In his new role, Piotrowski will oversee Via’s legal affairs and support the continued growth of the company’s licensing programs and strategic initiatives. His extensive experience across patent pool administration, SEP licensing, and technology commercialization will further strengthen Via’s ability to deliver balanced, innovative licensing solutions that benefit both licensors and licensees.

“Via has built its reputation on deep expertise, strong industry relationships, and a commitment to delivering value to the marketplace,” said Kevin Mack, President of Via. “Tony is one of the most experienced professionals in the patent licensing and patent pool industry. His unique combination of legal, licensing, and business development experience will be a tremendous asset as we continue to expand our licensing programs and pursue new growth opportunities. We are excited to welcome him to the Via team.”

Piotrowski has held numerous leadership roles throughout his career across the intellectual property and technology licensing ecosystem. Most notably, he served as General Counsel for MPEG LA, a leading patent pool licensing and administration company, where he led the legal department, oversaw licensing programs, and supported the development of new licensing initiatives. During his tenure, the company administered licensing programs covering widely adopted technology standards, including leading video codec technologies, generating billions of dollars in royalties for patent owners worldwide.

In addition to his patent pool experience, Piotrowski previously served as Vice President of Business Acquisition for a technology licensing organization, where he led efforts to identify, evaluate, finance, and manage patent acquisition and licensing opportunities. He has also held senior intellectual property and licensing positions with major multinational corporations, directing global patent and SEP licensing programs and overseeing intellectual property activities across Asia, Europe, and North America. Earlier in his career, he practiced law with a prominent New York law firm specializing in intellectual property litigation.

“I am thrilled to join Via Licensing Alliance at such an exciting time for the licensing industry,” said Piotrowski. “Via has established itself as a trusted and respected leader in collaborative licensing, and I look forward to working with the talented team at Via to support our licensing programs, build new opportunities, and help innovators realize the value of their intellectual property.”

Piotrowski earned his JD, with high honors, from Seton Hall Law School and received a BS in Electrical Engineering, with high honors, from the New Jersey Institute of Technology. He is a registered patent attorney.

About Via Licensing Alliance:

Via Licensing Alliance is the collaborative licensing leader, dedicated to accelerating global technology adoption, fostering participation, and generating return on innovation with balanced licensing solutions for innovators and manufacturers of all sizes around the globe. Via has operated dozens of licensing programs for a variety of technologies. Via is an independently managed company owned by industry-leading participants with over 25 years of intellectual property licensing leadership. For more information about Via, please visit https://www.via-la.com.

Contact:
Via Licensing Alliance
Raleigh Hogan-Miller
Press@Via-LA.com

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SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. (September 10, 2026) – Via Licensing Alliance (Via) today announced the formal launch of its Dynamic Random-Access Memory (DRAM) program, the first patent pool ever formed to facilitate collaborative licensing for the datacenter space. The founding licensor companies – significant IP holders in the space – signed the pool’s commercial agreement, marking the official launch of the pool. Via also announced another patent pool today that will support the next generation of data center technologies, building on the series of pool programs it is currently developing in this space.

The new DRAM program offers a highly efficient means of licensing critical technology standards for data center operators, including hyperscalers, neocloud operators, colocation providers, corporate data centers, other managed service providers, and companies with significant general data center needs for their businesses.

Founding licensors of the program have already begun to hear from companies who wish to take a pool license for the ability to access the data center infrastructure solutions they require for their commercial offerings. Via has also begun to actively engage in licensee outreach with companies who may be interested in taking a license.

“Via has been a true leader and first-mover in the patent licensing space for decades,” said Kevin Mack, President of Via. “I’m pleased that we once again have brought the first collaborative licensing solution to a major new market, this time in the datacenter space. With the explosion in demand for memory technologies, the market potential of this new pool is undeniable.”

“For decades, SEP licensing has been conducted primarily at the device level,” Mack continued. “Via is a pioneer not only in licensing for the data center, one of the fastest-growing segments of the technology industry, but also in developing a forward-looking licensing strategy that better pairs royalties with the value contributed by the use of the technology.”

