[vorbis] Fraunhoffer claims patents on other formats

[Aleksandar Dovnikovic]

Matt and Karin Lawson <lawson at qns.com> wrote:

> Hey everyone,
>
> I just visited http://www.mp3licensing.com for the first time in a while,
and now
> they are also claiming patent rights over other audio formats including
Sony's
> ATRAC-3 and Dolby AAC.  They haven't listed Vorbis, but you KNOW they will
try to
> claim SOME kind of patent on it, no matter how unfounded the claim.  This
might be
> a heads-up to the ICAST lawyers to see which patents Fraunhoffer is trying
to
> apply to other formats.

I asked a similar question on this list a few month ago, and I think that
the bottom line is that Fraunhofer & Thomson Multimedia will have a hard
time proving that their patents are being used in Vorbis. Now with formats
it is a different thing - if you use mp3 format it is much easier for them
to sue you if you don't pay mp3 license because that is something that is
obvious. But Vorbis is very different from mp3 and it does things in
different way - it probably uses common ideas that are used in almost every
other codec - but proving that these Fraunhofer patents are used in vorbis
is not an easy job. Also note that patents on algorithms don't exist in some
countries, and vorbis isn't alone, many other codecs are coming - like
MP+, TAC ...

Greetings,
Aleksandar

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