Digital Radio Mondiale
Submitting a Patent: Digital Radio Mondiale

Digital Radio Mondiale (DRM) is an international consortium of broadcasters, receiver manufacturers, research organizations, and network operators working to create an over-the-air digital system for the broadcasting bands below 30 MHz. DRM's robust digital signal will replace the static interference and fading that have always been shortcomings of analog AM shortwave, mediumwave, and longwave transmissions around the world. A copy of the Digital Radio Mondiale specification can be downloaded for free (registration required) from the ETSI website (search for "DRM").

Any entity believing it has patents or patent applications essential to the practice of the Digital Radio Mondiale Standard [ES 201 980 v2.2.1] is invited to submit its patent(s) or application(s) for an essentiality determination by an Independent Patent Evaluator.

Patents are considered essential when they are determined to have at least one independent claim that would be necessarily and unavoidably infringed (in the absence of a license) by the practice of the DRM Standard.

An evaluation fee of US $10,000, along with the patent's prosecution history and copies of all references relied upon by the examining patent office, must accompany the submission of each patent or application. In addition, an initial submission must be accompanied by a signed letter indicating agreement with the terms and conditions governing the patent submission process.

If informed by the Independent Patent Evaluator that the submitted patent or application is essential to the DRM Standard, the submitter is expected to participate in the DRM Licensing Committee and the patent licensing pool. Such participation will require the payment of a membership fee to help defray the shared costs of the Licensing Committee. Note that all essentiality determinations made on the basis of a submitted application will need to be performed again once a patent has issued.

Please contact Via Licensing at submissions@vialicensing.com to request a copy of the submission procedures and the terms and conditions governing the submission of patents for essentiality determination to join the DRM patent licensing program.