MPEG has moved forward with a royalty-free standard activity, approving a “Call for Evidence”, the typical first step in the MPEG standardization process.
The MPEG Call for Evidence is referenced in the public Resolutions of the just-completed 93rd MPEG meeting, which also hint at an upcoming Call For Proposals.
The Call for Evidence follows the April call for active participation in a royalty-free standardization activity to verify the ISO-required minimum of 5 National Bodies willing to actively participate.
No doubt of interest in response to the Call for Evidence will be performance tests on royalty free codecs and coding techniques (perhaps along the lines of the annual MSU h.264 codec comparison, which in June released test results on Google’s VP8 codec) and background on patent and prior art searches.
The documents use the new MPEG-speak for royalty-free licensing of “Option-1 Licensing”, named for the first check box on the ISO/IEC/ITU Common Patent Policy Patent Statement and Licensing Declaration, which allows patent holders to affirm that “[t]he Patent Holder is prepared to grant a free of charge license to an unrestricted number of applicants on a worldwide, non-discriminatory basis and under other reasonable terms and conditions to make, use, and sell implementations of the above document.”
14.6 Option 1 Licensing Video Coding
14.6.1 The Requirements subgroup recommends approval of the following documents:
| No. | Title | TBP | Available |
| Exploration – Option 1 Licensing Video Coding | ISO-group.jpg | ||
| 11533 | Call for Evidence on Option-1 Video Coding Technology | N | 10/07/30 |
| 11534 | Draft Context, Objectives and Applications for Option-1 video coding for Internet applications | N | 10/07/30 |
| 11535 | Draft Requirements for Option-1 Video coding for Internet applications | N | 10/07/30 |
| 11536 | Draft Call for Proposals for Option-1 Video Coding for Internet applications | N | 10/07/30 |
