| Karl-Erik Tallmo on Tue, 28 Aug 2001 01:41:37 +0200 (CEST) |
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| [Nettime-bold] Re: <nettime> a musical tribute digest [cramer vs recktenwald x2] |
>
>Quoted from http://www.mp3.com/news/095.html :
>
>> Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,
>>
>> As you may know, both the Fraunhofer Institute and THOMSON have done
>> important work to develop MPEG Layer-3 audio compression (before and
>> after it became part of the MPEG standards). This work has resulted
>> in many inventions and several patents, covering the MPEG Layer-3
>> standard.
>>
>> From your publications and your web-site we learn that you
>> distribute and/or sell decoders and/or encoders that use the MPEG
>> Layer-3 standard.
>>
>> Our files do not show that you have a valid license agreement with
>> us. This means that the products infringe the patent rights of
> > Fraunhofer and THOMSON.
>snip
> >
>> We look forward to hearing from you soon.
>>
>> Best regards,
>> - Martin
>>
>> ---
>> Martin Sieler
>> Fraunhofer IIS-A, Audio & Multimedia
>> email: [email protected]
>> phone: +49 9131 776-610
>> fax: +49 9131 776-699
>> www: http://www.iis.fhg.de/amm/
> >--
All this sounds as an echo from '94, when Unisys and Compuserve tried
to charge developers and end-users (or rather end-distributors) of
gif files for the use of their patent of the compression algorithm
LZW which they had developed. Back then, creative netizens developed
an alternative algorithm within a couple of hours, that was supposed
to be very easy to convert all the gif files into - if necessary. I
think it was called GEF. Unisys/Compuserve backed off then - at least
from some of their demands. Maybe this will happen here too...
Karl-Erik Tallmo
--
_________________________________________________________________
KARL-ERIK TALLMO, Swedish writer, lecturer
MAGAZINE: http://art-bin.com
_________________________________________________________________
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