One-Blue, LLC, an independent licensing company, today announced it will launch a one-stop shop product license for patents essential to Blu-ray Disc products on April 1st, 2011, subject to necessary governmental clearance. One-Blue also announced that Mr. Roel Kramer has been appointed as CEO of One-Blue. Mr. Kramer, who has been the President of the Blu-ray Disc Association since 2007, succeeds Mr. Jerry Rosenthal, who had served as CEO since One-Blue was established in 2009.
“One-Blue has been designed to provide an important service to the entire industry while at the same time stimulating the growth and adoption for Blu-ray Disc™ products,” said Mr. Kramer. “I look forward to working with all of the companies participating in the One-Blue patent pool as we gear up to make the licensing program available in the marketplace by April 2011.”
Since issuing its call for Blu-ray Disc™ product patents in October 2009, One-Blue has been working diligently with potential licensors to ensure wide-spread adoption of the license program that One-Blue will administer. As part of this activity, new royalty rates under the licenses were recently announced. The new rates are now US$9.00 for a Blu-ray Disc™ player and US$12.00 for a Blu-ray Disc™ recorder; US$0.0975 for a BD-read only video disc, US$0.1075 for a BD-recordable disc and US$0.1350 for a BD-rewritable disc. Other royalty rates can be found on the renewed website www.one-blue.com.
It is still possible to submit patents for evaluation. Any holder of patents essential to optical formats used in Blu-ray Disc™ products is invited to join the program as a licensor. More information can be found on: www.one-blue.com.
