Talk:MP3/Archive 3

Expiration of Patents
Removed:
 * However, U.S. patents can only last up to 20 years from the date of filing which must be within one year of first publication. MP3 was released as a specification in 1991, so if U.S. courts applied U.S. law, no patent claims could apply to MP3 itself after 2012.
 * Any U.S. patent filed after 1992 should (by law) have any claims pertaining to MP3 struck down considering the published specification as prior art. If they had been published earlier (such as in public drafts), the latest date would be even earlier.
 * Current US patent law has the patents expire at most 20 years after filing. However, at the time that many of the patents were filed, it was 17 years after the patent was granted.  In the big list of patents, #5,924,060 was filed August 29, 1987, so it was filed before the published specifications.  But it was granted on July 13, 1999, so 17 years after that is July 13, 2016. So, sorry, but under the law that it was granted under, it expires in 2016.  Jrincayc 03:23, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
 * See . The law changed in 1995, so presumably patent 5,924,060 was under the old law of 17 years from being granted.  Jrincayc 03:27, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Has anyone done a study of when the patents required for playing an mp3 expire? Jrincayc (talk) 04:48, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I could be wrong, but it looks like it might be 2013 is the year that the last patents for playing an MP3 expire. I am assuming that anything filed after 1993 must only be necessary for encoding, since MP3 was a standard by then.  All of the other ones that expire after 2013 look like they are about encoding MP3s.  Can someone verify this? 75.174.1.63 (talk) 19:29, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
 * After looking it up myself, here are the facts that I found: The initial near complete MPEG-1 standard (parts 1,2,3) was publicly available in  December 6, 1991 as ISO CD 11172.  The final version of the MPEG-1 specification describes decoding and includes pseudo-code for the decoding.  It also has hints as to how to encode MPEG-1 audio, but is not as detailed for that.  In the US, patents must be filed within one year of publication or they are invalid.  US patents filed before about 1995 last the longer of 17 years from the date that they are granted, or 20 years from the date of filing.  The last US MP3 patent to expire that was filed by December 1992 (one year after publication of the draft standard) expires in December 2012.  So, it should be theoretically possible to implement MP3 decoders patent free at that time.  In otherwords, I think that a statement similar to the one I removed can be readded.  If no-one has any objections I will do so after at least a week, or someone else can do so.  Jrincayc (talk)
 * I added it back into the article, with three reference links. Jrincayc (talk) 21:52, 12 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Either I copied the date down wrong, or it was wrong at the MP3 patent list, but #5,924,060 was filed on August 29, 1997, so it probably can't apply to MP3 decoding, since that was specified in the August 1993 ISO MPEG-1 standard ISO/IEC 11172-3. Jrincayc (talk) 13:42, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Here is the list of when MP3 patents expire. I am not sure how to deal with a reissued patent, but I think it probably expires based on the original patent date. US 5,742,735 is the last one to expire that was filed by August 1994 (one year from the MPEG-1 decoding spec being published, so decoding probably is safe by April, 22 2015. Some of these patents may not be necessary for encoding or decoding MP3.  Also, I just did the later of 17 after the granting date, or 20 years after the filing date.  Jrincayc (talk) 14:49, 1 June 2008 (UTC) (Replaced with better table using User:Jrincayc/Patent_utils Jrincayc (talk) 03:37, 17 July 2008 (UTC))

