MP3 patent expiration?

Posted Jan 4, 2006 21:08 UTC (Wed) by Duncan (guest, #6647) [Link]

Thanks!

It appears from your links that there are a collection of patents claimed
to apply, mid eighties thru mid nineties.

The MPEG standard completely defined decoding in 1991, so no decoding
patents can apply beyond 20 years after that (US, I understand others
expire faster), so 2011, five years off. That's not too long, and some
may have already expired or will be expiring between now and then.

Certain parts of the encoding process may be covered thru 2015-ish.

Apparently, however, LAME was one of the earliest decent quality encoders,
in good part responsible for the popularity of MP3, and Thompson appears
to have learned something from the GIF/PING thing, and hasn't gone after
LAME, tho they probably could. They probably realize that were they to do
so, they'd only push competing formats such as ogg vorbis, just as GIF
enforcement pushed PING. Early on, that would have discouraged adoption
and popularization; now, with the patents on the way to expiry and other,
better quality codecs available, they probably just don't want to rock the
boat. Rather, they have pushed the commercial license side, and seem to
have been fairly successful in doing so. Thus, while in the gray area,
FLOSS MP3 implementations appear to be relatively safe, as long as they
don't push the commercial side.

In any case, 2011 isn't /that/ far away, and we can all rest easier when
it arrives. After that, 2015 won't be far away. So.. a few more years of
gray area, but it won't be /that/ long, from a user's perspective, anyway.
Of course, being a commercial distributor puts things in a far different
light, but the clock is still counting down, either way.

Duncan