Unified Poops in Velos’ Punchbowl

Jan Ozer March 7, 2019 Blogs, Codecs Leave a comment 2,631 Views

Sorry for the visual but couldn’t resist. Just got the following email from Unified Patents.

All the normal caveats apply; I haven’t reviewed the filings (and won’t) and Unified may not succeed though they’ve had some recent successes.

Why the hate on Velos? In contrast to the transparency with which MPEG LA and HEVC Advanced operate, Velos still won’t publish rates, identify its essential patents, or even inform the market if they’ll be seeking royalties for HEVC-encoded content, despite being a significant concern to many producers and potential HEVC adopters (both other pools have ruled out charging content royalties for free internet content). Given that HEVC came to market about six years ago, it’s not like Velos’ IP owners haven’t had time to get their thoughts together.

Long story short; few will be sad if a quarter of the Velos IP assets are invalidated. And it’s fabulous to have an IP watchdog like Unified making technology adoption safer and fairer for all technology companies.

About Jan Ozer

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I help streaming and video technology companies solve complex technical and market-facing problems in practical business terms. Engagements range from fixed-scope audits and codec strategy reviews to product testing and technical content that helps customers, prospects, and internal teams connect technical performance to business outcomes. I am a contributing editor to Streaming Media Magazine, writing about codecs and encoding tools. I have written multiple authoritative books on video encoding, including Video Encoding by the Numbers: Eliminate the Guesswork from your Streaming Video (https://amzn.to/3kV6R1j) and Learn to Produce Video with FFmpeg: In Thirty Minutes or Less (https://amzn.to/3ZJih7e). I have multiple courses relating to streaming media production, all available at https://bit.ly/slc_courses.

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