what firm patented the MP3 format? From the article, it would appear the German firm (and then their predecessor) named was the party that patented the MP3 format, and that Microsoft paid them $16 billion to license the format.
From the article, it's not clear where Alcatel/Lucent even came into this picture and why the court wound find in their favor.
"Microsoft said it believes that it properly licensed MP3 technology from Fraunhofer, paying that company $16 million. Fraunhofer, which helped develop the MP3 compression technology along with Lucent's Bell Labs, has licensed its intellectual property to companies that want to use the audio format in their products. Fraunhofer has since handed the MP3- licensing duties over to Thomson."
Microsoft get what they deserve......as patent troll themselve. What business Lucent-Alcatel business is in? This is an example company use patent to sue other company just to make money. The patent office should be shutdown long time ago.
I am never opposed to someone trumping MS, but in this case I think this is a bit ridiculous. If anyone should be sued it would be the company that claimed rights to the technology (assuming, they do not in fact own those rights). MS and others did what they thought was correct and even if they'd done their research, surely would have found no reason not to believe Fraunhofer was the legitimate owner of the patent.
To me it seems the whole patent system is broken. So many patent cases lately, and some of them potentially affecting both free and commercial software.
One thing the story doesn't indicate is what concept is Lucent claiming. Perhaps this just relates to something specific Microsoft does with MP3 processing, but if not, the implications could be that all people making MP3 playback software/hardware could be at risk now.
Does this mean that if the company that I bought my MP3 player from will have to make it so my player won't play MP3's if they don't buckle under and pay up? Or will I have to pay to keep using it?
As i understand it its for the overseas sales of Windows, MS has the license for the US and payed other company's for the non US use of the technology.
The law states that every box or product that gets shipped out also has to be payed for except when its a blueprint to other manufacturers. For MS the master DVD is a blueprint but Lucent thinks otherwise. In effect all US based company's would have to pay a US license for US and overseas sales added to the licenses it already pays to company's for other country's.
Its sick but i love it, a lot of company's will escape the US for this law alone. USofA is one sick country, come to mainland Europe and live the genuine freedom we have instead of make believe.
Could have fooled me. I've been working in Europe for over 18 months, and nowhere on Earth is as restrictive to personal freedom as Europe. The little FM transmitter for my mp3 player, yeah, it's illegal in the UK. Don't even think of owning a firearm to defend yourself in Europe. The government says you don't need one because they will take care of you....riiiiiggghhhtttt, ask the Jews how that went in Germany or the Albanians how that went in Kosovo at the hands of the Serbs, and now, vice versa?
Oh, and on the sick note, how many radical terrorists does one country (France or UK) have to let into their own borders before they realize they have a problem? Nowhere in the west is there more hate and filth being spewed than by so-called "religious" leaders in Europe. In Kosovo, ostensibly still part of Serbia (though the UN is working to change that...not for the better....), there is a rapidly growing cult of the Wahhabi radical Islamic sect...and it is a cult.
Anyone who advocates violence in the name of religion is a nut that belongs to a cult and is not smart enough to pull his or her head out their a**...whether that cult is Christian (David Koresh / Timothy McVeigh / the IRA) or Islamic (too many to even start naming). So, tell me why again, would I move from a rather free society, that is also much more free of these nut job radical "religous" freaks, to a place where my personal freedom, cost of living, and other forms of enjoyment are curtailed. By other forms of enjoyment, I mean sports and computers (never seen such slow Internet in the "civilized" world). By sports, I mean that watching soccer, or football...not the real kind, is so retarded and boring that despite having played it for 16 years, much of it at a high level, I cannot even watch the Euro-sissies play anymore....who wants to watch diving and acting. I can watch ballet or the basketball...another sissy sport...and see that. For real sports, I want hockey and REAL football, not some bunch of pansies who hit the ground screaming like a baby if someone sneezes towards them.
So, go back to your sniveling little socialist hole and quit disparaging the greatest country on Earth. Sure, we're not perfect in the USA, but we're far better than the snobs in Europe.
This is about a patent dispute between a company that thinks it owns certain patents and it went for one of the biggest companies that it could find, a company that states it was doing everything legally to license the technology. If the very final verdict is sustained, it will affect not just Microsoft but every other company that licenses mp3 technologies.
...and have enough change left over to stock it with personnel and provisions for at least a decade or more.