The patent license agreement for Via’s DRAM pool provides data center operators with a convenient mechanism for licensing servers that employ DRAM technology. License fees range from $0.005 to $0.020 USD per hour per server processing unit, depending on the memory type utilized. Via is encouraging any company with standard essential patents in the DRAM space to reach out and explore contributing their patents to the pool, and the company anticipates that the pool’s list of participating licensors will continue to grow in the months ahead.

DRAM currently represents the greatest memory bottleneck for data center infrastructure and is used for real-time computing and processing, one of the critical components forming the foundation of modern computer architecture. The new DRAM program focuses on licensing JEDEC standards that are fundamental to data center operations. More information is available about the pool here.

Additional AI Licensing Patent Pool Announced by Via

Via is developing a series of patent pools to support the next generation of data center technologies. As part of this initiative, Via announced today another first-of-its-kind pool offering: Media for Cloud Processing. This innovative program is designed to cover server-side activities pertaining to media, including the ingestion and generation of images, audio, and video, as well as server-side encoding and decoding in the context of generative AI. The pool program is planned to encompass widely adopted media formats, including the video format AVC, and the audio formats AAC and Opus, providing a comprehensive licensing solution for the evolving needs of modern data centers.

Via also recently issued a formal public call for patents for its new NAND memory licensing program. Building on the foundation of Via’s established DRAM solution, this program reflects a natural extension of Via’s memory technology offerings, highlighting the growing importance of these technologies in supporting the next-generation infrastructure demands of modern data center environments.

About Via Licensing Alliance:

Via Licensing Alliance is the collaborative licensing leader, dedicated to accelerating global technology adoption, fostering participation, and generating return on innovation with balanced licensing solutions for innovators and manufacturers of all sizes around the globe. Via has operated dozens of licensing programs for a variety of technologies. Via is an independently managed company owned by industry-leading participants with over 25 years of intellectual property licensing leadership. For more information about Via, please visit https://www.via-la.com.

Contact:
Via Licensing Alliance
Raleigh Hogan-Miller
Press@Via-LA.com

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SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. (June 15, 2026) – Via Licensing Alliance (Via) today announced that it has hired Patrick Zhang as the company’s new Vice President of Licensing and Commercial Strategy. This newly created role at Via further bolsters the senior team, adding over two decades of expertise in IP litigation and licensing to the organization. In his new role, Zhang will bridge the licensing and new programs functions at Via, with a focus on expanding the company’s strategic partnerships accelerating its licensing deal flow. He will also contribute to new program growth and strategy.

“Via has always placed a strong emphasis on hiring top talent with extensive experience and relationships in the IP space,” said Kevin Mack, President of Via. “Patrick’s background, energy and expertise are an ideal fit as we continue to grow our senior team and build our momentum. We look forward to working with Patrick and leveraging his ability to consistently generate value for licensors and licensees.”

Zhang brings more than 20 years of experience spanning technology licensing, intellectual property strategy, litigation, and commercial negotiations. He has held IP litigation roles at leading global law firms such as Morrison & Foerster and Ropes & Gray, and he has also served as senior in-house counsel, overseeing IP licensing, strategy and enforcement for IP innovators and technology companies including Atlassian, Technicolor and TiVo.

 Among his notable accomplishments, Zhang served on the courtroom trial team for the landmark Apple v. Samsung smartphone litigation and has built and led sophisticated licensing and intellectual property functions for global technology organizations. More recently, he has counseled companies on AI model use and training risks amid evolving litigation and regulatory developments.

“I am very excited to join the great team at Via and look forward to working closely with Via leadership to grow our partnerships and present the balanced value proposition of a pool IP license to our customers.  It is an incredibly exciting time for technology innovation and an equally important time for intellectual property and licensing.  I look forward to bringing a balanced perspective from having sat on both sides of the negotiating table to create trust and unlock solutions.”

