Opticom


An Overview on OPTICOM PESQ's Licensing Program The idea behind the PESQ licensing arrangements is that there are only two companies in the world, who will offer PESQ licenses as a one stop shopping solution.
You need not to contact both, or any other party. This is due to the fact that on the basis of a cross-licensing framework, we also act on behalf of the IPR owners and KPN, and BT as well. This means, once you choose OPTICOM as your supplier you will have a single source for the PESQ technology as well as one single contract partner handling all licensing for you.

OPTICOM offers Patent License Agreements that cover the licensed use of ITU-T P.862. A patent license agreement will only cover the IPR involved. Technical information, including the public C source code of PESQ, is made available through the ITU (as part of recommendation P.862). Executable code, technical support or future updates are not part of a patent license agreement.

In addition to the patent license agreement, OPTICOM offers OEM License Agreements, that cover the licensed use of OEM versions. OEM versions may include executable code, either available as a standard software library, or an implementation that will be developed according to your individual specs. For example, OEM agreements might comprise a Windows DLL, a Linux lib or a DSP implementation. OEM agreements may also cover technical support and future updates.
There are enormous advantages that make an OEM version very attractive for test product vendors, which are

the fast time-to-market due to reduced development cycles,

while you will save in-house development resources – and you don't have to reinvent the wheel once more; plus

the verified conformance of the OEM component, which is guaranteed for by OPTICOM.

1. The Standard Package: PESQ Patent Licensing The Standard Package is targeted at commercial entities, who want to develop (or have already developed) a PESQ implementation based on the technical information, including the public C source code of PESQ, which is made available through the ITU (as part of recommendation P.862). For example, if you want to develop a DSP or chip implementation, the standard package may perfectly suit your needs, as you will probably have to do your own re-write of the code anyway. Thus, executable code, technical support or future updates are not part of a patent license agreement.

The Standard Package for PESQ Patent Licensing includes:

a license agreement covering all relevant IPRs from KPN Research and British Telecom, including essential patents, trade marks and copyrights;


Basically, the royalty model for all patent license agreements is composed of two components,
an annual minimum prepaid royalty fee
per unit royalties, payable for each sold product. The per unit royalties will be dropping with higher volumes according to a discount scheme.
The advance payment for the annual minimum prepaid royalty fee is fully creditable against the following per unit royalty payments. In other words, the advance payment will already cover the per unit royalty costs for the first 20 units sold! Thereafter, additional units would be charged for on a quarterly basis.


[Please contact us for rates and prices!]
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2. The Premium OEM Package: PESQ-to-go! The Premium OEM Package is targeted at commercial entities, who want to quickly release a PESQ product based on a standard type of software implementation on a Pentium PC architecture.

The Premium OEM Package 'PESQ-to-go' includes:

a license agreement covering all relevant IPRs from KPN Research and British Telecom, including essential patents, trade marks and copyrights;

an off-the-shelf Windows DLL, or Linux library, along with the technical information and documentation, necessary to achieve a PESQ implementation that conforms to the standard;
(limited) technical support from OPTICOM, including future updates and bug fixes;

participation in OPTICOM's 'Certified PESQ Licensee' program, incl. PESQ conformance test seal at no extra cost!


The original standard information, including the public C source code of PESQ, is separately made available through the ITU (as part of recommendation P.862).

Basically, the royalty model for the Premium OEM Package – as all patent license agreements – is composed of two components,
an annual minimum prepaid royalty fee
per unit royalties, payable for each sold product. The per unit royalties will be dropping with higher volumes according to a discount scheme.
The advance payment for the annual minimum prepaid royalty fee is fully creditable against the following per unit royalty payments. In other words, the advance payment will already cover the per unit royalty costs for the first 20 units sold! Thereafter, additional units would be charged for on a quarterly basis.
3. The key to your successful product launch: OPTICOM's 'Certified PESQ Licensee' Program In the past with PSQM/P.861, only part of the measurement algorithm was defined by the 'official' ITU-T recommendation document. For example, the important part of signal pre-processing, like time alignment, and level alignment, was left as an engineering exercise to the implementers. As a consequence, among independently developed product implementations that were not making use of OPTICOM's OEM PSQM components, one could find different measurement results for one and the same test condition. This is of course not acceptable for an international standardized test procedure.

To overcome this issue with PESQ/P.862, the developers have put effort into the definition of a conformance test procedure as part of the ITU recommendation. Because even if there is a comprehensive public C source code for PESQ, experience shows that many practical constraints – or simply 'bugs' – may in a real world product implementation again take effect on the final results.

In order to give the introduction of PESQ a strong momentum in the market, at OPTICOM we have developed our 'Certified PESQ Licensee' program: Why not give your product a value add by assigning an independent third parties' conformance test label? The PESQ conformance label certifies that the product has been independently verified to be conforming to the standard!
Having been the pioneer in the introduction of perceptual measurement technology since 1987, OPTICOM gains the perfect reputation to issue an audio quality conformance certificate like this!
The 'Certified PESQ Licensee' program will also be linked to our new and official PESQ website [http://www.pesq.org]. In addition to the licensed label that you may want to put on your product packaging, documentation, website, etc., your company and product will show up under the list of certified PESQ products on the PESQ website.
The PESQ conformance label and participation in OPTICOM's 'Certified PESQ Licensee' program is already included in every PESQ Premium OEM Package, and is available as an option for all other PESQ license agreements from OPTICOM.

