JPEG 2000 is by itself not license-free, but the contributing companies and organizations agreed that licenses for its first part — the core coding system — can be obtained free of charge from all contributors.
The JPEG committee has stated:
It has always been a strong goal of the JPEG committee that its standards should be implementable in their baseline form without payment of royalty and license fees … The up and coming JPEG 2000 standard has been prepared along these lines, and agreement reached with over 20 large organizations holding many patents in this area to allow use of their intellectual property in connection with the standard without payment of license fees or royalties.[3]
However, the JPEG committee has also noted that undeclared and obscure submarine patents may still present a hazard:
It is of course still possible that other organizations or individuals may claim intellectual property rights that affect implementation of the standard, and any implementers are urged to carry out their own searches and investigations in this area.[4]
Because of this statement, controversy remains in the software community concerning the legal status of the JPEG2000 standard.