Zhang will be based in Via’s San Francisco office. He earned a bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering from Cornell University and a law degree from Fordham University School of Law.  He is admitted to the bar in New York and California and is registered to practice before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

About Via Licensing Alliance:

Via Licensing Alliance is the collaborative licensing leader, dedicated to accelerating global technology adoption, fostering participation, and generating return on innovation with balanced licensing solutions for innovators and manufacturers of all sizes around the globe. Via has operated dozens of licensing programs for a variety of technologies. Via is an independently managed company owned by industry-leading participants with over 25 years of intellectual property licensing leadership. For more information about Via, please visit https://www.via-la.com.

Contact:
Via Licensing Alliance
Raleigh Hogan-Miller
Press@Via-LA.com

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SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. (May 22, 2026) – Via Licensing Alliance (Via) today announced the expansion of its AI and data center licensing efforts by issuing a formal call for patents for its new NAND memory licensing program. The initiative builds on Via’s previously announced DRAM-focused program and reflects the growing importance of advanced memory technologies in supporting next-generation AI infrastructure and data center environments. 

“As AI infrastructure continues to evolve, NAND memory will play an increasingly important role in enabling large-scale data storage and retrieval,” said Kevin Mack, president at Via Licensing Alliance. “Building on our work in DRAM licensing, this new program expands our data center efforts and positions us to support the next generation of AI technologies.” 

Garrard Beeney, a leader of Sullivan & Cromwell’s IP practice for over two decades and whose work has helped shape the global patent licensing landscape, has been engaged to serve as licensing counsel for Via’s data center licensing efforts. 

In 2025, Via announced its plans to launch a series of pools in AI infrastructure and data centers, the first focusing on DRAM memory. Now, as Via continues to focus on opportunities for licensing memory technologies within the data center, the company is moving toward the launch of the second new pool offering in this series: NAND memory. 

The rise of AI data centers has redefined the importance of high-performance memory technologies, with NAND playing a critical role in enabling large-scale data storage, retrieval, and processing. As AI workloads continue to scale, demand for advanced memory solutions is expected to accelerate across the data center ecosystem. The program builds on Via’s previously announced DRAM-focused licensing efforts and represents the company’s second AI and data center-focused patent pool initiative. 

Both NAND and DRAM play critical roles in the future of AI and data centers. DRAM currently represents the greatest memory bottleneck for AI and is used for real-time computing and 

processing. DRAM and NAND therefore work together to form the foundation of modern computer architecture. 

Via Licensing Alliance is inviting patent holders with technologies essential to NAND memory implementations to submit patents for evaluation and potential inclusion in the program. 

About Via Licensing Alliance: 

Via Licensing Alliance is the collaborative licensing leader, dedicated to accelerating global technology adoption, fostering participation, and generating return on innovation with balanced licensing solutions for innovators and manufacturers of all sizes around the globe. Via has operated dozens of licensing programs for a variety of technologies. Via is an independently managed company owned by industry-leading participants with over 25 years of intellectual property licensing leadership. For more information about Via, please visit https://www.via-la.com. 

Contact:
Via Licensing Alliance
Raleigh Hogan-Miller
Press@Via-LA.com 

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SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. (May 20, 2026) – Via Licensing Alliance (Via) today announced continued momentum for its Voice Codec patent pool, including the addition of a new unnamed licensee and new licensors, NovaVoice Limited and Cordial IP, further growing the program’s patent stack and market penetration from its initial five, large global licensors. 

The addition of the new licensee, unnamed at this time, reflects growing industry adoption of the collaborative licensing pathway Via’s Voice Codec program creates for accessing IP rights to critical voice technologies. This addition reflects a growing market uptake of advanced voice technologies, including EVS and IVAS, driven by rising demand as 5G and 5G-Advanced technologies are adopted worldwide. 

