Q&A
1. What is the purpose of the company One-Blue?
One-Blue, LLC (from now on: One-Blue) is a company which has been established for the purpose of administering a one-stop shop licensing program for patents essential to Blu-ray Disc™ (from now on: BD) products. This one-stop shop license for BD hardware and software products covers BD, DVD and CD essential patents and for BD disc products covers BD essential patents.
2. What is the status of the establishment of the One-Blue licensing program?
One-Blue launched the BD product licensing program on July 1st, 2011.
3. Who are the current licensors of One-Blue?
The current licensors are Cyberlink, Dell, Fujitsu, Hewlett-Packard, Hitachi, JVC Kenwood, LG Electronics, Panasonic, Philips, Pioneer, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, Taiyo Yuden and Yamaha. Other major companies across industry have shown interest to become licensors as well. See also under Licensors.
4. Where can I submit patents for evaluation of essentiality?
Entities who believe they have patents that are essential to the implementation of the Blu-ray Disc™ Standards, BD+(*), DVD Standards, and/or CD Standards can submit these to selected patent evaluation law firms.
(*) System Description Blu-ray Disc Read-Only Format Security Virtual Machine (BD+).
5. What are the royalty rates for the One-Blue licensing program?
You can find a complete overview of the royalty rates on this website.
6. What product categories will be licensed by One-Blue?
BD-ROM Disc, BD-R/RE Disc (including BD-XL Disc), BD-Player/Recorder, BD- Drive, BD-PC and BD-SW.
7. Who is going to run One-Blue?
One-Blue will be managed by a small management team operating under guidance of its Board of Directors and an administrative committee with representatives of licensors.
8. Why is it taking so long to launch the One-Blue program?
It has taken a considerable amount of time for a number of reasons:
- One-Blue will administer a unique licensing program that offers a product license instead of a format license. This has not been done before and it brings additional complexities that needed to be solved.
- One-Blue will introduce many new elements (when compared to existing patent pools) aimed to create a more level playing field for licensees and for licensors.
- More owners of essential patents means reaching a consensus, which takes more time.
9. 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?
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.
10. What does One-Blue mean?
The name is an amalgam of “One” (representing one-stop shop) and “Blue” (representing that the program is for patents essential to Blu-ray Disc™ products).
11. What is per-batch licensing?
Per-batch licensing is a license per shipment instead of a license for total production for the lifetime of the essential patents.
12. Why is One-Blue using per-batch licensing?
One-Blue uses per-batch licensing to avoid problems of existing licensing programs, where products have the status of being licensed without a royalty being paid for them.
13. What is the benefit of joining the One-Blue program early as a Licensor?
Licensors who contribute eligible patents on or before December 31, 2011 will receive a more favorable share of past-use royalties collected on their essential patents, subject to program terms and conditions. Interested Licensors should contact One-Blue for detailed documentation regarding the above programs.
14. What is the benefit of joining the One-Blue program early as a Licensee / Registrant?
Licensees / Registrants (manufacturers and brand owners) who execute a registration and / or past-use agreement on or before December 31, 2011, subject to compliance to all program terms and conditions, remain eligible for a past-use discount, dependent upon the individual program terms. Interested Licensees / Registrants should contact One-Blue for detailed documentation regarding the above programs.
15. Will One-Blue do border dententions?
One-Blue will ask customs in the various countries to do border seizures to intercept unlicensed products with the aim to create a level playing field. This is in the interest of the whole market and ultimately to consumers.
16. Will One-Blue enforce against retailers?
One-Blue expects that it will be able to get all manufacturers to sign-up on the basis of the strict enforcement regime against manufacturers in combination with border seizures, labels and logos, etc., on BD products so that retailers can easily determine whether products are licensed or not. In the unforeseen situation that a manufacturer takes advantage of not being licensed, One-Blue reserves the right to enforce against retailers and others in the whole distribution chain.