I'm hoping Ballmer is smart enough to see that, today's case in the USSC, and actually think that maybe the whole software patent thing isn't such a good idea after all?
If this keeps up, all those vague and empty threats Ballmer has been mouthing in Linux' direction won't mean much.
(Yes, MSFT has a metric ton of cash on hand, but a billion and a half equals (roughly) 6% of their total cash on hand, 12% of their total operating cash flow, and 15% of their current year-on-year Net Income (Q1/06 to Q1/07) at this time. Now imagine where that money is going to actually come from... obviously not Petty Cash).
If this lawsuit is successful, then the company is free to sue any and all other manufacturers that have any sort of device or product that plays MP3's, and that includes Apple's iPod, Creative Labs' Zen, all the MP3 phones, Red Hat Linux, Apple, etc.
This is similar to the attempt Compuserve made nearly 20 years ago to sue anyone for the use of the GIF file format without paying a licensing fee first. I don't see it happening.
How many iPods have been sold to date? That's a heck of a lot of fines. While a $1 billion dollar fine is small to Microsoft, it could kill other companies such as Apple who would have to pay on every iPod and Macintosh OSX product ever sold.
This is a very dangerous precedent and all the companies need to band together to stop this.
and I'm no lawyer either but this IP thing seems so outdated in this digital age and open source. There are thousands of products using MP3 compression for crying out loud.
Well we all know MS can be greedy with its products, so why shouldnt some other big company get on the band wagon. All this money changing hands why dont they concentrate more on helping others less fortunate. Nooooo they all want it in their own pockets and screw the rest. Seriously though if there was an agreement in place why wasnt that taken into consideration. Its like when you take over a company, you get it with its assets AND its liabilities. Same goes here, IF there was a lisence agreement prior to the technology changing hands then that agreement is a liability as well as an asset, so to speak. Just because you get the technology doesnt meany you can change the rules that are in place. Sure alter them for future deals and arrangements, but you cant change the existing ones
So you think because they worked hard, had good ideas, and came up with a business plan to make money, that now they should just help you because you didn't do any of those things? Think again, both companies earned their position through hard work.
You state that MS is too greedy and needs to share the wealth,
... but you forget (or don't want to mention) that Bill and Melinda Gates his wife at the time started a charity organization (The Bil and Melinda Foundation) with the largest endowment in history. In 1999 Bill gates contributed 16 Billion, with a capital B) to the foundation that HE started. By the way how much have you contributed to charity in the last year? Why don't you think of all the good things that not only Bill Gates but also others like him, like the Kroc's, who started Mcdonalds, have done. "ALL this money changing hands why don't they concentrate more on helping others less fortunate. Nooooo they want it all in their own pockets and screw the rest." Bullsh*t Do some research before you tear into someone who has given plenty back to society already (hes still giving). One more thing he is romured to be stepping down from his fulltime work at MS to work fulltime in the foundation too. He'll probably still stay on as a consultant but still what have you or for that matter most of us dont to compare?
Even though MS certainly deserves this sort of karma. This issue is bigger then any company or format. This is a bad ruling, regardless of the delicious irony.
mp3 is a mathematical algorithm. Nothing more.
Mathematical algorithms can not be patented. All software are nothing more then a collection of algorithms. Software patents should not be allowed.
Copyright is all that is needed to protect specific implementations of a collection of algorithms. Patents stifle innovation and competition.
Knowledge belongs to all, because all knowledge builds on other previous knowledge. Restricting knowledge in the form of the very oxymoron-ic title of IP is the very opposite of what got mankind as far as we have gone.
Hiding it from others, just to be greedy will slow down the march of progress, for the worse. This sort of thing along with the unethical actions of giants like MS are the reason computing has not advanced much further.
Although I think the verdict is unjust and that the whole case is a display of classic predatory capitalism and of the flaws of the US patent system, just think...
if everybody can be sued for using mp3s... we have wma and ogg left. It just takes an anti-DRM FUD campaign for ogg to be left standing alone.
Their Vorbis codec is better than MP3, both in terms of sound quality for a given bitrate and for multi rate streaming. they have a version using integers only for embedded products (Tremor). Stability is outstanding.
Microsoft was targeted by Lucent simply because they are the top dog. They are dominant in the world of computers. But will Microsoft survive? Sadly, they will. They've got a war chest of funds for atleast 20 of these lawsuits. (put together even)
But does Microsoft care about losing 1.5 billion? No. I believe it actually works out in their favour. I really don't believe they care much for the MP3 format. They'd just as soon toss it and replace it with WMA, if they had it their way.
