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Statements

Sponsors

MPEG LA to Charge MPEG4 Streaming in Europe
Patent Tax Threatens the Freedom of Movie Picture Artists in Europe

EuroLinux Alliance

petition.EuroLinux.org

For immediate Release

Paris, Munich, Amsterdam - 2002-02-20 - EuroLinux has been informed by Larry Horn, Vice President for Licensing at the MPEG association, that "the patents that will constitute the MPEG-4 Visual Patent Portfolio License support the charging of royalties on the use of MPEG-4 Visual streams in Europe" and that a license should be available within several months.

MPEG LA is a group of large corporations which control the MPEG standards through a large patent portfolio. MPEG LA includes notceably Canon, Inc., Fujitsu, General Instrument Corp., GE Technology Development, Inc., Hitachi, Ltd., KDDI Corporation, Matsushita, Mitsubishi, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation, Philips, Samsung, Sanyo Electric Co., Ltd., Scientific Atlanta, Sony, Toshiba, and Victor Company of Japan, Limited. [1]

MPEG LA strategy consists in charging all possible uses of MPEG4 technologies wordwide and to block the diffusion of independently developped innovations in the field of video software technology. In particular, MPEG LA is charging 0.02 USD per hour of compressed MPEG4, which is actually more than the copyright royalties most movie writers receive.

The MPEG LA strategy leads to levying a tax on all cultural goods and is a typical example of the way patents on Internet standards are a tool for private taxing of all economic activities.

MPEG LA is not the only group of companies trying to patent common Internet standards and create new forms of taxes managed by private interests. Organisations such as the W3C or the IETF, under the influence of large IT companies, are also starting to accept patents on Internet standards.

"Patents on Internet standards have absolutely no economic justification since the economic value of a standard is related to the number of its users, not to the R&D spent to develop the standard or its technical quality." says Bernard Lang, Directeur de Recherche at INRIA. "Also, Internet standards are extremely cheap to develop. Corporate Members of the EuroLinux Alliance have for example developped innovative fractal based digital video software in less than 3 months."

However, and although all economic studies show that software patents harm software innovation [3, 4, 6, 7, 8], software patents on Internet standards are likely to be legalised by the European Commission according to current informations on the proposed directive [9]. It would give control to a few large corporations on the whole digital culture and threaten European cultural diversity.

The MPEG LA Email to EuroLinux

Subject: RE: Submit Your Question to MPEGLA
Date: Mon, 18 Feb 2002 10:54:29 -0700
From: "Larry Horn" 
To: XXXX

Hello, XXXX.

Thanks for your question.  The patents that will constitute the MPEG-4
Visual Patent Portfolio License support the charging of royalties on the
use of MPEG-4 Visual streams in Europe.  Details of the actual license
agreement are still being worked out, however, and a license may not be
available for several more months.

Regards,
Larry Horn
Vice President, Licensing

References

[0] Apple Delays QuickTime 6 Over Proposed MPEG-4 Licenses - http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/02/13/041234&mode=thread

[1] MPEG-LA - http://www.mpegla.com/l_patentlist.html

[2] European Software Patent Horror Gallery - http://swpat.ffii.org/vreji/pikta/mupli/index.en.html

[3] What is behind the recent surge in patenting? Samuel Kortum, Josh Lerner. Research Policy 28. 1999. Elesevier

[4] Abstraction oriented property of software and its relation to patentability. Tetsuo Tamai. Information and Software Technology. 1998. Elsevier.

[5] Juridical Coup at the European Patent Office - http://petition.eurolinux.org/pr/pr14.html

[6] Software Patentability with Compensatory Regulation: a Cost Evaluation. Jean Paul Smets and Hartmut Pilch. Upgrade February 2002 http://swpat.ffii.org/stidi/pleji/
http://www.upgrade-cepis.org/issues/2001/6/up2-6Smets.pdf

[7] Fraunhofer Study about the Economic Effects of Software Patents. Micro and Macroeconomic Implications of the Patentability of Software Innovations. German Federal Ministry Economics and Technology. November 2001. http://www.bmwi.de/Homepage/Politikfelder/Technologiepolitik/Technologiepolitik.jsp#softwarepatentstudie
http://www.bmwi.de/Homepage/download/technologie/Softwarepatentstudie_E.pdf

[8] Stimulating competition and innovation in the information society. Conseil Général des Mines. September 2000. - http://www.pro-innovation.org

[9] Collusion Discovered between BSA and European Commission - http://petition.eurolinux.org/pr/pr18.html

About EuroLinux - www.EuroLinux.org

The EuroLinux Alliance for a Free Information Infrastructure is an open coalition of commercial companies and non-profit associations united to promote and protect a vigourous European Software Culture based on Open Standards, Open Competition, Linux and Open Source Software. Companies, members or supporters of EuroLinux develop or sell software under free, semi-free and non-free licenses for operating systems such as Linux, MacOS or Windows.

The EuroLinux Alliance launched on 2000-06-15 an electronic petition to protect software innovation in Europe. The EuroLinux petition has received so far massive support from more than 100.000 European citizens, 2000 corporate managers and 300 companies.

Press Contacts

France & Europe: Jean-Paul Smets jp@smets.com +33-6 62 05 76 14
Germany & Europe: Hartmut Pilch phm@ffii.org +49-89 127 89 608
Denmark and Northern Europe: Anne Østergaard aoe@sslug.dk
Belgium: Nicolas Pettiaux nicolas.pettiaux@linuxbe.org
Netherlands: Luuk van Dijk

Permanent URL for this PR

http://petition.EuroLinux.org/pr/pr17.html

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