Dolby Labs Reveals Licensing Program

Dolby Labs recently expanded its MPEG-4 AAC licensing program that builds on its MPEG-2 AAC program. MPEG-4 applications include Internet streaming, electronic media distribution, multimedia playback and wireless applications. The licensing program takes into account various market demands and environments that range from freely distributed PC-based software decoders to high-quality playback consumer electronics devices.
Under the new license terms, licensees will pay the following royalty rates for MPEG-4 AAC products: Consumer (noncommercial) decoder product royalty rates are 50 to 12 cents (volume based) per channel; royalties for PC-based software decoder products are 25 cents per channel, up to a maximum annual payment of $25,000 per legal entity.
For consumer encoder product royalties will cost 50 to 12 cents (volume based) per channel; for PC-based software encoder products royalties are 50 to 27 cents per channel, up to a maximum annual payment of $250,000 per legal entity. A professional (commercial) decoder royalty is $2 per channel and the pro encoder product royalty is $20 per channel.
There are no royalties or usage fees for content distribution in AAC format, either in electronic form or in packaged media. A migration path for existing MPEG-2 AAC licensees will be made available.
For more information from Dolby Labs, contact the company in California at (415) 558-2100; e-mail [email protected], or visit www.aac-audio.com on the World Wide Web.