Patents for MPEG-2 Technology

Owners of patents essential to the MPEG-2 compression standard agreed to pool their patents under an administrator that would grant non-discriminatory licenses, collect and distribute royalties under a most-favored-nation clause, and require licensees to grant back licenses on any additional essential patents; an independent expert continuously reviewed the pool to ensure it included only genuinely essential (complementary, non-competing) patents, individual owners could still license their own patents separately, and licensees remained free to develop competing alternative technologies. The owners requested a DOJ business review letter regarding antitrust enforcement.