No independent company "owns" DVD. The official specification was formulated by a consortium of ten companies: Hitachi, JVC, Panasonic, Mitsubishi, Philips, Pioneer, Sony, Thomson, time warner Inc. and Toshiba. Representatives from many other companies also contributed to many working groups. 1In May 1997, DVD Alliance was replaced by DVD Forum, which was open to all companies and had more than 220 members by February 2000. Time warner Inc. Company first registered the trademark of DVD, and then handed it over to the DVD format/logo licensing company.
Any company that wants to make DVD products must obtain the main technology patent authorization from the following companies: Philips/Pioneer/Sony camp (3.5% per player, at least $5; In addition, VCD compatibility costs $2.50; 5 points for each disc), Hitachi/Panasonic/Mitsubishi/time warner Inc./Toshiba/Victor camp (4% for each player or drive, at least $4; 4% for each DVD decoder, with a minimum of $65,438+0; 7.5 points per set), and Thomson. The patent also belongs to Discovision Associates, which owns about 65,438+0,300 optical disc patents (usually paid by copy manufacturers).