In a recent joint statement, Sony, Philips, and Panasonic have announced a less expensive and simpler licensing process for companies wishing to manufacture Blu-ray equipment.

The license will include all necessary Blu-ray, DVD, and CD patents for selling Blu-ray players. The licensing programme will be handled by a new licensing company to be led by Gerald Rosenthal, former head of intellectual property at IBM. It will be based in the U.S., but will have local branches in Asia, Europe, and Latin America.

Instead of having to approach Blu-ray, DVD, and CD holders individually and paying them separate royalties, the single license should cut down the total cost of royalty payments by 40 percent, according to Sony.

The fees for the new licenses will be $9.50 for a Blu-ray player, and $14 for a Blu-ray recorder. Blu-ray Discs will cost $0.11 for read-only, $0.12 for recordable discs, and $0.15 for rewritable discs.

The idea for a one-stop shop for Blu-ray has been floating around since a 2007 meeting of the 18 companies that hold Blu-ray patents. This one-stop shop will help avoid the harduous process DVD licenses created. To make a DVD player or disc, manufacturers have had to sign agreements with three separate bodies that represented various patent holders - DVD 6C (Hitachi, Panasonic, JVC, Mitsubishi Electric, Samsung, Sharp, Toshiba, Sanyo, Warner); DVD 3C (Philips, Sony, Pioneer); and MPEG LA (representing encoders and decoders).

Story filed 01.03.09