Why the Via LA Streaming Codec Pool Merger Matters
Via Licensing shook the MPEG licensing world in May 2023 when it acquired MPEG LA to form the Via LA juggernaut. And how is that deal shaking out now, six months on, as licensors and patent holders alike survey the landscape? Robert J.L. Moore, Patent Attorney, Moore IP Solutions discusses the implications with Mattia Fogliacco, President, Sisvel Group, in this clip from November 2023’s Streaming Media Connect.
Moore asks Fogliacco about the Via Lincensing and MPEG LA merging. “Describe who the players are here, the importance of this merger, and how is this likely to affect codec licensing in the future?”
Fogliacco says that both entities have been the most important patent pool operators, with Via Licensing controlled by Dolby and MPEG by a number of companies, including General Electric, and that the licensing of standard essential patents is normal in a maturing market. “I think it is good news, because more efficiency will be provided to the market through this new vehicle,” he says. “I think it helps streamline some of the licensing operations that both companies were having. I think will provide an increase [of] efficiency and effectiveness.”
He notes that this merger will also make for tougher competition in the codec space but that this competition will be good for licensees and licensors, who will be pushed toward being more creative and ambitious by addressing issues in the market. He says that Sisvel is unique in having a technical domain team of experts who have worked to validate the assumption that there would be VP9 patents held by companies outside of Google and The Alliance for Open Media. “How did we do that?” he says. “Back at the time, our specifications for everyone were not even available. There was only pseudocode, and our team mapped the patterns of these players to the pseudocode, validating what later would be also validated through a mapping to the specification. Those validations were then confirmed by third-party experts. Now it's a level of domain expertise that allows us to engage in a different fashion in technical discussions and in licensing discussions. I'm not entirely sure how other pool operators are doing [this] because I think if you want to be truly on top of the subject, you need this technical expertise, and I'm super happy that this is present for video encoding and other domains in Sisvel. That is something that still differentiates us from Via LA.”
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.
Related Articles
How close to obsolescence is AVC in 2024, with AV1 and other more efficient and increasingly well-established "emerging" codecs like VP9 and HEVC on the rise? Meta's Hassene Tmar, Netflix's Andrey Norkin, AMD's Sean Gardner, and Help Me Stream's Tim Siglin weigh in during this clip from Streaming Media Connect 2024.
29 Mar 2024
Migrating to new codecs is fraught with challenges and complications for companies with massive content libraries like Netflix and Meta, or live linear providers like United Cloud. What drives change-of-codec decisions and what considerations and trade-offs complicate these decisions vis a vis legacy users and more? Netflix's Andrey Norkin, Meta's Hassene Tmar, United Cloud's Boban Kasalovic, and Help Me Stream's Tim Siglin discuss these issues and more in this clip from Streaming Media Connect.
15 Mar 2024
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; just to streaming. So how does it impact other existing patent pool players? Two leading patent attorneys with expertise in this market, Garrard R. Beeney of Sullivan & Cromwell, and Robert J.L. Moore of Moore IP Solutions explore what it meant when Avanci joined the patent pool party in this clip from November 2023's Streaming Media Connect.
15 Jan 2024
What are the key factors that drive and impede new and emerging codec deployment on premium OTT streaming platforms like Netflix, Disney, and Apple TV+? Streaming Learning Center's Jan Ozer provides a much-needed codec deployment reality check in this clip from his presentation at Streaming Media East 2023.
25 Aug 2023
Amazon considers six key factors when choosing and adopting streaming codecs. AWS solutions architect Kevin Yao breaks them down in this clip from Streaming Media Connect 2023.
03 Apr 2023
Which streaming codecs do Netflix and Facebook most commonly use? Jan Ozer of Streaming Learning Center asks Andrey Norkin of Netflix and David Ronca of Facebook to discuss in-depth the specific codecs they employ for their organizations.
22 Nov 2022
What are the key advantages of proprietary versus open-source codecs? Many factors come into play based on finding the right balance of customer needs in various use cases
14 Sep 2022