DVD Licensing and Royalties... AAARRRGGGHHHHH

Raptor · Post by **Raptor** » Tue Oct 14, 2003 1:41 am

OK so it seems it just never ends, not a lot of easy to digest info here, but some of the news talks about coming after content owners..... at first glance, it would apper if you are selling DVD's of your movies then you have to have a license from these guys, and pay them a royalty per disc ( max shown was 7.5 cents US). Just another little legal point for all to ponder........ likle we don't have enuff. Here's the link
http://www.dvd6cla.com/

BrownCowStudios · Post by **BrownCowStudios** » Tue Oct 14, 2003 2:32 am

And why do you have to pay this? Why pay them and not someone else? Why anything? WHY?!?

Raptor · Post by **Raptor** » Tue Oct 14, 2003 2:43 am

Apparently they are the licensing clearinghouse for the DVD patent holders, like BMI, ASCAP etc are license clearinghouses for copyrighted music... it make sense since they spent the R&D money to develop the technology, just seems like the parade never ends sometimes..

U.S.Amateurfilmaker · Post by **U.S.Amateurfilmaker** » Tue Oct 14, 2003 3:16 am

Oh good God, who cares?! I'm not going to be selling DVD's of my films on a mass market anyway. What next? Soon I'll have to pay the the inventor of stereo sound a licensing fee! IT JUST NEVER ENDS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I might as well give up filmakinmg if EVERYTHING is going to cost me.

Not directing this toward you Raptor, just licensing in general

Raptor · Post by **Raptor** » Tue Oct 14, 2003 3:48 am

Originally posted by U.S.Amateurfilmaker
Oh good God, who cares?! I'm not going to be selling DVD's of my films on a mass market anyway. What next? Soon I'll have to pay the the inventor of stereo sound a licensing fee! IT JUST NEVER ENDS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I might as well give up filmakinmg if EVERYTHING is going to cost me.

Not directing this toward you Raptor, just licensing in general

Understood, they had a full page ad in Producer magazine and I figured I'd just go out to their site to see what the hell it was all about.. Personally tho I think if you burn yourself to DVD-R you're probably OK, since the DVD-R manufacturer paid the royalty to produce the disc. If however you ever do use a reproduction house, then you probably need to make sure they are properly licensed.. that way you pay the royalty fee as part of the copying fee. just an opinion with damned little knowledge about this issue.. but just another one of those legal pitfalls to look oput for if any of us ever get beyond the "just for the hell of it" stage...

El Brenty · Post by **El Brenty** » Tue Oct 14, 2003 4:36 pm

I'd like to take the view that if I bought a DVD-R, I'd be able to sell whatever I like (Copyright issues aside) on said DVD, because that's why the manufacturer made a DVD-R! To then have to pay a royalty is madness! Lets flash-mob whoever wants the royalties, every thursday until they change their mind!

I also would have thought that suck a royalty would be payable by manufacturers wanting to produce DVDs under license, rather than end-users. Doesn't really make any sense. How do they maintain a hold over copying royalties?

[Edited on 14-10-2003 by CamClub]

Raptor · Post by **Raptor** » Tue Oct 14, 2003 5:10 pm

Originally posted by CamClub
I'd like to take the view that if I bought a DVD-R, I'd be able to sell whatever I like (Copyright issues aside) on said DVD, because that's why the manufacturer made a DVD-R! To then have to pay a royalty is madness! Lets flash-mob whoever wants the royalties, every thursday until they change their mind!

I also would have thought that suck a royalty would be payable by manufacturers wanting to produce DVDs under license, rather than end-users. Doesn't really make any sense. How do they maintain a hold over copying royalties?

[Edited on 14-10-2003 by CamClub]

They own the patents for the technology behind the production, so therefore they can license the technology. Theoretically you can burn all the DVD-Rs you want, just when you sell them you would have to pay the royalty. Again I'm not real clear on this one, and their site wasn't real clear either. I think as far as the content owners, they are going after them to force them to make sure the repro houses are paying appropriate license fees. The bottom line is, they did go to the expense to develop the technology, and they do have a right to profit from their work..... doesn't mean we have to like it... but it's what really makes all the awesome tech advances possible.

