Vectis IP, an intellectual property management company, has announced the formation of a patent pool to license technologies used in the free audio codec Opus. 10 years ago, Opus was standardized (RFC 6716) by the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) as a royalty-free audio codec for Internet applications and does not interfere with proprietary technologies. Vectis IP intends to change the patent-licensing status of this codec and has begun accepting applications from companies holding patents that overlap with Opus technologies.
After the formation of the patent pool, the collection of royalties is planned to be focused on manufacturers of hardware devices that support Opus. Licensing will not affect open codec implementations, applications, services, and content distribution. The first patent holders to join the initiative were Fraunhofer and Dolby. It is expected that in the coming months a pool of more than a hundred patents will be formed and manufacturers will be asked to license the use of the Opus codec in their devices. The amount of deductions will be 15-12 euro cents from each device.
It is noted that in addition to the Opus format, Vectis IP is simultaneously working on the formation of patent pools covering other technologies related to image and video coding, communications, e-commerce and computer networks.
The Opus codec is created by combining the best technologies from Xiph.org's CELT codec and Skype's open source SILK codec. In addition to Skype and Xiph.Org, companies such as Mozilla, Octasic, Broadcom and Google also took part in the development of Opus. Opus features high coding quality and minimal latency for both high-bitrate streaming audio compression and voice compression for bandwidth-constrained VoIP telephony applications. Previously, Opus was voted the best codec at 64Kbit (Opus outperformed competitors like Apple HE-AAC, Nero HE-AAC, Vorbis and AAC LC). The reference implementations of the Opus encoder and decoder are distributed under the BSD license. The complete format specifications are publicly available, free of charge, and approved as an Internet standard.
All patents used in Opus are granted by the contributing companies for unlimited use without payment of royalties - patents are automatically delegated for applications and products using Opus, without the need for additional approval. There are no restrictions on the scope and creation of alternative third-party implementations. However, all rights granted are revoked in the event of patent proceedings affecting Opus technologies against any user of Opus. Vectis IP is focused on finding patents that overlap with Opus, but do not belong to the companies that originally participated in its development, standardization and promotion.
Source: opennet.ru