NEW YORK – After more than a decade striving to untangle proprietary claims among the IP juggernauts of CD, DVD and Blu-ray technologies, 15 companies with essential patents have finally forged a patent pool called One-Blue, LLC.
One-Blue CEO Roel Kramer, a retired former Philips executive, said in a recent interview with
EE Times that One-Blue’s one-stop licensing program covers “the vast majority of Blu-ray and optical patents that include DVD and CD.”
One-Blue is asking for
royalty rates ranging from $12 for a Blu-ray Disk recorder and $9 for a BD player to $7 for a BD playback drive in a PC and 9¾ cents per pre-recorded BD movie disk.
It remains to be seen whether this is asking too much too late for emerging consumer OEMs in China and India. Kramer, a former CTO for Philips Semiconductors and later CTO and senior vice president at Philips Consumer Electronics, said he is confident that One-Blue will offer enough carrots and sticks to make it a viable joint licensing program for the global industry.
One-Blue reflects fundamental changes in the consumer electronics industry. Leading system brands in the West and in Japan no longer make their own DVD/Blu-ray players or disks. Instead, they source their products from China or elsewhere. Established Western and Japanese brands also face much tougher competition from a growing number of new Chinese vendors with their own brand names. Whether such emerging OEMs are paying royalties to DVDs and Blu-Ray, however, is another matter.
Traditional IP powerhouses seem to agree that now is the time to end long-running disputes in order to protect and enforce their IP against industry newcomers.
The initial breakthrough for One-Blue came when three long-time rivals with competitive histories and cross-licensing agreements came together. In February 2009, Panasonic agreed to join with Philips and Sony to launch a patent pool. The pool expanded when Hitachi, Samsung and Cyberlink joined. Since August, 2011 when One-Blue officially rolled out its licensing program, others have joined, including Dell, Fujitsu, JVC Kenwood, Hewlett-Packard, LG Electronics, Pioneer, Sharp, Taiyo Yuden and Yamaha.
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