Media Coding Industry Forum Establishes Work Groups and Hosts Event with Lively Keynote Discussion around Standard Essential Patents

YOKOHAMA, Japan–(BUSINESS WIRE)–The Media Coding Industry Forum (MC-IF) organized an Asia outreach event
in Yokohama, Japan hosted by Sony and Canon. At the event MC-IF
announced the establishment of four Work Groups and good progress by
active member participation. There was also an introductory presentation
of MC-IF in Japanese, a keynote speech by Professor Toshifumi Futamata,
and Work Group sessions for some of the MC-IF Work Groups. The event was
held in the Landmark Tower in Yokohama, conveniently accessible for
representatives attending the Licensing Executives Society International
(LESI) annual conference. The Yokohama meeting had a good mixture of
existing and prospective new members, with a full room of almost 60
attendees from more than 30 different organizations.

One of the highlights of the day was the keynote speech by Professor
Toshifumi Futamata, Visiting Senior Researcher, Institute for Future
Initiatives (IFI), the University of Tokyo. The speech was entitled
“Latest development of SEPs – Observation from Japanese Perspective” and
provided a good overview of many of the recent court cases that have
involved Standard Essential Patents (SEPs). Professor Futamata noted the
problems of transparency and predictability in the SEP licensing
environment. He also discussed the Japanese Patent Office’s “Guide to
Licensing Negotiations Involving Standard Essential Patents” — an
attempt to address SEP rate calculation and the interplay of fair
reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) obligations and injunctive
relief.

The afternoon session consisted of Work Group (WG) sessions by the
Intellectual Property (IP) Ecosystem WG and the Marketing and Outreach
WG. Charters for these two WGs, along with the Profiling WG and the
Implementation & Interoperability WG, have now been approved and chairs
for each WG appointed.

The next major MC-IF event is planned to be held around IBC in
Amsterdam, Netherlands, in September 2019. For more information, or to
join the discussion and become a member of MC-IF, go to www.mc-if.org

About MC-IF

The Media Coding Industry Forum was formed and announced at IBC in
Amsterdam in September 2018 and has since held meetings in Macau, China
and Sunnyvale, CA in the US. One of the goals of the MC-IF is to
facilitate cross-industry discussions around the non-technical aspects
of deployment of media coding standards, including patent licensing.
MC-IF also serves as a hub for information related to implementations,
tools, and guidelines for MPEG standards. Membership includes major
codec implementers and codec providers, as well as patent licensing
entities and licensors.

MC-IF is an open international forum that works on the non-technical
aspects of deployment of media coding standards, including issues
related to licensing. Member companies / organizations include Apple,
Ateme, bcom, Bitmovin, CableLabs, Canon, Divideon, Dolby, Ericsson,
ETRI, Fraunhofer, Harmonic, HEVC Advance, Intel, InterDigital,
Mitsubishi, Netint, NGCodec, Nokia, Ocean Tomo, OP Solutions, Orange,
Sisvel, Sony, Technicolor, Tencent, Unified Patents, Velos Media, and
Zetacast. For more information, visit www.mc-if.org.

Contacts

Lori Mesecke, 503-459-9150
lmesecke@nereus-worldwide.com