EVD Standards, Licensing and Patents

SJ/T 11299-2005

The only published EVD standard is the four-part electronics-industry standard SJ/T 11299-2005 高密度数字激光视盘系统技术规范 (High-Density Digital Laser Video Disc System Technical Specification). No GB (national) standard for EVD was found. Western headlines sometimes called it a national standard; Chinese sources are more precise: it is a recommended SJ/T industry standard.

Part Title (Chinese) Translation
SJ/T 11299.1-2005 盘 specification Disc
SJ/T 11299.2-2005 高密度数字激光视盘文件系统规范 File system
SJ/T 11299.3-2005 音视频数据 specification Audio/video data
SJ/T 11299.4-2005 多通道环绕声增强音频编解码规范 Multichannel surround enhanced audio codec

Details retrieved from the SJ/T 11299.2-2005 national standards platform record:

Field Value
Type Electronics-industry standard, recommended (SJ/T)
Release / implementation 2005-02-18
Filing number 15185-2005
CCS / ICS M71 / 33.160.40
Competent authority Ministry of Information Industry
Responsible committee 全国音频、视频及多媒体系统与设备标准化技术委员会
Drafting units 北京阜国数字技术有限公司; 江苏新科电子集团有限公司
Drafters 徐翔, 秦志尚

Chinese press dates the MII approval notice to 22 or 23 February 2005; the platform gives 18 February as release/implementation. The record page has shown both a current banner and a withdrawn step in its status timeline; current legal status should be checked rather than assumed. SJ/T 11346 is an unrelated projector standard that sometimes appears in EVD searches. Full texts of parts 1-4 were not obtained for this research.

The On2 VP5/VP6 contract

On2 Technologies filed the E-World contracts with the SEC. The terms below come from the 24 June 2003 8-K, August 2003 exhibits, and later 10-KSB / 10-Q / 10-K filings.

Term Detail
Parties On2 Technologies; Beijing E-World; Nature Talent Capital Limited (BVI)
Agreements EVD licence and non-EVD licence, effective 21 June 2003
Technology VP5 and VP6 encoder and decoder
Territory Exclusive in PRC, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan; non-exclusive elsewhere
EVD licence fee US$50,000
Non-EVD licence fee US$1,000,000 in staged payments
Royalty US$2.00 per product with encoder or decoder only; US$4.00 with both
Disc royalty None (McIntyre: no royalty fee per disk is a big advantage)
Minimum royalty units 800,000 EVD decoders in 2004; 1.6 million in 2005
Minimum royalties US$1,642,000 (2004); US$3,350,000 (2005), conditional on VP6 DSP ports
Arbitration LCIA, London; English language
Amendment September 2003: exclusivity amended to a 50/50 China royalty split

Arbitration timeline

Date Event
Apr 2004 On2 announces negotiations have broken down
3 May 2004 On2 files LCIA arbitration; claims US$1,232,000 overdue, seeks US$4,992,000
10 Mar 2005 Decision: On2’s claims dismissed; no minimum royalties due because VP6 had not been ported to a jointly selected DSP; contracts remain in effect
31 Mar 2006 Second arbitration, seeking about US$5,690,000
2006 Settlement: E-World to pay about 25% of remaining unpaid licence fees by 30 Nov 2006
12 Mar 2009 On2 10-K FY2008: settlement still unpaid

About US$187,500 would be 25% of US$750,000 outstanding on the non-EVD fee; that is a derived figure, not one stated in the filings. Why the first arbitration failed is itself disputed: On2 filings emphasise the unmet VP6 DSP port condition; English Wikipedia says primarily because no significant number of player devices had ever been produced. What was dismissed is also worded differently across filings (counterclaims versus a request for a declaration). All versions are kept as open disagreements. For format history, the decisive point is that VP6 never became the working codec of shipping EVD players.

E-World’s own licensing terms

Item Claim Source
Consortium licence fee ¥500,000 per licensee plus US$2 per player People’s Daily, 21 Nov 2003
Proposed two-tier royalty (2005) ¥3-5 per player for domestic makers; ¥30-50 for foreign makers Zhang Baoquan
Foreign makers Foreign companies wanting to produce must pay patent fees to the Chinese E-World FAQ via PjTime

These are claimed commercial terms, not verified royalty ledgers. They sit alongside the unresolved fact that DVD-compatible EVD players still owed DVD-pool royalties.

