AVR32722: AVR32 How to license audio and video codecs 32-bit Features Microcontrollers • Audio codecs licensing - WMA - MP3 - MPEG-2/MPEG-4 Audio (AAC) Application Note • Video codecs licensing - WMV - MPEG-2/MPEG-4 Video 1 Introduction This guide shall give Atmel® customers information about, as well as an overview over, the licensing of patents that cover technologies such as MP3 and WMA. A video or audio technology involves not only one patent but rather many different ones. Because of that a licenser needs to license a pool of patents that cover the desired technology. These patent pools are offered from dedicated companies to ease the licensing process. All license royalties (and schemes) in this document are taken from the official websites of the licensers but these may change over the time. Because of that the reader should always take a look at the referenced sources in this document for detailed, up to date license schemes and royalties. This document only applies as a source of information and no responsibility is taken by Atmel for the correctness of the information found herein. Rev. 32097A-AVR32-01/08 2 MP3 MP3, short for MPEG-1/MPEG-2 Layer 3, is a format for storing digital audio. It uses an advanced type of audio compression, which reduces the file size with little reduction in audio quality. MP3 is used in software applications, digital audio players, home stereo devices and music distribution over the Internet, but is also used for other purposes such as real-time digital audio transmissions over ISDN. The companies, Thomson, Sisvel (and its U.S. subsidiary Audio MPEG; http://www.audiompeg.com) offer a patent pool of relevant MP3 patents related to decoder and encoder. Thomson licenses Fraunhofer MP3 and MP3 Surround software as well as Fraunhofer MP3 patents. The contact website for the licensing of MP3 through Thomson is http://www.mp3licensing.com. The following chapters describe different license models from Thomson. 2.1 MP3 hardware decoder/encoder licensing Atmel has a license of MP3 for its ICs/DSPs from Thomson. This means that a customer does not have to license its product when he uses an Atmel IC with an incorporated MP3 decoder/encoder [3]. 2.2 MP3 software decoder/encoder For hardware that uses software MP3 decoder/encoder a license is needed. Important is that this license does not include the right to distribute, broadcast and/or stream MP3/MP3Pro encoded data. These rights are covered by the license described in chapter 2.3. The royalties for MP3 decoder/encoder software are staged according to the used technology (MP3 or MP3Pro) and the use of decoding/encoding or just decoding. In any case an annual minimum royalty is payable upon signature and each following year. This minimum royalty is creditable against annual royalties and is about 15,000 US$. Table 2-1 shows the royalties for a license of the MP3 patents only. This model is most likely for a customer that uses e.g. an AVR®32 to decode/encode MP3 data because the ported codec library is available from Atmel (contact Atmel for further details: [email protected]). Table 2-1 MP3 patent-only license (third party MP3 software) Component Costs per unit in US$ Decoder 0.75 Codec 1.25 2.3 Electronic music distribution/broadcasting/streaming The current licensing scheme of MP3 makes it necessary to have a license to be allowed to stream or distribute content in MP3 if the use is commercial (e.g. revenue- generating). This makes the MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 audio formats (AAC), in addition to their superior compression technology, more attractive for broadcasting systems and because of that also for receiving systems. 2 AVR32722 32097A-AVR32-01/08 AVR32722 According to Thomson no license is needed for private, non-commercial activities (e.g. home-entertainment, receiving broadcasts and creating a personal music library), not generating revenue or other consideration of any kind or for entities with associated annual gross revenue less than US$ 100,000. The royalties for MP3 music distribution/broadcasting/streaming is related to the revenue. These are 3.0% for MP3Pro and 2.0% for MP3. Also a minimum annual royalty of US$ 3000 for MP3Pro and US$ 2000 for MP3 that is creditable against annual royalties exists. 