I throw this topic for people as puzzled as me to discuss. those so called "INTERNATIONAL STANDARD" dorminate in current market, but charge high license fee for every product on the market related to it, all those license fee eventually be paid by consumers. some manufacturers don't even realize it before MPEG LA knock on their doors. suppose you are manufacturing an Mpeg4/H.264 encoder,and you use 10 IC related to it, those 10 IC companies will be charged license fee before they can produce those ICs, and you will be charged for another one or more.
to me, it's not like standard anymore, let alone International standard, more like trademark for a group of private companies or individuals. in the name of international standard, lure people from all over the world to jump in, and produce products, finally find out they can't even afford the license fee. individual company can have their proprietary standard(such as real audio, real video or quicktime), but they can't call it international standard. I don't see many products related to it either except their own.
it's more concerned that there is growing trend more international standard become patented with license fee. name a few: AVC/H.264, DVB-T,1394, VC-1, ATSC, DVB-H, Blu-Ray etc. I don't know how consumers can benefit from it with just a few companies charging extorted license fee.
I wonder how today would look like if Ethernet was charged license fee.