The patent right of Technicolor with the patent of MP3 disappears

Audio codec "MP3FrenchTechnicolor(Technicolor: Old Thomson) 's licensing program ended on April 23, 2017.

Mp3
https://www.iis.fraunhofer.de/en/ff/amm/prod/audiocodec/audiocodecs/mp3.html


As can be seen from the official name "MPEG-1 Audio Layer-3", MP3 was developed as the audio standard of the video compression standard MPEG-1. However, it was later used as a high-compression audio codec than CD, PC, music player, etc. It became popular as a digital audio format.

Regarding the right of MP3, Fraunhofer IIS of Germany and Thomson of France (now: Technicolor) claim the patent right and have licensed to software developers such as game makers using MP3 encoding function, Thanks to free playback software such as LAME of an open source program developed so as not to conflict with the technology of both companies and Windows Media Player of Windows standard software, we succeeded in occupying the position of de facto standard of audio format. After that, since MP3 has no copyright management function, AAC, ATRAC, etc. were developed, but it is not spread as much as MP3, and it is still in the standard position as audio format at the time of article creation.

Fraunhofer IIS claiming the right of MP3 announced that the MP3-related licensing program possessed by Technicolor, another claimant, was terminated on April 23, 2017. As Technicolor's MP3-related patents have disappeared, Technicolor's licensing program has been terminated and it is now freely available.


Regarding the patent rights of MP3, France's Alcatel-Lucent sued Microsoft and a first verdict issued a verdict of 1.5 billion dollars (about 180 billion yen at that rate), then Microsoft licensed from Fraunhofer IIS It is certified to receive the offer and the compensation order is canceledCasehad. Now, other audio standards with higher sound quality and a copyright management function have appeared, but because the market share of MP3 still is high, for developers who want to use MP3 as a sound source, it is important to have MP3 related patent rights The annihilation is going to be welcomed.