Moving Picture Experts Group
The MPEG-4 Visual format was developed by the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) committee. The specification was authored by Swiss-Iranian engineer Touradj Ebrahimi (later the president of JPEG) and Dutch engineer Caspar Horne. The standard was developed using patents from over a dozen organizations, listed by MPEG LA in a patent pool. The majority of patents used for the MPEG-4 Visual format were from three Japanese companies: Mitsubishi Electric (255 patents), Hitachi (206 patents), and Panasonic (200 patents). See "Patent holders" below for a full list of patent holders.