Toshiba Corporation Joins the G.729 Consortium

[Metropolitanjury]

Sipro Lab Telecom (Sipro), the G.729 Patent Pool Licensing Administrator, is pleased to announce that Toshiba Corporation has joined the G.729 Consortium. The G.729 Consortium now represents and pools together the intellectual property rights (IPR) essential to this ITU-T standard of France Telecom, Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation Universite de Sherbrooke, and Toshiba Corporation -- all recognized industry leaders in the area of speech coding and processing solutions.

Sipro now represents the IPR portfolio of five (5) major telecommunication innovators related to the G.729 technology on a worldwide basis. "Adding Toshiba's IPR to the Patent Pool license delivers added value for all existing and potential future licensees of the IPR represented by the G.729 Consortium which through its licensing agent, Sipro, provides a single point of contact to a more comprehensive pool of essential patents," says Catharie Bechamp, Sipro's Vice President Licensing.

Sipro and the G.729 Consortium have agreed to maintain the current Patent Pool licensing terms and rates with the added value of Toshiba's essential patents to ease the continued use of this proven speech coding solution by the telecommunication industry.

About G.729

The G.729 standard and its annexes, an ITU (International Telecommunication Union) approved recommendation, provides the telecommunication industry with a low bit rate speech coding solution. In today's market, G.729 is found in equipment and applications such as VoIP gateways, IP phones, videoconferencing and teleconferencing, unified messaging, Internet telephony, and other applications where the quality of service, delay and bandwidth are important.

About Sipro Lab Telecom

Sipro Lab Telecom is patent pool administrator and licensing agent for the G.729, G.723.1, G.729.1 and G.711.1 patent pools, with more than 10 years experience in patent pool creation and management for standard speech and audio coding technologies. Sipro's hallmarks are solid business ethics in managing multiple patent pools, extensive knowledge of the telecommunications market, and a proactive sales approach that contributes to optimum timeframes for the conclusion of license agreements. Sipro actively contributes to the spread of the technologies we represent through our services to partners and customers. Sipro is a privately owned Canadian corporation, created in 1994 and based in Montreal, Quebec.

By Ms.Bobby Aanand, Metropolitan Jury.