El Brenty · Post by **El Brenty** » Wed Oct 15, 2003 4:06 pm

Normally in manufacturing, it's the manufacturer that has to pay royalties from a product or design creator, not the distributor, wholesaler, retailer or end user, it just seems a bit backwards to me - an exception to the rule.

I used to deal with intellectual property licensing for 20th Century Fox, Nickelodeon Studios, Enid Blyton, to name a few, as well as balloon manufacturers, and never came across a licensing structure like that

Adam · Post by **Adam** » Thu Oct 16, 2003 12:55 pm

I would agree the manufacturer of the DVD-R etc will have allready had to pay the royalty to make the disc.

Raptor · Post by **Raptor** » Thu Oct 16, 2003 2:20 pm

Possibly in DVD-R, it seems to read more in duplication houses for for pressed DVD's but it's a bit hard to figure out from their site no doubt. I think they are going after the dupe houses, who would be the manufacturers, but using the suit against content owners to leverage them to use only comlpliant dupe houses...

El Brenty · Post by **El Brenty** » Thu Oct 16, 2003 4:46 pm

Ah, well this sounds a bit different - A duplication house, is effectively manufacturing a finished product, using partly-manufactured raw materials.

Have you ever seen the way DVDs are made in full scale commercial production? A duplication house gets a blank bit of plastic, and bonds the pre-recorded foil data layer onto the DVD. The foil is transcribed through a laser-based printing/etching method, much the same way that they make holographic foil balloons, wrapping paper, and other products with. CDs are screen-printed on the foil side so you've got a picture!

A DVD-R is manufactured in a similar way, but the foil layer is not etched, and you buy a ready finised product for your recording. It's similar to buying a blank casette! The material properties of the foil layer are also slightly different - They use a film that has slightly light-sensitive properties, sensitive to the wavelengths of laser radiation on the electromagnetic scale!

It's not like DVDs (Or CDs) start out as a finished blank product, and the duplication houses then pop them into a heavy-duty recorder! No siree! A small one-man band copy house may, someone who'se set up for very small runs.

I would be very surprised if this article was aimed at anyone apart from duplication houses. Any home/office user using DVD-Rs or DVD-RWs as the raw media should be exempt.

In fact, I'd put a tenner on that! Prove me wrong, earn your tenner!

Famous · Post by **Famous** » Thu Jan 15, 2004 6:33 pm

What about that DVD thing on the DVD insert case?

El Brenty · Post by **El Brenty** » Fri Jan 23, 2004 6:59 pm

That is just a logo for the industry to use to show the product conforms to relevant product compatibility. If you have the DVD logo, it implies that it'll play in your DVD player with the same logo. Same type of things with CDs. It was a system that was devised to make the standards easier for Joe Public to understand.

nakomass · Post by **nakomass** » Sun Feb 01, 2004 10:29 pm

So who does the trademark belong to then?

Post by **Matt** » Sun Feb 01, 2004 11:43 pm

That site is related to companies that make DVDs, DVDRs and DVD drives. Not people who author discs using equipment you bought in a shop (ie us !).

The license fee is for using the technology in a product (ie DVD ROM) not for selling something you wrote onto a DVD disc.

The companies that own the patent on DVD are Hitachi, IBM, Panasonic, Mitsubishi, Time Warner, Toshiba and JVC (according the FAQ on their site).

BenjaminLevin · Post by **BenjaminLevin** » Sun Feb 01, 2004 11:57 pm

If you only knew how much better I feel after hearing tha Matt

padawanNick · Post by **padawanNick** » Mon Feb 02, 2004 9:35 am

When you buy a run of discs from a production house, the licensing for the DVD logo and technology are rolled into the per disc fee. Still, when I did a run of 5000 DVD's the price was only about 60 cents per disc total, including three-color printing on the disc.

Have fun.