The genealogy of the ubiquitous MP3 audio encoding/compression system is in question, with many seemingly legitimate and conflicting paternity claims. The New York Times does us a service by describing some of the tangled origins and many contributers to the technology, including Fraunhofer, Thomson, Royal Philips, and Alcatel-Lucent… they’re the ones who successfully sued Microsoft for patent infringement last month and won $1.52 billion.
While the article acknowledges the contribution of the above players, it complicates matters by also making note of patents claimed to be held by Sisvel and Texas MP3 Technologies. So who wins the most points? While the authors claim neutrality, of the 6 companies listed, they mention Fraunhofer Institute the most (16x)…must be some message there.
The article suggests that MP3 started life as a pastiche and ended up a chimera, but stops short of calling for a Solomonesque solution. Sounds like it might take 5-10 years in the courts to settle the matter of overlapping degrees of ownership of MP3…Ogg Vorbis (or some other open audio codec) anyone?
Patent Fights Are a Legacy of MP3’s Tangled Origins – NYT, March 5 2007
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The New York Times often does a great job of sorting out complicated histories and jumbles of info.