Context: Earlier this year we reported on a surprising move by Access Advance. After years of focusing its licensing efforts on product makers rather than streamers, the Boston-based pool administrator announced its Video Distribution Pool (VDP) (January 16, 2025 ip fray article).
What’s new: Today, Access Advance published a list of 31 licensors, only two of whom remain anonymous for now (July 1, 2025 press release by Access Advance). The list includes some longstanding Access Advance partners (such as Dolby, Philips, Mitsubishi Electric, Hyundai and its subsidiary KIA), but also four companies that are simultaneously licensors and licensees: ByteDance (TikTok), Kuaishou, NTT Docomo and Tencent (a Chinese digital conglomerate with a strong position in social media and messaging services as well as gaming).
Direct impact & wider ramifications: Today’s announcement is reflective of the strong dynamics in the streaming patent license business. Every announcement of this kind makes it more difficult for video streamers to decline to pay for the technologies they use. Patent holders who participate in this pool, in another pool and/or engage in bilateral licensing can show that they are from the only ones seeking to get paid. At the same time, major implementers such as ByteDance (TikTok) and Tencent have apparently found the terms of this pool to be fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND).
When Access Advance announced the VDP back in January, it already stated that those who join the program (as licensees or licensors) on or before June 30 this year will be offered “substantial incentives.” That early-bird period ended yesterday, which is presumably the reason why the list of initial licensors (including four initial licensor-licensees) was published today.
Access Advance had a strong track record in the field of video patent licensing when it made the announcement in January, but there was no guarantee that the next announcement would include a long list of licensors and the first four licensees (all of whom also contribute their own patents to the pool).
The press release contains a quote from Peter Moller, CEO of Access Advance. Here’s its second part:
“This milestone shows that the VDP Pool is delivering on its promise to provide simplicity and predictability for online video distributors, allowing them to focus on innovation and content delivery rather than complex patent negotiations.”
The above appears to be a diplomatic way of saying: take licenses, don’t infringe. What is needed for standard-essential patent (SEP) licensing to take off in the video streaming context, beyond the bilateral deals Nokia has struck so far, is for implementers to be willing to pay FRAND royalties for the patents they use. Pools are options, for their licensors and their licensees alike. Bilateral licenses are the alternative, though transactionally inefficient if a pool offers a good deal. What is not an alternative, however, is unrepentant infringement.
We continue to monitor this space with a strong interest as this is a major growth area for the SEP ecosystem. As we announced two days ago, articles related to patent pools as well as those related to video streaming will not be paywalled in the foreseeable future (June 29, 2025 ip fray article).