Additionally, Via continues to prioritize transparency and has published its full rate structure for the Voice Codec pool, providing further clarity and predictability for implementers and to the broader market. For implementers, the full rate structure allows for complete visibility as they consider the appropriate royalty structure to choose from to meet their product level costs, evaluate future growth paths for their product lines, or plan their geographical expansion plan needs. This level of disclosure not only reduces uncertainty in licensing decisions but also enables more consistent benchmarking, reinforcing confidence in fair, market-aligned SEP licensing practices. The program’s royalty rates are listed on Via’s website at https://www.via-la.com/licensing-programs/voice-codec/#license-fees. 

The addition of the new licensors indicates increased interest from patent holders in licensing their voice technology SEPs through highly efficient, aggregated licensing vehicles such as patent pools. Future growth in both the licensor list and the number of patents consolidated through the pool license will continue to enhance the value of the Voice Codec License for implementers. Via’s Voice Codec program licensors are listed here: https://www.via-la.com/licensing-programs/voice-codec/#licensors. 

Via’s Voice Codec pool covers Enhanced Voice Services (EVS), which supports voice communications across more than one billion and growing active devices globally, as well as Immersive Voice and Audio Services (IVAS), which will play a central role in next-generation voice and spatial audio applications. 

“We are pleased to welcome these new entrants to our pool, which signal continued growth and momentum our Voice Codec program,” said Kevin Mack, President of Via Licensing Alliance. “This pool license offers strong value relative to other market options and represents the only collaborative licensing solution for EVS and IVAS technologies, making it a smart and efficient pathway for companies seeking to license critical voice capabilities.” 

EVS remains a foundational technology for high-quality voice communications in 5G and 5G-Advanced networks, with adoption continuing to expand as 5G, 5G-Advanced and future network iterations reach global scale. As spatial audio and advanced voice technologies expand into 6G and a broader range of non-cellular devices, the importance of IVAS technologies is expected to increase, with Via’s pool offering an early and effective licensing pathway. 

For more information about the Voice Codec patent pool, including information for prospective licensees, please visit https://www.via-la.com. 

About Via Licensing Alliance: 

Via Licensing Alliance is the collaborative licensing leader, dedicated to accelerating global technology adoption, fostering participation, and generating return on innovation with balanced licensing solutions for innovators and manufacturers of all sizes around the globe. Via has operated dozens of licensing programs for a variety of technologies. Via is an independently managed company owned by industry-leading participants with over 25 years of intellectual property licensing leadership. For more information about Via, please visit https://www.via-la.com. 

Contact:
Via Licensing Alliance
Raleigh Hogan-Miller
Press@Via-LA.com

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SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. (April 14, 2026) – Via Licensing Alliance today announced that Sony has joined Via’s Qi Wireless Power patent pool as both a licensor and licensee. The addition of the major technology company, which brings the number of new licensors and licensees entering the pool over the last six months to a total of nine, highlights the increasing momentum of Via’s Qi Wireless Charging pool.

The pool represents more than 50% of all standard-essential patents (SEPs) in the Qi wireless charging space, making it the leading licensing solution for companies implementing the Qi standard.

“Sony’s participation reinforces the growing industry alignment around collaborative licensing as wireless charging adoption continues to scale globally,” said Kevin Mack, President of Via Licensing Alliance. “As the Qi ecosystem expands, companies are increasingly turning to efficient, streamlined licensing models that reduce complexity and accelerate innovation. Bringing Sony into the pool as both a licensor and licensee further strengthens the program’s depth and underscores its role as a leading solution for implementers worldwide.”

This growth comes at a time of increasing litigation in wireless charging, reinforcing the value of streamlined, collaborative licensing models in the space. Wireless charging applications continue to be increasingly deployed across a number of sectors, including automotive and consumer electronics.

For more information about the Qi Wireless Patent Pool, please visit via-la.com.

About Via Licensing Alliance

Via Licensing Alliance is the collaborative licensing leader, dedicated to accelerating global technology adoption, fostering participation, and generating return on innovation with balanced licensing solutions for innovators and manufacturers of all sizes around the globe. Via has operated dozens of licensing programs for a variety of technologies. Via is an independently managed company owned by industry-leading participants with over 25 years of intellectual property licensing leadership. For more information about Via, please visit www.Via-LA.com.

