TOKYO — After more than two years of wrangling over royalties, two groups of DVD patent holders acknowledged that they have failed to come up with a unified one-stop-shop patent licensing program. Lacking an accord, would-be DVD licensees will have to buy DVD patent rights from two separate organizations and one independent company.

The result could mean higher hardware prices for such DVD licensees.

The commercializing of DVD products could be hampered by the need to obtain licenses and pay royalties to multiple patent holders, said a spokesman for the DVD Forum. "Manufacturers have to get licenses for mandatory technologies such as MPEG, Dolby for audio and the Contents Scramble System for copy protection as well. The patent cost could go up to more than 10 percent of hardware price," he said. "I am getting complaints on the high royalty and multiple licensors. I am afraid that these will jeopardize healthy growth of DVD market."

Six companies — Hitachi Ltd., Matsushita Electric Industry Co. Ltd., Mitsubishi Electric Corp., Time Warner Inc., Toshiba Corp. and Victor Company of Japan Ltd. — had agreed on a joint licensing program in 1997, and began this month to license DVD-related patents for DVD-Video players, DVD-ROM drives, DVD decoders and DVD disks.

Another three companies that hold DVD patents — Philips Electronics NV, Pioneer Electric Corp. and Sony Corp. — formed a separate licensing body in 1997.

Both groups had discussed joining forces, but "the attempt finally failed at the end of last year," the DVD Forum spokesman said.

Sources said the two groups could not reach an accord about their respective shares of joint royalty payments.

The Philips/Pioneer/Sony group has set its royalty rates at 3.5 percent of the net price of hardware plus 5 cents per disk, while the six-company group is asking royalties of 4 percent for the hardware and 7.5 cents per disk.

Thomson, a DVD patent holder not affiliated with either group, has not yet disclosed its licensing plan. Would-be DVD licensees will presumably have to work with all three entities.

Among the six-company group, Toshiba will act as the agent of the licensing. Matsushita and Hitachi will help Toshiba as regional contacts, with Matsushita overseeing North and South America and Hitachi overseeing Asia (excluding Japan), the Middle East and Oceania.