But Apple on the other hand can very well be crippled by this type of lawsuit. Dating back five years to the first release of Itunes. Not to mention every iPod sold since its inception. Not to mention Quicktime's use of MP3s in Mac OS X and OS 9.
Hopefully this lawsuit won't snowball past Microsoft.
this would affect all future and past software licensing deals ever made in the US. To compensate that MS would have to aggressively pursue all there patents to make a profit out of it.
If they bought the license(s) from Alcatel-Lucent then no worries from lawsuits, but I think most companies did it through Thomson/Fraunhofer which'll lead to way more lawsuits..
Microsoft properly licensed MP3 technology from Fraunhofer gave it out, Lucent's should be suing them not Microsoft at all...MS as in the right and by the law got the ok to use it.
wait there bigger money suing all these companys then suing one small company for given the paid license to other for the use of MP3
... A big hole lobbed out of my shiny new Vista. Just like they did in removing other software from earlier versions of windows because they did not steal it right. Can't microsoft do anything right. Yup all those "smily faced updates stripping away all the functionality of my new and expensive Vista. Wow XP is now over 95 updates on a newly installed XP. Way to go Microsoft I really feel secure now!!!!
"The company also noted that roughly half of the damages are for overseas sales of Windows, which could be affected by a separate patent case. That case, currently before the Supreme Court, deals with whether overseas sales of software products should be subject to U.S. patent law."
First, regardless of what you think about the current patent system, you can't have your cake and eat it too. Microsoft is just as guilty as any of the other large companies that have abused software patents so they don't have any room to squirm.
But what Microsoft doesn't like is the fact that they are on the hook for international sales. That is what they are going to for an appeal.
From an outsider's perspective, the judge was right to include the overseas sales as part of the damages. When the laws were drafted, the world was less of a global marketplace.
For years, Fraunhofer has been the licensor of record for the patents (which don't cover the MP3 format, or decoding, but rather the specific psychoacoustic model and algorithm for the audio compression). Microsoft and others have dutifully identified the licensor and licensed the technology in good faith.
So, how is this willful infringement? It would seem to me that Lucent's real beef ought to be that its partner hasn't been sharing the profits, or has been licensing the technology without proper agreements between them and Lucent.
I'm pretty sure that this won't hold up, but if it does it will set a fundamentally bad precedent.
Incidentally, the patents cover a very specific aspect of the compression method, so it affects encoders, not decoders/players. Also, not all MP3 encoders use the model described in the patent (LAME is a good example), so it is still possible to encode MP3s without violating the specific patents.
Side with Microsoft any much of anything, but in this instance I may have to.
I doubt that the entire industry and the courts are going to let Alcetel sue them over this especially when companies have been paying licensing fees in good faith. It would have the potential to bring the entire computer sound industry to it's knees in one fell swoop.
That being the case the verdict against Microsoft will likely be set aside if not reduced drastically, but having got the verdict in the first place, gee ain't karma a *****!
Does this mean that all those companies that licensed MP3 from Thomson (or Fraunhofer) are now in the wrong? Somehow I imagine this verdict is going to throw Thomson & Alcatel-Lucent into court if it's unclear who owns the MP3 rights in the U.S...
We all remember what a boon the court's licensing decision was to the .GIF format back in the Web0.9 days. I'm sure MP3's fate will be just as glorious. (what's the emoticon for dripping sarcasm?)
Using someone elses technology and ideas as your own is stealing. If Microsoft was as original as the people it steals and copies from it would be a completely different company, and they might have to change their name, to Apple.
Ummm... did you read the article? They did license it, and never presented it as their own. As did Apple, whom you tout. So I guess Apple isn't innovative or original either. Neither is anyone who based their work on the people who came before... yeah, right.
If you read the article, you know that Microsoft has paid the patent to other company. So it's their right to use the technology, and Microsoft never claims that MP3 is their technology, different case from WMA format. Apple is nothing to do with innovate the MP3 format either, they just use it. And, I believe that Apple paid the same pattent fee as Microsoft. You're clearly Mac Blinded Fan Boy.
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From the article, it's not clear where Alcatel/Lucent even came into this picture and why the court wound find in their favor.
