HEVC Advance freezes royalty rates on patent pool

Independent licensing administrator HEVC Advance has announced that the royalty rates offered by its HEVC/H.265 Pool License will be unchanged until at least the end of 2025.

The body has ownership of more than 10,000 patents and counts the likes of Dolby, Warner Brothers, Toshiba and Huawei among its partners. It provides customers access to an exclusive pool of HEVC essential patents.

HEVC Advance has also announced that the Category and Enterprise Caps will increase by 20% beginning on January 1, 2021, but those increases will be suspended through the end of the First Renewal Term for all Licensees in the programme by December 31, 2020, and that remain in good-standing.

The administrator noted that any holders of HEVC Standard Essential Patents that are not yet licensors in the its Advance Pool that incentives in the form of increased patent points are still available for patents submitted and determined to be essential by December 31, 2020.

HEVC Advance CEO, Peter Moller said: “We are very pleased that our Licensors have decided to maintain existing royalty rates and caps for those companies that are meeting their IP obligations. This decision of our Licensors is especially note-worthy considering the overwhelming success of the HEVC Advance pool in consolidating HEVC patent owners – with now 29 Licensors and 11,000 essential patents as compared to our launch in 2016 with 6 Licensors and 500 essential patents – all with no increase in royalty rates.”