Frequently Asked Questions About MHL Membership

The MHL Consortium is responsible for licensing and promoting the MHL technology as an industry standard open to anyone desiring to become an adopter, and to drive adoption of the technology into a broad ecosystem of specification-compliant products.

The current Promoters of the Consortium are: Nokia, Samsung, Lattice Semiconductor, Sony, and Toshiba.

MHL adopters gain the following benefits from their membership:

1. Access to the full suite of MHL specifications.
2. Rights to use the MHL and superMHL wordmarks and logos on compliant equipment in a wide variety of equipment categories:
   • MHL
   • MHL (and design)
   • SUPERMHL
   • SUPER MHL (and design)
3. Benefits of a mutual non-assert agreement among Promoters and other members that applies to patent claims that are necessarily infringed by implementation of compliant MHL interfaces.
4. Listing of company and compliant products on the MHL web-site.

Companies require a license to design, make, sell, lease or promote MHL products, components or IP cores. Companies may also choose to become MHL Adopters to access the MHL specification even if they do not intend to undertake the activities above. This license can be acquired directly by becoming an Adopter or in some cases may be sublicensed from an MHL Adopter. The following principles may be helpful in understanding if an organization needs to become an adopter:

• The organization that has the legal rights to a brand used on a product (such as a cable, device, component or IP core) branded with or marketed with an MHL trademark, MUST become an MHL Adopter.
• Subject to some limitations MHL Adopters may sublicense certain limited rights to enable others to design, make, re-sell or distribute an MHL product, component or IP core on their behalf.

Please note that we intend this FAQ as a general guide. We recommend that all organizations with questions about how MHL licensing may apply to their situation conduct a legal review of the MHL Adopters Agreement. If you do not have a copy of the MHL Adopters Agreement you can obtain a copy by submitting your details here. http://www.mhltech.org/adopter.aspx

The following link provides some examples of when an Adopter Agreement is required.

Examples of Situations Where Organizations Need to Become Adopters of MHL

Register on our website to become an adopter and download the agreement. Sign two (2) copies and send to:

MHL, LLC
2115 O’Nel Drive, Suite 203
San Jose, CA 95131

MHL, LLC processes signed agreements within 24 business hours of receipt. Once processed, a membership invoice is issued and sent to the contact provided. Within 24 business hours of payment receipt, the account is activated and log in credentials emailed to the contact provided.

There are two (2) automatically renewed annual membership fee options: 

o USD 10,000 - companies with annual revenue equal to or greater than USD 10 million.

o USD 5,000 - companies with annual revenue of less than USD 10 million.

Note, companies claiming revenues of less than USD 10 million are required to submit documentation of their revenues with their initial signed adopter agreement and then 90 days prior to each yearly anniversary.  Companies failing to provide appropriate documentation will be assumed to have revenues greater than USD 10 million.  See Exhibit B of the adopters agreement for more details.

Royalties are $0.04 per unit for all Adopters regardless of company revenue, product category or volume shipped. 

Any company that wishes to gain access to the specifications has to first become an MHL adopter. Once the company becomes a licensed adopter, access will be granted to the MHL extranet where the specifications reside.

To see a comparison chart that outlines all of the different features of each specification, please click here.

MHL adopters will have to meet compliance requirements of the MHL specification by submitting their products for testing and certification to an MHL Authorized Test Center (ATC). A company must be an MHL adopter in order to submit any product for testing to an ATC. 

The abridged specification is a shortened version of the full specification, the goal of which is to provide a preview of the complete feature set found within the full specification.

Yes, membership allows you access to the full suite of MHL specifications.