"Microsoft said it believes that it properly licensed MP3
technology from Fraunhofer, paying that company $16 million.
Fraunhofer, which helped develop the MP3 compression
technology along with Lucent's Bell Labs, has licensed its
intellectual property to companies that want to use the audio
format in their products. Fraunhofer has since handed the MP3-
licensing duties over to Thomson."
Seems clear to me.
One thing the story doesn't indicate is what concept is Lucent claiming. Perhaps this just relates to something specific Microsoft does with MP3 processing, but if not, the implications could be that all people making MP3 playback software/hardware could be at risk now.
Now although it was a colaboration between Fraunhofer ATT and Thompson. The righful patent owner is Fraunhofer.
Its a bit of twisting of patent laws, that Lucent Suddenly issued a patent then had it back dated to before the Fraunhofer patent.
But heck, when you company is in trouble heck I quess it never hurts to play like this.
So now I assume all people who license MP3 from Fraunhofer will now also have to pay an additional fee to Lucent?
that you turn over your illegal mp3 player. This is the way it works
these days.
the license for the US and payed other company's for the non US
use of the technology.
The law states that every box or product that gets shipped out
also has to be payed for except when its a blueprint to other
manufacturers. For MS the master DVD is a blueprint but Lucent
thinks otherwise. In effect all US based company's would have to
pay a US license for US and overseas sales added to the licenses
it already pays to company's for other country's.
Its sick but i love it, a lot of company's will escape the US for this
law alone. USofA is one sick country, come to mainland Europe
and live the genuine freedom we have instead of make believe.
Hint: Its not. It contains the final product for reproduction.
No company is going to leave the US of A over this.
Its all PR lobbying.
And living in Europe vs the US? LOL... all you're doing is trading one set of problems for another.
Oh, and on the sick note, how many radical terrorists does one country (France or UK) have to let into their own borders before they realize they have a problem? Nowhere in the west is there more hate and filth being spewed than by so-called "religious" leaders in Europe. In Kosovo, ostensibly still part of Serbia (though the UN is working to change that...not for the better....), there is a rapidly growing cult of the Wahhabi radical Islamic sect...and it is a cult.
Anyone who advocates violence in the name of religion is a nut that belongs to a cult and is not smart enough to pull his or her head out their a**...whether that cult is Christian (David Koresh / Timothy McVeigh / the IRA) or Islamic (too many to even start naming). So, tell me why again, would I move from a rather free society, that is also much more free of these nut job radical "religous" freaks, to a place where my personal freedom, cost of living, and other forms of enjoyment are curtailed. By other forms of enjoyment, I mean sports and computers (never seen such slow Internet in the "civilized" world). By sports, I mean that watching soccer, or football...not the real kind, is so retarded and boring that despite having played it for 16 years, much of it at a high level, I cannot even watch the Euro-sissies play anymore....who wants to watch diving and acting. I can watch ballet or the basketball...another sissy sport...and see that. For real sports, I want hockey and REAL football, not some bunch of pansies who hit the ground screaming like a baby if someone sneezes towards them.
So, go back to your sniveling little socialist hole and quit disparaging the greatest country on Earth. Sure, we're not perfect in the USA, but we're far better than the snobs in Europe.
I have always thought that rectal medicine is good for a bully.
I'm hoping Ballmer is smart enough to see that, today's case in the USSC, and actually think that maybe the whole software patent thing isn't such a good idea after all?
If this keeps up, all those vague and empty threats Ballmer has been mouthing in Linux' direction won't mean much.
(Yes, MSFT has a metric ton of cash on hand, but a billion and a half equals (roughly) 6% of their total cash on hand, 12% of their total operating cash flow, and 15% of their current year-on-year Net Income (Q1/06 to Q1/07) at this time. Now imagine where that money is going to actually come from... obviously not Petty Cash).
/P
This is similar to the attempt Compuserve made nearly 20 years ago to sue anyone for the use of the GIF file format without paying a licensing fee first. I don't see it happening.
How many iPods have been sold to date? That's a heck of a lot of fines. While a $1 billion dollar fine is small to Microsoft, it could kill other companies such as Apple who would have to pay on every iPod and Macintosh OSX product ever sold.
This is a very dangerous precedent and all the companies need to band together to stop this.
By the way how much have you contributed to charity in the last year? Why don't you think of all the good things that not only Bill Gates but also others like him, like the Kroc's, who started Mcdonalds, have done.
