Bluray & HD-DVD battle on the legal table

The European Commission's antitrust agency (EC) will review the licensing strategy for two developers of next-generation DVD optical discs - Bluray and HD-DVD.

HD-DVD optical disc standard was developed by Toshiba. The Bluray standard was developed by the alliance Sony, Philips, Samsung and Sharp Corporation - in which Sony leads the ship.

The HD-DVD standard was officially released in April last year in the US and received the support of the big guys in information technology and entertainment industries such as Intel, Microsoft, and Universal Studios.

Meanwhile, the Bluray has just officially launched the product last month. However, this standard has also received support from 20th Century Fox and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

The two developers will have to compete with each other to gain market share in the potential entertainment market. To do so, they must convince consumers to upgrade from the existing DVD optical disc standard to Blu-ray or HD-DVD optical discs.

An EC spokesman said earlier this month that the committee had officially sent a letter asking developers to standardize Blu-ray and HD-DVD optical discs, asking them to provide information about licensing. In addition, the EC spokesperson declined to give further information.

The EC did not say which companies had sent letters to the companies and how many times they had sent them. Only Sony confirmed that it had received requests from the European Commission. Sony also said it is fully cooperating with the EC.

" There is no sign of the existence of lawsuits or monopolistic concerns here ," Sony said in a recent statement.

The EC requires developers to provide next-generation optical disc licensing terms, fearing that these provisions may violate the European Union's competition principle. However, the committee has not conducted any formal investigation yet. The EC also declined to say that the committee is currently seeking some licensing terms for specific product areas or the full terms of licensing.

Developers of next-generation optical disc standards will have to license their products to hardware manufacturers who want product products compatible with their optical disc standards.

Sony and other Blu-ray alliance partners said they had begun licensing work in 2003. The information on the Bluray Alliance's official website said there were a total of more than 100 licenses. has been issued to manufacturers in 6 different product categories, including Hitachi, Pioneer, Samsung, TDK and LG Electronics.

After receiving all the information, the European Union's monopoly authority will decide whether to officially conduct an investigation.

Toshiba has not had any comment on the above information.

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