MPEG LA, LLC issued a call for patents and patent applications that are essential to the Blu-ray Standard, in an effort to bring together the essential patent holders aiming at the efficient adoption in devices, discs and related implementations.

The call begins a process of evaluating and determining patents that are essential to the standard in order to include them in a joint patent portfolio license providing users with reasonable access to the technology as an alternative to negotiating separate licenses.

The Blu-ray optical disc format was jointly developed by the Blu-ray Disc Association, a group of the world's leading consumer electronics, personal computer and media manufacturers. The format was developed to enable recording, re-writing and playback of high definition video (HD) as well as storing large amounts of data. The BD standard refers generally to a rewritable optical disc, a recordable optical disc and a read-only optical disc; the method of playing such discs; and recording methods.

MPEG LA is not related to any standards agency and is not an affiliate of any patent holder. MPEG LA licenses portfolios of essential patents for the MPEG-2, IEEE 1394, DVB-T, MPEG-4 Visual (Part 2), MPEG-4 Systems and AVC/H.264 (also known as MPEG-4 Part 10) standards. MPEG LA is also facilitating the development of alternative patent portfolio licenses for VC-1, ATSC, DVB-H, various digital rights management (DRM) technologies including OMA DRM 1.0 and 2.0., and RFID.

To assure that the license development process may benefit from the views of parties who potentially may obtain essential patent rights in the future as well as those who currently have them, MPEG LA welcomes any owner of a patent application with claims that the owner believes are essential to the Standard to submit it for an evaluation of its essentiality by independent patent experts in order potentially to participate in the license development process (only issued patents would be included in the license, however).

Further information, along with terms and procedures governing patent submissions, can be found at http://www.mpegla.com/pid/Blu-ray.