Announced back in February 2009, formally established eight months later, One-Blue has officially launched its licensing programme for Blu-ray Disc products. Participating companies include Cyberlink, Hitachi, Panasonic, Philips, Samsung and Sony.

An independent licensing company, One-Blue says it has been established for the purpose of administering a licensing programme for patents essential to Blu-ray Disc products. For hardware and software products, the license covers Blu-ray Disc, DVD and CD essential patents; for disc products, the license covers Blu-ray Disc essential patents.

The new one-stop BD licensing shop claims it has founded “an innovative patent pool for Blu-ray Disc products that levels the playing field, reduces costs, and fosters fair use of the patent system in the entire optical disc sector.”

This level playing field is achieved through the introduction of a per-batch licensing system for high volume Blu-ray Disc products and labels to be put on the outer boxes of Blu-ray Disc products, which will enable retailers and other players in the value chain to determine readily which products are licensed under this programme. One-Blue expects that after a short initial period all boxes of relevant Blu-ray Disc products will be provided with labels.

Any holder of patents essential to optical formats used in Blu-ray Disc products is invited to submit patents for evaluation and join the licensing programme as a new licensor.
 And any company interested in obtaining licenses for one or more Blu-ray Disc products under the One-Blue product licensing programme is requested to contact the company.

The launch of the One-Blue licensing programme is likely to introduce confusion, if not anger, as four leading companies – Mitsubishi, Thomson, Toshiba and Warner – have already formed the BD4C Licensing Group, launched in March 2010, for the joint global licensing of Blu-ray and DVD patents essential for the whole range of BD discs and devices.


“The potential licensees will benefit from one-stop shopping for the essential patents owned or controlled by the four companies, which will facilitate the development of the BD market,” said the their communiqué at the time.

The issue of competing royalties is addressed on the One-Blue website’s Q&A. Q:Why do you refer to your program as a “one-stop shop” while BD4C has started a BD licensing program? Will One-Blue and BD4C ever merge? A: "The announcement made by BD4C has not changed the objective of One-Blue to create a one-stop shop product license for BD products. One-Blue has always welcomed, and will continue to welcome, the companies participating in the BD4C pool to join One-Blue. One-Blue hopes the licensors of BD4C will join One-Blue or merge into one entity to realize a one-stop shop, because that will result in a better outcome for consumers and the industry as a whole."

Delegates at last year’s Media-Tech Replicator Committee meeting in Germany, which DVD Intelligence attended, expressed concern that there were already a number of Blu-ray licensing pools with which they have to deal, raising costs, and the door is still open for additional parties, who could claim patent protection, to set up shop.

Story filed 04.08.11