellectual property. In the interests of new customers, she began collecting licensing fees even for the technology of genetic editing of CRISPR and other patented technologies (see the list on the left).Thus, from now on, you can legally use MPEG-2 video codecs in your programs and freely distribute them, sell hardware that supports MPEG-2 encoding — all without paying $ 2 for each copy of an encoder or decoder. Theoretically, now these programs and equipment should be cheaper by two or three dollars.
For example, the Raspberry Pi has hardware support for MPEG-2 in the Broadcom VideoCore IV GPU, but to use it now you need to buy a license key worth £ 2.40 (191 rubles) . In theory, now the license key is required only for residents of Malaysia and the Philippines.
In addition, many Linux distributions (for example, Fedora) refused to distribute proprietary codecs due to patent restrictions. If necessary, they could be installed from third-party repositories. In principle, now after the expiration of the patents, nothing prevents the Linux distributions from including MPEG-2 codecs. The same situation was with the MP3 codecs, patents on which expired in May 2017 - and soon the codecs appeared in the Fedora distribution .
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/374257/
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