 The royalties were previously priced higher but were lowered at several points, most recently on January 1 2018.An earlier criticism of the MPEG-2 patent pool was that even though the number of patents will decreased from 1,048 to 416 by June 2013 the license fee had not decreased with the expiration rate of MPEG-2 patents..The following organizations have held patents for MPEG-2, as listed at MPEG LA.