Manufacturers of DAB receivers for Europe are set to benefit from
lower costs as a result of the expiry of the patents related to the DAB
family of standards – generally referred to as the Philips patent pool.
For manufacturers, this is important news as the patents expire in
some of the largest potential target markets for the DAB family of
standards – France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK – and
this means lower priced receivers on the market.
From January 18, any shipments into countries where the patents have
expired are no longer liable for the royalty payment. Furthermore, this
means that the price barrier to integrating the DAB family of standards
into devices as default is lower as, similar to FM in the past, DAB
becomes a free-to-integrate technology.
The patents are the intellectual property of various companies within
a pool which is administered by Philips. The last ‘original’ DAB patent
will expire at different times in different countries. For example by
mid-August 2012 the original patent had already expired in Australia,
Denmark, The Netherlands and a few other countries.
The DAB+ royalty that is specifically for HE-AACv2 (paid to VIA
Licensing) needs to be paid only once, so if a manufacturer has an
Internet radio product that needs HE-AAC to handle IP streams, then that
will also cover DAB+.
More than 500 million people worldwide are within range of a
DAB/DAB+/DMB Digital Radio transmitter, there are well over 1,000
services on air and several hundred varieties of receivers are available
to market.
(Source : Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union)
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