Avanci vs. Other Streaming Codec Pools
Avanci Video launched in October 2023 as the latest patent pool contender to stake a claim to a piece of the streaming codec pie. Avanci isn’t new to licensing; it's just to streaming. So, how does it impact other existing patent pool players? Two leading patent attorneys with expertise in this market, Robert J.L. Moore, Patent Attorney, Moore IP Solutions, and Garrard Beeney, Co-Head, Intellectual Property & Technology Group, Sullivan & Cromwell, explore what it meant when Avanci joined the patent pool party in this clip from November 2023’s Streaming Media Connect
Moore asks Beeney, “Would you please describe the Avanci organization, how their stated approach for codec differs from existing codec pools, and how you see this playing out?”
Beeney says that Avanci was founded around 2016 by a former Ericsson executive to fulfill a need in the marketplace to address the automotive industry. “There was a debate ongoing as to whether there should be component licensing and whether that is a requirement of the fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory (FRAND) undertaking that participants and standard-setting organizations agreed to,” he says. “Or do you satisfy that FRAND commitment by end product licensing? Avanci went after the automotive industry and has been, I think, by some reports, at least in terms of who is licensed, has been successful in licensing the car manufacturers to various technologies.”
He notes that while he thinks Avanci was late to the game, they have effectively succeeded in multi-standard licensing in a single program. “So with the new Avanci program that was announced in October, the focus is going to be on internet streaming services, something new,” he says. “Although something other patent pool administrators have toyed with in the past. But the program will include AV1, MPEG-DASH, HEVC, VVC, VP9…and I think that is another development that we're going to start to look forward into the future that will increase the efficiency of pools, as devices such as smartphones include multiple different codecs as the use of the codec become more multipurpose and different content is streamed in different formats. So I think this is where we're going in the future: multi-standard licensing programs and streaming.”
Watch full sessions from Streaming Media Connect November 2023. We'll be back in person for Streaming Media NYC on May 20-22, 2024. More details here.
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