(Japanese Site)
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| Sony, Philips Offer Nominal Royalty on Super Audio CDs
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February 24, 1998 (TOKYO) -- Sony Corp. and Philips Electronics
NV said they will offer a nominal price on the royalties of Super
Audio CD, a next-generation optical audio disk.
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Companies that already have been licensed to use both companies'
CD formats will be allowed to produce disks and equipment using
the Super Audio CD standards without additional royalties.
Sony and Philips will hold a CD licensing forum on March 19 in
Tokyo, where both companies will announce the contents of Super
Audio CD licenses.
The official specifications of Super Audio CD will be attached to
a red book that defines their Audio-CD formats. About 400
companies around the world are currently allowed to use both
companies' CD patents.
DVD-Audio, which also aims at becoming a worldwide standard as a
next-generation optical audio disk, cannot be licensed for free,
industry sources said.
Several groups already have obtained DVD patents jointly or
separately. They are Hitachi Ltd., Matsushita Electric Industrial
Co., Ltd., Mitsubishi Electric Corp., Victor Co. Japan, Ltd.,
Toshiba Corp. and Time Warner of the U.S.. In addition, there are
Sony, Philips and Pioneer Electronic Corp., as well as Thomson
Multimedia SA of France and others.
Thirty three companies around the world participated to firm up
the DVD-Audio standards. Each has different opinions that make it
difficult to make the royalties free.
The March 9 issue of Nikkei Electronics will carry a full report
on DVD-Audio and Super Audio CD in Japanese.
(Nikkei Electronics)
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