Via Licensing issues call for MPEG-H 3D Audio patents

SAN FRANCISCO — Via Licensing Corporation, the leading administrator of licensing programs for standardized audio technologies, today announced a call for patents that are essential to the practice of the MPEG-H 3D Audio standard.

MPEG-H is the latest set of audio/video compression and transmission technologies to be standardized under the auspices of the ISO/IEC Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG). MPEG-H 3D Audio specifies the transmission and playback of audio over a variety of speaker arrangements for broadcast and streaming applications in diverse environments such as home theater settings, automotive systems, headphones, and mobile devices.

“Adding an MPEG-H 3D Audio patent pool to our existing portfolio of audio licensing programs makes tremendous sense for our customers and the market,” said Roger Ross, President, Via Licensing Corporation. “Via Licensing has had great success in developing audio licensing programs that are broadly adopted by the industry. For any patent pool, the goal is to create one-stop shopping for implementers of the applicable technology—with our MPEG-4 High Efficiency AAC and MPEG Surround patent pools, Via has resoundingly achieved that goal. Given the dramatic success of our audio programs and the fact that these technologies are the fundamental building blocks of the MPEG-H 3D Audio standard, this program is a natural fit for our existing licensors and licensees. Via Licensing looks forward to working with inventors and implementers of MPEG-H 3D Audio to build a single source for essential MPEG-H 3D Audio patents through an efficient, consolidated offering.”

Any entity that believes it has patents or pending patent applications that are essential to the normative portions of ISO/IEC 23008-3 (High Efficiency Coding and Media Delivery in Heterogeneous Environments, Part 3: 3D Audio) is invited to contact Via Licensing in order to receive information about how to submit patents for essentiality review.

For complete submission information, please email submissions@vialicensing.com, indicating your interest in submitting a patent or patent application to an independent patent evaluator for consideration of essentiality to the MPEG-H 3D Audio standard.