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MPEG-4 Royalties

1. MPEGLA

MPEGLA is the organization that handles all MPEG (including MPEG-2) Patents and royalties. This organization is made of a group of companies that own the MPEG patents, for example: Fujitsu, GE, KDDI, Philips, LG, Microsoft, Samsung and many others.
MPEGLA web site www.mpegla.com, where you can find those information and more.

2. Who needs to pay royalties?

Rather than place the entire royalty in one place (e.g., on the decoder or encoder manufacturer), royalties are also payable at those parts of the product chain where value is received and those who receive the value can build the royalties into their business models. For example, encoder and decoder manufacturers pay royalties for the right to make and sell decoders and encoders, but video providers who receive remuneration for offering MPEG-4 video either directly (e.g., subscription fees) or indirectly (e.g., advertising fees) pay a royalty for the right to use the decoders and encoders to receive and transmit the remunerated video.
Where video is not offered for remuneration, however, no additional royalty is payable. Advertising or promoting one's own products is not treated as a remunerated use for which royalties are payable; neither are private communications among end users.

3. What does a manufacturer pay?

An encoder and decoder manufacturer, pays all royalties for making and selling every encoder and decoder sold.

4. What is remunerated video?

For example Blockbuster renting movies, broadcasters who charge monthly payment for the content they provide, ISPs who charge for web casting events, etc.

5. How much would one pay?

Generally speaking the basic calculation is $0.000333 per minute of movie. Therefore 3 hours of movie is 5 cents (with a max of $1M royalties per year and per legal entity).