"ALL this money changing hands why don't they concentrate more on helping others less fortunate. Nooooo they want it all in their own pockets and screw the rest." Bullsh*t
Do some research before you tear into someone who has given plenty back to society already (hes still giving). One more thing he is romured to be stepping down from his fulltime work at MS to work fulltime in the foundation too. He'll probably still stay on as a consultant but still what have you or for that matter most of us dont to compare?
mp3 is a mathematical algorithm. Nothing more.
Mathematical algorithms can not be patented. All software are nothing more then a collection of algorithms. Software patents should not be allowed.
Copyright is all that is needed to protect specific implementations of a collection of algorithms. Patents stifle innovation and competition.
Knowledge belongs to all, because all knowledge builds on other previous knowledge. Restricting knowledge in the form of the very oxymoron-ic title of IP is the very opposite of what got mankind as far as we have gone.
Hiding it from others, just to be greedy will slow down the march of progress, for the worse. This sort of thing along with the unethical actions of giants like MS are the reason computing has not advanced much further.
>"All software are nothing more then a collection of algorithms."
The works of Shakespeare are nothing more than the same 26 letters repeated and reordered.
A painting is nothing more than some paint spilled on a canvas in a specific manner.
Humans are just slight variations in a DNA sequence.
Software is just a bunch of 1's and 0's, but placed in a specific order.
If I shoot and kill you I am only using a ball of lead to displace some carbon and water.
if everybody can be sued for using mp3s... we have wma and ogg left. It just takes an anti-DRM FUD campaign for ogg to be left standing alone.
Oh, and it's free software ...
It's about time to make the switch.
<a class="jive-link-external" href="http://www.xiph.org/" target="_newWindow">http://www.xiph.org/</a>
Let's hope there ain't an obscure patent lurking in the shadows ...
top dog. They are dominant in the world of computers. But will
Microsoft survive? Sadly, they will. They've got a war chest of
funds for atleast 20 of these lawsuits. (put together even)
But does Microsoft care about losing 1.5 billion? No. I believe it
actually works out in their favour. I really don't believe they care
much for the MP3 format. They'd just as soon toss it and replace
it with WMA, if they had it their way.
But Apple on the other hand can very well be crippled by this
type of lawsuit. Dating back five years to the first release of
Itunes. Not to mention every iPod sold since its inception. Not to
mention Quicktime's use of MP3s in Mac OS X and OS 9.
Hopefully this lawsuit won't snowball past Microsoft.
made in the US. To compensate that MS would have to
aggressively pursue all there patents to make a profit out of it.
wait there bigger money suing all these companys then suing one small company for given the paid license to other for the use of MP3
First, regardless of what you think about the current patent system, you can't have your cake and eat it too. Microsoft is just as guilty as any of the other large companies that have abused software patents so they don't have any room to squirm.
But what Microsoft doesn't like is the fact that they are on the hook for international sales. That is what they are going to for an appeal.
From an outsider's perspective, the judge was right to include the overseas sales as part of the damages. When the laws were drafted, the world was less of a global marketplace.
record for the patents (which don't cover the
MP3 format, or decoding, but rather the specific
psychoacoustic model and algorithm for the audio
compression). Microsoft and others have
dutifully identified the licensor and licensed
the technology in good faith.
So, how is this willful infringement? It would
seem to me that Lucent's real beef ought to be
that its partner hasn't been sharing the
profits, or has been licensing the technology
without proper agreements between them and
Lucent.
I'm pretty sure that this won't hold up, but if
it does it will set a fundamentally bad
precedent.
Incidentally, the patents cover a very specific
aspect of the compression method, so it affects
encoders, not decoders/players. Also, not all
MP3 encoders use the model described in the
patent (LAME is a good example), so it is still
possible to encode MP3s without violating the
specific patents.
may have to.
I doubt that the entire industry and the courts are going to let
Alcetel sue them over this especially when companies have been
paying licensing fees in good faith. It would have the potential to
bring the entire computer sound industry to it's knees in one fell
swoop.
That being the case the verdict against Microsoft will likely be
set aside if not reduced drastically, but having got the verdict in
the first place, gee ain't karma a *****!
(I'd vote for using Ogg Vorbis, personally!)
I'm sure MP3's fate will be just as glorious.
(what's the emoticon for dripping sarcasm?)