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The licensing program for MP3-related patents has been terminated

iis.fraunhofer.de

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Re: The licensing program for MP3-related patents has been terminated

#171

Post by josaka »

JulianMorrison wrote: post #143
TD-Linux wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not believing in software patents is unlikely to change a court's mind. Instead, support formats that are royalty free from the start - Vorbis, Opus, and Codec2, for example.

The major trouble with patents, and the thing that puts them in a special category of nuisance all of their own, is that it's fundamentally impossible to know that a thing is unencumbered until each particular claim to the contrary has been hashed out in court, at ruinous expense. And there is no legal proscription against patent owners letting you think you were safe for years, and then popping up to cream off the f…

>it's fundamentally impossible to know that a thing is unencumbered

One noteworthy exception, which plays a much bigger role in slower-moving industries, is that an exact copy of something sold over more time than the pendency of any patent in existence (mostly less than 23-24 years) is clear. But the larger point holds. Comparing patent claims to products and prior art is hard and expensive.

Re: The licensing program for MP3-related patents has been terminated

#172

Post by CharlesW »

erik wrote: post #116
CharlesW wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For new products there isn't really any room for debate anymore, Opus is the clear winner. If you mean "for low-latency live streaming/conferencing", I think you're probably right. If you mean "by popularity", with a few exceptions all non-MP3 encoded audio you hear is (and has been for some time) AAC. If you mean "by quality", Opus is comparable to AAC/HE-AAC audio quality, but Opus' Achilles' heel is hardware sup…

Re: popularity; If you play PC or console games, you probably listen to a lot of Vorbis encoded audio.

Oh! Thank you. Q: Why not Opus instead of Vorbis for that use?

Re: The licensing program for MP3-related patents has been terminated

#173

Post by beedogs »

TD-Linux wrote: post #32
notaplumber wrote: post #11

Recognizing this adds legitimacy to software patents. Don't. There have been free and open source MP3 decoders for many years now.

Not believing in software patents is unlikely to change a court's mind. Instead, support formats that are royalty free from the start - Vorbis, Opus, and Codec2, for example.

Or just keep using MP3 and ignoring these idiotic patents. This has worked for me for 20 years; why would I do anything differently now?

Re: The licensing program for MP3-related patents has been terminated

#174

Post by josaka »

zlynx wrote: post #165
JulianMorrison wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The major trouble with patents, and the thing that puts them in a special category of nuisance all of their own, is that it's fundamentally impossible to know that a thing is unencumbered until each particular claim to the contrary has been hashed out in court, at ruinous expense. And there is no legal proscription against patent owners letting you think you were safe for years, and then popping up to cream off the f…

If an implementation of a patent exists, and that patent expires, it is impossible for that implementation to infringe another patent for the same thing, because any other patent that applies would have been invalid when issued, because of the previous patent.

Not necessarily. You could patent an improved engine. 19 years later, I could patent an improved alloy that someone might use in your engine. Your patent expires in year 20, but they still infringe if they make your engine with my alloy for the next 20 years.

Re: The licensing program for MP3-related patents has been terminated

#175

Post by josaka »

maxlybbert wrote: post #119
Manchit wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has been confusing me for a long time. As far as I know, it's clearly stated that software is not applicable to patent.

In the US, patents on ideas, business processes, and algorithms are not allowed. However, there's a goofy (court approved) legal idea that software transforms a general-purpose computer into a single-purpose computer, and that transformation makes software patentable. The general-purpose computer to single-purpose computer transformation cracks me up (and makes it obvious that the law doesn't necessarily have any rel…

>that transformation makes software patentable

This isn't true in many cases after the Supreme Court decision Alice v. CLS Bank in 2014. Now we have a rule more like that in Europe, where some software is patent-eligible if it's sufficiently technical (e.g., something like RSA, or better cache management) and not patent eligible if it's not technical (e.g, CRUD apps, or new views on a database).

Re: The licensing program for MP3-related patents has been terminated

#176

Post by svieira »

floatboth wrote: post #101
yuhong wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PNG ended up being supported better than Vorbis/Opus though.

Sure, PNG instantly took over as the lossless non-animated format, but Animated PNG is still not widely supported (Firefox only IIRC?) Mostly the "auto-playing animations without audio" stuff is moving to videos, e.g. https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2016/07/autoplay

Chrome too, as of Chrome 59 (currently in Beta): https://www.chromestatus.com/features/6691520493125632 and Safari: http://caniuse.com/#feat=apng

Re: The licensing program for MP3-related patents has been terminated

#177

Post by comex »

0xffff2 wrote: post #161
daveFNbuck wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon sells music and lets you download DRM-free mp3s.

So does Apple... the call here is to use something other than MP3.

Apple doesn't use MP3, they use AAC (.m4a), which is technically superior to MP3 but also patent encumbered.

Re: The licensing program for MP3-related patents has been terminated

#178

Post by quadrangle »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #53
quadrangle wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no real-life example of software patents being good.

I'm down on software patents too, but I'm not sure that's supportable without at least some sort of argument.

Given that the fundamental concept of software patents is bad, not only in principle but in practice, there's burden on anyone suggesting the good/bad question to validate that it's even a legitimate question. It's like the creationism/evolution "debate". I can simply say that there's no validity at all to the creationism arguments without providing any argument at all. Similar to the idea that I don't need to provide an argument to reject any other sort of baseless idea of false equivalence or unwarranted appeal to agnosticism.

Re: The licensing program for MP3-related patents has been terminated

#179

Post by CalChris »

djsumdog wrote: post #148
JulianMorrison wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The major trouble with patents, and the thing that puts them in a special category of nuisance all of their own, is that it's fundamentally impossible to know that a thing is unencumbered until each particular claim to the contrary has been hashed out in court, at ruinous expense. And there is no legal proscription against patent owners letting you think you were safe for years, and then popping up to cream off the f…

I'm really glad New Zealand decided to disallow software patents. I wish more countries would follow suit.

I'm really glad New Zealand decided to disallow software patents

No, that is not the case.

http://www.ajpark.com/ip-central/news-articles/2016/05/new-z...

What the Zeds have done is really not so different from what the Supreme Court decided in Enfish:

  claims purporting to improve the functioning of the
  computer itself, or improving an existing technological
  process might not succumb to the abstract idea exception
Abstract software is excepted (disallowed) but software which really controls machines is allowed.

Re: The licensing program for MP3-related patents has been terminated

#180

Post by wfunction »

ryukafalz wrote: post #104
throwaway91111 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a suggestion? Where can I find Rihanna in Ogg/Vorbis?

The simplest thing, IMO, is just to buy your music on CD and rip it to a free format yourself. Some indie artists release their work online in free formats, but for mainstream artists a physical copy is often the only way.

And pay like 10x more + shipping because you only wanted 1 song on the CD?
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