Patents, Fedora, and MP3
Posted Apr 13, 2006 12:22 UTC (Thu) by
Duncan (guest, #6647)
Parent article:
Fedora and MP3
I always find it frustrating when reading articles discussing patents such
as the MP3 patent, when the expiration isn't noted. Unlike copyrights,
patents actually /do/ expire within one's lifetime, and too often, they
are discussed as if they don't. Obviously, a shorter than 20 year period
would be better for software patents, if they are to be granted at all.
Perhaps 5 years. However, 20 years remains a whole lot better than the
practically infinite period now granted to copyright.
As it happens, according to Wikipedia, there's a series of patents claimed
to apply to MP3. The decoding process was fully described in the original
MPEG standards of 1991, so the last of the decoding patents must expire in
2011 or earlier, now five years away. That means we've made it 3/4 of the
way already. Encoding patents are claimed to last a few years longer, as
parts of that process weren't fully published until 1995. Thus, some of
those won't be in the clear until 2015.
In any case, it seems that early on, LAME became one of the more popular
encoders, and Thompson apparently learned something from Unisys and their
GIF patent enforcement leading to PNG. They've never attempted to go
after LAME itself, preferring to go after proprietary-commercial users
with deeper pockets. Early on, they likely recognized this was
significantly contributing to the wide availability and consequent
popularity of the MP3 format. Now, with the clock on the patents winding
down and more efficient encoding formats such as the free Ogg Vorbis
available, they are apparently content to keep the status quo as the
dominant format, still collecting royalties from the
proprietary-commercial folks, still not wanting to encourage a mass
migration off MP3, as pushing enforcement on the free community would
certainly do, forcing them to actively look elsewhere instead of biding
their time while the clock runs out.
Of course, after MP3, it'll be other issues, Treacherous Computing and
Digital Restrictions Management to name one set, but as the GIF thing
demonstrated, patents /do/ eventually come to an end, and that end is at
least within sight, at least for MP3.
Duncan
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