SAN FRANCISCO — Via Licensing Corporation has announced that it is developing a patent pool for the Extended High Efficiency AAC (xHE-AAC). A recent update to the Advanced Audio Coding range of technologies from standardized by ISO MPEG, xHE-AAC combines a speech coder with a general audio coder for a single audio coding system that can achieve low bitrates with either speech, music or ambient sounds. Digital Radio Mondiale has selected xHE-AAC for its audio coding format.
xHE-AAC patent owners, which include Dolby Laboratories, Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute, Fraunhofer IIS, Koninklijke Philips N.V., Orange S.A., Sony, and VoiceAge Corp., have worked with Via Licensing to establish this patent pool. As a result, third parties will be able to license the xHE-AAC technology for a fee.
According to Via Licensing, royalties for the xHE-AAC are expected to be:
- 1-500,000 units — $1.08/unit
- 500,001-1,000,000 — $0.88/unit
- 1,000,001-2,000,000 — $0.78/unit
- 2,000,001-5,000,000 — $0.70/unit
- 5,000,001-10,000,000 — $0.67/unit
- 10,000,001-20,000,000 — $0.47/unit
- 20,000,001-50,000,000 — $0.45/unit
- 50,000,001-75,000,000 — $0.40/unit
- 75,000,000+ — $0.35/unit
AAC pool licensees will be able to add a license grant for xHE-AAC to an existing AAC license agreement. The license fees are inclusive of underlying AAC patents.
Via Licensing plans to launch the patent pool during the second quarter of 2016.