For stand-alone (PC) type of equipment with file based and/or analog loop start and/or E1/T1 interfaces, one sample product to be supplied to OPTICOM during conformance test phase
for non stand-alone type of equipment, not offering file based interfaces, or equipment that may not be supplied to OPTICOM for conformance testing, additional costs may apply. Please request your individual quote.

4. Evaluation first: The PESQ Eval Package A new standard measurement method of course involves a lot of effort for every test and measurement product vendor. One of the key issues will be whether existing hardware devices or platforms can be upgraded to the new algorithm. Thus, understanding the complexity and the constraints of the new measurement method are important issues for management decisions that might follow. At OPTICOM we know about all this, as we were developing and adapting many new algorithms during the past. We perfectly understand the implications for signing into a license agreement, which will cause costs and bear commercial risks from the very beginning.

To offer you what you need in order to evaluate the performance of PESQ first, we have compiled a PESQ Eval Package. The PESQ Eval Package targets at vendors, who consider to license an OEM PESQ component from OPTICOM.
The PESQ Eval Package includes:

a 30 days limited evaluation license agreement covering all relevant IPRs from KPN Research and British Telecom, including essential patents, trade marks and copyrights;

an off-the-shelf Windows DLL, or Linux library, along with the technical information and documentation, necessary to achieve a PESQ implementation that conforms to the standard;
(limited) technical support from OPTICOM;

at your choice a conditional PESQ Product License [1] for up to five (5) users against a one time payment if you decide to keep the Eval Package for your internal company use after the 30 days evaluation period, but you do not want to sign a license agreement with OPTICOM.


The PESQ Eval Package is made available against a non-disclosure, conditional purchase agreement only.
5. Upgrading from PSQM or PAMS If you are already a licensee of either PSQM or PAMS today, [2] some special upgrade conditions apply to you. Please feel free to discuss your needs with us.
6. Small Volume Business Models In the course of the development of the above business models, we have tried to keep in mind the many applications of PESQ that might come along. Experience shows, however, that it is very difficult to match all the different businesses of the industry by a unified royalty model. We are aware of the fact that the PESQ royalty structure addresses the needs of test equipment manufacturers in the first place.

If you should have come to the conclusion that our PESQ licensing program will not work for your application because of the small volumes, then there is another option for you: our small volume licensing program. The idea is quite simple. If you sign into a Standard Package or Premium OEM Package you will be granted the rights to copy, make or have made an unlimited number of copies of PESQ products. A dedicated system of reporting and accounting will be stipulated by the terms of the license agreement. Of course, the whole contract negotiation would be quite some overhead for small volumes. And for reasons of ITU terms of fair and non-discriminatory terms, we would still have to ask for the same annual minimum prepaid royalty.

One solution to overcome this problem might be to consider to purchase a limited number of executable libraries from OPTICOM on demand. Of course, each copy would be registered to the final user and will be copy protected, e.g. by a dongle. For a limited number of copies this approach will give you access to the patented PESQ technology, still at affordable rates, while you would profit from all the advantages of certified OPTICOM software.
PESQ Small Volume Business Models may include:

a limited runtime license agreement for the numbers of registered copies covering all relevant IPRs from KPN Research and British Telecom, including essential patents, trade marks and copyrights;

an off-the-shelf Windows DLL, or Linux library, along with the technical information and documentation, necessary to achieve a PESQ implementation that conforms to the standard;
(limited) technical support from OPTICOM, including future updates and bugfixes;

participation in OPTICOM's 'Certified PESQ Licensee' program, incl. PESQ conformance test seal at no extra cost!


In order to retain your individual quote, please let us know briefly some basics of your application, including some estimated sales projections for the first three years. We will certainly treat this information confidentially, and we may also sign into an NDA.

7. Terms and Conditions General: All offers are based upon the terms and conditions on OEM license agreement to be executed when placing the order. The availability of Premium OEM Packages, or others, which include proprietary technology of OPTICOM – other than the ITU-T recommendations – are available subject to non-compete arrangements only.

OPTICOM reserves all rights to change the above offers without notice. All offers are without obligations and subject to contract a legally binding license agreement. Further terms and conditions will apply in the license agreement, please request your individual draft proposal.


[1] see definition of PESQ Product License; includes a limited right to use PESQ, but no license to make, have made, copy, sell or exploit otherwise is included. [back]

[2] NOTE: PESQ combines the technology of PSQM and PAMS. Consequently, parts of the IPRs related to PESQ also represent the IPRs of either single technology. [back]

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Here you will find further information about:

The Standard Package: PESQ Patent Licensing
[read more]

The Premium OEM Package: PESQ-to-go!
[read more]

The key to your successful product launch: OPTICOM's 'Certified PESQ Licensee' Program
[read more]

Evaluation first: The PESQ Eval Package
[read more]

Upgrading from PSQM or PAMS
[read more]

Small Volume Business Models
[read more]

Terms and Conditions
[read more]