3 MPEG-2 / MPEG-4 Audio Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) is a standardized, lossy compression and encoding scheme for digital audio. It is specified both as Part 7 of the MPEG-2 standard, and Part 3 of the MPEG-4 standard. As such, it can be referred to as MPEG-2 Part 7 and MPEG-4 Part 3 depending on its implementation. However it is most often referred to as MPEG-4 AAC, or AAC for short [1]. MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 Audio (AAC) patents are licensed by Via Licensing Corporation. Please visit http://www.vialicensing.com for more information. Various patents from different companies or institutions are covered by these licenses but still others do claim to have relevant patents that are needed (e.g. Thomson states that it has relevant patents that are not included [3]). Via offers any company to submit their patent that covers a relevant part of a technology for an evaluation. If the patent meets the requirements it can be added to the patent pool at no further costs for the licensees. It is No licenses or payments are required to be able to stream or distribute content in AAC format. This reason alone makes AAC a much more attractive format to distribute content than MP3, particularly for streaming content (such as Internet radio). However, a patent license is needed by manufacturers or developers of end user encoder and/or decoder products. Under this category fall, according to Via licensing, all end-user products, when sold directly or through distribution to end users. Licensee's products that are not end user products are not covered by the license and would require that the party incorporating such a component or implementation into its end user product obtain its own license. 3.1 MPEG-2 AAC License The royalties for a license of the MPEG-2 AAC pool are related to the number of units per year and decoder/encoder channels. A channel refers to an audio output channel. For example stereo is a two-channel implementation (left and right), while a surround sound system might have five or more audio channels. Special licensing prices for cellular phones, PC software are also available upon request. Table 3-1 shows an excerpt of standard royalties for MPEG-2 AAC. Table 3-1. MPEG-2 AAC license royalties excerpt Volume(per channel/quarterly Consumer Decoder Consumer Codec reset) Channels Channels 1 to 100,000 $0.45 $0.90 100,001 to 500,000 $0.35 $0.80 500,001 to 1,000,000 $0.25 $0.70 3 32097A-AVR32-01/08 Volume(per channel/quarterly Consumer Decoder Consumer Codec reset) Channels Channels 1,000,001 to 5,000,000 $0.20 $0.65 5,000,001 to 10,000,000 $0.15 $0.65 10,000,001 or more $0.10 $0.65 3.2 MPEG-4 AAC License The royalties for a license of the MPEG-4 AAC pool are, just like the MPEG-2 version, related to the number of units per year and decoder/encoder channels. Table 3-2 shows an excerpt of standard royalties for MPEG-4 AAC. For special licensing prices that apply for cellular phones or PC software please contact Via licensing. Table 3-2. MPEG-4 AAC license royalties excerpt Volume(per channel/quarterly Consumer Decoder Consumer Codec reset) Channels Channels 1 to 100,000 $0.50 $1.00 100,001 to 500,000 $0.37 $0.74 500,001 to 1,000,000 $0.27 $0.54 1,000,001 to 5,000,000 $0.22 $0.44 5,000,001 to 10,000,000 $0.17 $0.34 10,000,001 or more $0.12 $0.24 4 MPEG-2 / MPEG-4 Video Patents covering MPEG-4/MPEG-2 video are claimed by many companies. The MPEG Licensing Authority (http://www.mpegla.com) licenses patents required for MPEG-4 Part 2 Visual and MPEG-2 from a wide range of companies. New licenses for MPEG-4 System patents are under development and no new licenses are being offered while holders of its old MPEG-4 Systems license are still covered under the terms of that license for the patents listed. The MPEG Licensing Authority has two licensing models for MPEG-2/MPEG-4, a “system” license and “codec” license. The system license applies for devices which handle MPEG-2/MPEG-4 but do not have a licensed video encoder/decoder. This is the case when the device only handles MPEG data streams. For MPEG-2/MPEG-4 video decoding another license is needed. 4.1 MPEG-2 The fee for a MPEG-2 System license is US$ 0.50 for each product. Following royalty categories are available for a MPEG-2 “codec” license: • Decoders: $2.50 per unit • Encoders: $2.50 per unit • Distribution Encoders: $2.50 x L per unit, where L is the number of programs encoded in parallel 4 AVR32722 32097A-AVR32-01/08 AVR32722 • Consumer Products (Encode & Decode): $2.50 per unit • Intermediate Products: License to make and sell (no royalty), end user product bears royalty 4.2 MPEG-4 Visual Currently no information about a MPEG-4 system license is available. For further details please contact the MPEG Licensing Authority. Following royalty categories are available for a MPEG-4 “codec” license: • Decoders sold to end users and/or as fully functioning for PCs o 0 - 50,000 decoders/year = no royalty (available to one legal entity in an affiliated group) o US $0.25* per decoder after first 50,000 decoders/year o Annual cap per Legal Entity: $1,000,000 • Encoders sold to end users and/or as fully functioning for PCs o 0 - 50,000 encoders/year = no royalty (available to one legal entity in an affiliated group) o US $0.25* per encoder after first 50,000 encoders/year o Annual cap per Legal Entity: $1,000,000 • Enterprise cap - $3 million per year 5 Windows Media To get more information about the different licensing models of Windows® Media visit http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/licensing/default.mspx.