MP3 Reviews

Licensing and patent issues

In September 1998, the Fraunhofer Institute sent a letter to several developers of MP3 software stating that a license was required to “distribute and/or sell decoders and/or encoders”. The letter claimed that unlicensed products “infringe the patent rights of Fraunhofer and THOMSON.

To make, sell and/or distribute products using the [MPEG Layer-3] standard and thus our patents, you need to obtain a license under these patents from us.”
These patent issues significantly slowed the development of licensed MP3 software and led to increased focus on creating and popularizing alternatives such as Vorbis, AAC, and WMA.

Microsoft chose to move away from MP3 to its own proprietary Windows Media format to avoid licensing issues associated with these patents. Until the key patents expire, unlicensed encoders and players could be infringing in countries where the patents are valid.
In spite of the patent restrictions, the perpetuation of the MP3 format continues. The reasons for this appear to be the network effects caused by:

1.familiarity with the format,

2.the large quantity of music now available in the MP3 format,

3.the wide variety of existing software and hardware that takes advantage of the file format,

4.the lack of DRM restrictions, which makes MP3 files easy to edit, copy and play in different portable digital players (Samsung, Apple, Creative, etc.),

5.the majority of home users not knowing or not caring about the patent’s controversy, who often do not consider such legal issues in choosing their music format for personal use.

On February 16, 2007, Texas MP3 Technologies sued Apple, Samsung Electronics and Sandisk with a patent-infringement lawsuit regarding portable MP3 players. The suit was filed in Marshall, Texas; this is a common location for patent infringement suits due to speedy trials.

Texas MP3 Technologies claimed infringement with U.S. patent 7,065,417, awarded in June 2006 to multimedia chip-maker SigmaTel, covering “an MPEG portable sound reproducing system and a method for reproducing sound data compressed using the MPEG method.