Compact Disc player technology

Factual Questions
1

Being the amazingly observant person I am, I’ve noticed that all of my CD players, be they the Sony portable stereo, Pioneer car stereo, RCA 5 disc changer and even whoever cobbled together by computer’s CD-ROM all bear the same “COMPACT disc” logo.

I believe Sony developed the compact disc technology (though I might be wrong), so do they just license it to other companies? Do they get a kick-back off each CD player sold or did they just get some big lump sum from each manufacturer? Are they all being made by a single company and sold as a pre-manufactured unit to RCA, Awia, Pioneer, Technics, whoever? And are there any rogue CD player companies that don’t need to use the logo?

“I guess one person can make a difference, although most of the time they probably shouldn’t.”

2

I pretty sure that Philips originally developed most of the CD technology; in any case, in order to build CD players or manufacture CDs, you have to license patents from both Philips and Sony through Philips, paying 25,000USD up front and 0.045USD for each disc or about 2USD for each player in royalties. This includes the right to use the CD logo you refer to.

“Ain’t no man can avoid being born average, but there ain’t no man got to be common.” –Satchel Paige