Contact:
Via Licensing Alliance
Raleigh Hogan-Miller
Press@Via-LA.com

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SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. (March 9, 2026) – Via Licensing Alliance (Via) today announced global AI device ecosystem company HONOR is taking a license in Via’s Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) patent pool. As the AAC ecosystem continues to scale, the addition of another leading smartphone manufacturer to the program underscores the critical role that Via’s consolidated licensing model continues to play in advancing global audio codec implementation. With the addition of HONOR as a pool licensee, the penetration of Via’s AAC pool into the mobile market is over 80%.

“The addition of HONOR reinforces the scale and continued relevance of our AAC program,” said Via President Kevin Mack. “AAC remains a foundational audio standard globally, and our consolidated licensing model ensures innovators and implementers have efficient, reliable access to essential technology.”

AAC delivers essential patent rights to technologies advancing audio innovation and includes some of the most efficient audio coding solutions available today. It enables higher-quality audio at lower bit rates than older MPEG formats and supports a wide range of content, including music, speech and ambient sound.

One reason Via’s AAC pool has enjoyed sustained growth for decades is its evergreen structure. By continuously incorporating new, essential patents from the evolving AAC family, the pool ensures that global licensees always have access to the most advanced audio standards through a single, efficient license.

For more information about the AAC patent pool, including information for prospective licensees, please visit www.Via-LA.com.

About Via Licensing Alliance:

Via Licensing Alliance is the collaborative licensing leader, dedicated to accelerating global technology adoption, fostering participation, and generating return on innovation with balanced licensing solutions for innovators and manufacturers of all sizes around the globe. Via has operated dozens of licensing programs for a variety of technologies. Via is an independently managed company owned by industry-leading participants with over 25 years of intellectual property licensing leadership. For more information about Via, please visit www.Via-LA.com.

Contact:
Via Licensing Alliance
Raleigh Hogan-Miller
Press@Via-LA.com

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Via’s Qi Wireless charging pool covers over 50% of all standard-essential patents (SEPs) in the Qi wireless charging space and remains the primary one-stop licensing solution globally for companies looking to implement the Qi standard within their products.

“We are pleased to welcome Longcheer and Desay SV to our Qi Wireless pool,” said Kevin Mack, President of Via Licensing Alliance. “Their participation underscores the continued growth and global adoption of Qi wireless charging technology across both consumer electronics and automotive applications. By joining the pool, these companies will enjoy the benefits of a collaborative licensing model while supporting a fair and efficient licensing ecosystem for the industry.”

Longcheer is a leading global consumer electronics original design manufacturer (ODM), providing full-stack design and manufacturing services for smartphones, personal computing devices, automotive electronics, and emerging consumer electronics products. As one of the world’s largest consumer electronics ODM providers, Longcheer supports a broad range of global brands and telecommunications operators, and has established manufacturing operations in China, Vietnam, and India, with branch offices in the United States, South Korea, Japan, and other regions.

Desay SV is an international mobile technology company focused on automotive intelligence, including intelligent cockpit systems, intelligent driving, and connected services. The company maintains a global presence with overseas institutions in Germany, France, Spain, and Japan, and serves a wide range of domestic and international automotive customers. Desay SV has developed and mass-produced numerous Qi wireless charging solutions.

For more information about the Qi Wireless Patent Pool, please visit via-la.com.

About Via Licensing Alliance

Via Licensing Alliance is the collaborative licensing leader, dedicated to accelerating global technology adoption, fostering participation, and generating return on innovation with balanced licensing solutions for innovators and manufacturers of all sizes around the globe. Via has operated dozens of licensing programs for a variety of technologies. Via is an independently managed company owned by industry-leading participants with over 25 years of intellectual property licensing leadership. For more information about Via, please visit www.Via-LA.com.

Contact:
Via Licensing Alliance
Raleigh Hogan-Miller
Press@Via-LA.com

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