I have updated the program, to better deal with patent divisions, patent continuations, and PCT filings. It now looks the like the actual date of expiration is probably around 2015. Jrincayc (talk) 03:22, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Note that program is limited to the information that it can parse out of the patent text. If it can't find a exact date, it will put 32 as the day of the month. Also, at least some of the patents put the needed information in strange places, so some of the time it will be wrong. Jrincayc (talk) 14:25, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Patent List
List of the MP3 Patents for reference. Jrincayc (talk) 15:03, 11 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Alcatel-Lucent
 * US 5,341,457 -- Perceptual coding of audio signals  -- Filed: August 20, 1993 Granted: August 23, 1994
 * US RE39,080 -- Rate loop processor for perceptual encoder/decoder -- Filed: August 13, 2002 Granted: April 25, 2006  Reissue of 05627938 Filed: Sep., 1994 Granted: May., 1997
 * Audio MPEG, Inc
 * US 4,972,484 -- Method of transmitting or storing masked sub-band coded audio signals -- Filed: July 21, 1988 Granted: November 20, 1990
 * US 5,214,678 -- Digital transmission system using subband coding of a digital signal -- Filed: May 31, 1990 Granted: May 25, 1993
 * US 5,323,396 -- Digital transmission system, transmitter and receiver for use in the transmission system -- Filed: December 21, 1992 Granted: June 21, 1994
 * US 5,539,829 -- Subband coded digital transmission system using some composite signals  -- Filed: June 7, 1995 Granted: July 23, 1996
 * US 5,606,618 -- Subband coded digital transmission system using some composite signals  -- Filed: December 27, 1993 Granted: February 25, 1997
 * US 5,530,655 -- Digital sub-band transmission system with transmission of an additional signal  -- Filed: June 6, 1995 Granted: June 25, 1996
 * US 5,777,992 -- Decoder for decoding and encoded digital signal and a receiver comprising the decoder  -- Filed: June 7, 1995 Granted: July 7, 1998
 * US 6,289,308 --  Encoded wideband digital transmission signal and record carrier recorded with such a signal  -- Filed: March 8, 2000 Granted: September 11, 2001
 * US 5,481,643 -- Transmitter, receiver and record carrier for transmitting/receiving at least a first and a second signal component -- Filed: April 24, 1995 Granted: January 2, 1996
 * US 5,544,247 -- Transmission and reception of a first and a second main signal component  -- Filed: October 25, 1994 Granted: August 6, 1996
 * US 5,610,985 -- Digital 3-channel transmission of left and right stereo signals and a center signal -- Filed: January 21, 1994 Granted: March 11, 1997
 * US 5,740,317 -- Process for finding the overall monitoring threshold during a bit-rate-reducing source coding  -- Filed: August 30, 1995 Granted: April 14, 1998
 * US 5,878,080 -- N-channel transmission, compatible with 2-channel transmission and 1-channel transmission  -- Filed: February 7, 1997 Granted: March 2, 1999
 * US 5,960,037 -- Encoding of a plurality of information signals -- Filed: April 9, 1997 Granted: September 28, 1999
 * US 5,991,715 -- Perceptual audio signal subband coding using value classes for successive scale factor differences  -- Filed: August 31, 1995 Granted: November 23, 1999
 * US 6,023,490 -- Encoding apparatus for encoding a plurality of information signals -- Filed: April 9, 1997 Granted: February 8, 2000
 * Thomson
 * US 4,821,260 Expired
 * US 4,942,607 Expired
 * US 5,214,742 -- Method for transmitting a signal  -- Filed: October 1, 1990 Granted: May 25, 1993
 * US 5,227,990 -- Process for transmitting and receiving a signal  -- Filed:  January 17, 1992 Granted: July 13, 1993
 * US 5,384,811 -- Method for the transmission of a signal -- Filed: August 24, 1992 Granted: January 24, 1995
 * US 5,736,943 -- Method for determining the type of coding to be selected for coding at least two signals  -- Filed: May 31, 1996 Granted: April 7, 1998
 * US 5,455,833 -- Process for the detecting of errors in the transmission of frequency-coded digital signals  -- Filed: April 26, 1993 Granted: October 3, 1995
 * US 5,559,834 -- Method of reducing crosstalk in processing of acoustic or optical signals  -- Filed: April 15, 1994 Granted: September 24, 1996
 * US 5,321,729 -- Method for transmitting a signal  -- Filed: April 26, 1993 Granted: June 14, 1994
 * US 5,706,309 -- Process for transmitting and/or storing digital signals of multiple channels  -- Filed: May 2, 1995 Granted: January 6, 1998
 * US 5,701,346 -- Method of coding a plurality of audio signals  -- Filed: September 12, 1996 Granted: December 23, 1997
 * US 5,742,735 -- Digital adaptive transformation coding method  -- Filed: August 25, 1994 Granted: April 21, 1998
 * US 5,812,672 -- Method for reducing data in the transmission and/or storage of digital signals of several dependent channels -- Filed: December 15, 1994 Granted: September 22, 1998
 * US 5,579,430 -- Digital encoding process  -- Filed: January 26, 1995 Granted: November 26, 1996
 * US 6,185,539 -- Process of low sampling rate digital encoding of audio signals  -- Filed: May 26, 1998 Granted: February 6, 2001
 * US 6,009,399 -- Method and apparatus for encoding digital signals employing bit allocation using combinations of different threshold models to achieve desired bit rates  -- Filed: April 16, 1997 Granted: December 28, 1999
 * US 5,924,060 -- Digital coding process for transmission or storage of acoustical signals by transforming of scanning values into spectral coefficients  -- Filed: March 20, 1997 Granted: July 13, 1999
 * US 5,703,999 -- Process for reducing data in the transmission and/or storage of digital signals from several interdependent channels -- Filed:  November 18, 1996 Granted: December 30, 1997


 * I think that this list would need to be cleaned a bit. Some AT&T/Bell/Lucent/Alcatel patents are likely missing, and some of the listed patents do not cover mp3 (ex: US 6,185,539) --Gabriel Bouvigne (talk) 19:25, 11 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Go for it. I would love a comprehensive list of the patents.  Jrincayc (talk) 03:04, 12 May 2008 (UTC)