Patents

Patent-count claims disagree and are kept side by side:

  • 25 applied for, at least 7 granted (English Wikipedia; CBS 2003)
  • 22 patents obtained, 5 software sets developed (E-World via PjTime/ZOL)
  • More than 20 national invention patents and more than 10 international (E-World material)
  • More than ten invention patents (赢周刊)

E-World described subject matter as audio/video filter transforms and encode/decode optimisation to improve quality and compression ratio, plus an SVCD-derived method of dynamically overlaying subtitles. Early 2006 reports said EVD patents had been pledged as loan collateral. No CNIPA patent numbers were retrieved; a search on applicant 北京阜国数字技术有限公司 would settle the count. E-World’s claim that it exclusively owns the related domestic and international patents is marketing language until matched to filings.

Standards research map

Item Status Where to look next
SJ/T 11299.1-4 full texts Not obtained Chinese standards resellers; university libraries; std.samr.gov.cn
Comparisons of EVD and DVD (CUC) Abstract only ScienceDirect full text; CNKI
CNIPA patents of E-World Not searched CNIPA / Google Patents by applicant name
LSI Logic EVD chip part numbers Not found LSI press archive 2003-2006; datasheet archives
On2 contract exhibits Retrieved SEC EDGAR CIK 1045280
IEC/ISO submission of EVD Claimed by E-World only IEC TC100 documents

Until the full SJ/T texts and CNIPA numbers are in hand, treat EVD standards knowledge as a partial reconstruction: platform metadata for part 2, trade-press codec descriptions, On2 SEC economics, and E-World marketing claims. That is enough to place the format in the Chinese disc lineage and to explain why the On2 deal did not define shipping video. It is not enough for a lawyer’s reading of what each SJ/T part originally mandated.

What the paper trail does settle

Three conclusions are robust enough to carry into later posts without waiting for the missing SJ/T PDFs:

  1. SJ/T, not GB. EVD’s published Chinese home is an electronics-industry recommended standard (SJ/T 11299-2005), co-drafted by E-World and Shinco. Calling it a national GB standard is a Western or promotional shorthand that Chinese standards metadata does not support.
  2. On2 economics without On2 video. SEC exhibits prove licence fees, royalties, territory, DSP-port conditions and LCIA outcomes. They also prove the VP6 port condition failed. Combined with EE Times reports of MPEG-2 MP@HL-based shipping players, the contractual codec and the retail codec are not the same story.
  3. Patent counts remain noisy. 25 applied / 7+ granted, 22 obtained, 20+ national plus 10+ international, and “more than ten” all circulate. Without CNIPA numbers, treat exact portfolio size as unresolved while accepting that E-World claimed filter-transform and subtitle-overlay subject matter and that early 2006 collateral-pledge reports damaged confidence.

E-World also claimed the specification had been submitted to IEC and ISO. That claim appears only in promotional reprints so far; IEC TC100 documents would be needed to confirm or refute it. For collectors and historians, the actionable licensing fact is simpler: a genuine EVD player still needed DVD-pool licences if it played DVD, which every commercially serious unit did.

Reading On2 filings beside Chinese press

Methodical research across SEC exhibits and Chinese trade press is what makes the codec dispute usable instead of mysterious. EDN’s launch-day VP5/VP6 wording and EE Times’ MPEG-2 MP@HL wording are not transcription errors; they reflect different parts of the same week (contractual aspiration versus shipping silicon). On2’s later 10-K language that a settlement remained unpaid into 2009 is likewise not gossip; it is a primary filing. When English Wikipedia summarises the first arbitration as failing mainly because few players were made, keep that beside On2’s own DSP-port condition rather than collapsing them. Open disagreements are evidence, not a failure of the file.

The same discipline applies to patent tallies and to the SJ/T status banner. Until CNIPA numbers and a current standards-platform status are checked afresh, publish the conflicting counts and the current/withdrawn ambiguity rather than inventing a clean portfolio. Later posts on players and discs can then cite this chapter for the legal and contractual frame without reopening every exhibit.

Sources

Further reading on historic video formats

If you want to learn more about historic video formats, get The History of Physical Video Formats from the Frontier by Stephen Driver on Amazon: