MP3 patent expiration?

Posted Jan 4, 2006 11:32 UTC (Wed) by Duncan (guest, #6647)
Parent article: GStreamer's MP3 for Linux

Unlike copywrong, patents aren't yet virtually eternal. AFAIK, it's
17-20 years here in the US. (I believe now 20, extended three as a
tradeoff for something else, don't know the details, a few years ago.
However, I believe we're still in the period during which some 17 year
patents haven't yet expired.)

It would have been nice if the article had included the expiration date of
the MP3 patents, so we'd know how much longer we had to worry about it.
Obviously, the format has been around for several years already, so it's
quite possible we're already half-way there.

This is of practical interest once one compares it to the GIF patents
which recently expired. Along that line, Gentoo has recently deprecated
libungif, and all new ebuilds depend on libgif, tho it's quite likely
folks' stable installations will have libungif dependencies for a few more
months, anyway.

So... you see, it /does/ happen that patents expire within a software's
lifetime. =8^) If they'd just make the lifetime of software patents
something more realistic in terms of average software life, say five years
or so, I have a feeling there'd be far less pressure to do away with them
entirely. Maybe that'll be what will actually happen, eventually, as the
forces for serious patent reform continue to mount. Of course, doing away
with software patents altogether would be better, but five years would
certainly be better than twenty -- probably /enough/ better to take the
pressure off of killing them entirely.

So when /do/ the MP3 patents expire? Anybody know?

Duncan

to post comments

MP3 patent expiration?

Posted Jan 4, 2006 14:00 UTC (Wed) by frazier (guest, #3060) [Link] (3 responses)

I was curious so I did some hunting and found this page at wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:MP3

Look under "patent".

Here's a patent portfolio from Thompson:
http://www.mp3licensing.com/patents/index.html

...and some more talk on the subject...:
http://ask.metafilter.com/mefi/8894

Seems like a good topic for the EFF to have a write-up on, and maybe thay have one, but I wasn't able to find it.

-Brock

MP3 patent expiration?

Posted Jan 4, 2006 21:08 UTC (Wed) by Duncan (guest, #6647) [Link] (2 responses)

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

MP3 patent expiration?

Posted Jan 5, 2006 10:17 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (1 responses)

PING? You mean PNG, I think.

(PING, of course, is a duck.)

MP3 patent expiration?

Posted Jan 6, 2006 11:29 UTC (Fri) by Duncan (guest, #6647) [Link]

Well, pronounced "ping", but you are correct, it's officially PNG. (You
prompted me to look it up, so now I know. Thanks!)

Duncan