RSSAlcatel-Lucent Victory in MP3 Dispute Signals Trouble for Digital Audio
By Scott M. Fulton, III | Published February 22, 2007, 6:01 PM
In the first of a series of patent disputes regarding its claims to rights to technologies used in MP3 audio codecs, French telecommunications firm Alcatel-Lucent -- which now owns the IP first conceived by Bell Laboratories -- was awarded $1.5 billion in a jury verdict against Microsoft in a federal district court in Seattle this afternoon.
The verdict is an indication that the jury did not side with Microsoft's contention that Lucent, prior to its acquisition by Alcatel, posted a retroactive date on a patent re-application for so-called layer-3 audio technologies, thus to give the appearance that AT&T Bell Labs -- Lucent's predecessor -- worked on MP3 prior to its involvement with Fraunhofer Labs, one of Germany's leading technology research institutions. Microsoft's license to use MP3 in its Windows Media Player and other software and devices was issued by Fraunhofer, which continues to claim co-ownership of MP3.
Lucent's original 2003 suit was against Gateway and Dell, for having included software that utilized what Lucent claimed were its own patented codecs in their computers. Microsoft later voluntarily assumed the role of defendant, since it provided its customers with Windows Media Player.
"We think this verdict is completely unsupported by the law or the facts," stated Microsoft corporate vice president and deputy general counsel Tom Burt this afternoon. "We will seek relief from the trial court, and if necessary appeal.
"Like hundreds of other companies large and small," Burt continued, "we believe that we properly licensed MP3 technology from its industry recognized licensor - Fraunhofer. The damages award seems particularly outrageous when you consider we paid Fraunhofer only $16 million to license this technology...We are concerned that this decision opens the door for Alcatel-Lucent to pursue action against hundreds of other companies who purchased the rights to use MP3 technology from Fraunhofer, the industry-recognized rightful licensor."
Yesterday, Microsoft cobbled together its own patent lawsuit against Alcatel-Lucent, alleging the company's communications equipment infringes upon two of its patents: one for a methodology that employs a database in call screening, and another which provides central management services for hybrid communications technologies. Meanwhile, three more Alcatel-Lucent jury trials continue on different sets of patents.
Microsoft may be attempting to even the remaining stakes with Alcatel-Lucent, perhaps in order to offer that company a sort of "covenant," to re-coin a phrase, in which both companies look the other way with regard to the use of each others' technologies.
Experts had earlier feared that an Alcatel-Lucent victory could pave the way for the company to pursue similar patent suits against Fraunhofer licensees, including perhaps the biggest one of all: Apple. Another French technology firm, Thomson, co-manages the world's leading MP3 licensing firm with Fraunhofer, which sells the rights for software manufacturers and content providers to distribute and stream audio encoded using MP3.
Thomson's rights to manage MP3 licensing have apparently never been directly challenged by Lucent, though some fear an indirect war between the two French firms may have erupted, with Alcatel-Lucent preparing to attack Thomson's and Fraunhofer's customers, and with digital music users playing the collective role of victim.
Microsoft being the dominant operating system maker should just stop mp3 playback capability in their O/S immediately; release a critical patch for it.
That will cause a great slump to that format and very soon everyone will move to alternatives, perhaps to non-patented formats like Ogg Vorbis.
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As much as Microsoft hates being in such a situation, I hope they do not threaten the open source community with something similar.
Say NO to software patents!
Start converting your mp3 to ogg vorbis!!!
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|I wonder what this means for allofmp3.com ?
[grin]
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|I agree with Babylon2x, LeXTeRiTY_X & ryanraab but one thing is mysterious to me. Ogg Vorbis is better than mp3 in every aspect, it is not patented, royalty free and the quality of sound is far superior. However, BBC and other online radio stations (except of Virgin Radio) avoid this format, preferring even WMA which uses much broader bandwidth. It makes no sense IMO.
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|Sadly, it is about ease of use. The majority of people who go to the BBC website likely wish for something simple, which works with no downloads. As WMP is the standard on so many computers, it makes it the first, most obvious, choice (kudos Microsoft, it was a clever technique to get their format boosted in terms of popularity).
They're also quite heavy on Real, but that one I can understand. Much as the player is disliked (I am no fan of it either), the format itself is good for streaming media.
If Ogg was ever installed on every Windows machine as standard, I would see the uptake being better. Ultimately though, there would be no money to be made from it - so Microsoft for one would be unlikely to help.
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|MP3 has always been owned by someone. which is the problem. To my knowledge, selling things in .mp3 format requires you to pay a licensing (or royalty?) fee to someone.
It's time they look at better alternatives. Ogg is often suggested, though one of the problems with it is the resources needed to decode it (check google about it).
Still, all we really need is for portal players to update their firmware. Rockbox firmware can add support for Ogg and a lot more to portable players. What's the excuse of the companies? http://www.rockbox.org/
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|carefactor 0% - I couldn't agree more with ryanraab.
Sure, MP3 has a lot more support but it's inferior when compared to other codecs, especially OGG Vorbis.
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|The day of the OGG is upon us.
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|Well said!
Viva la xiph.org!
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|MP3 isn't that good anymore anyways. Hopefully this helps other codecs get more used than MP3. MP3 will silently die soon.
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|Like ACC & WMA? or do you mean FLAC & APE?
MP3 is by today's portable players, "The Standard" - Much like CDs or Cassettes or even 8-Track players were several years ago, many technology has come and gone in-between, but unless it's easy to use and there is plenty of support for it (which there already is for the MP3), you wont see much of the other formats.
And unlike Apple's ACC & Microsoft's WMA, the MP3 is NOT infected with DRM.
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|AAC (what's ACC? Advanced Coding ... Coding?) doesn't implement DRM. The mp4 container does. The distributors could easily use mp4 containers without DRM, or even put AAC inside mp3 containers, or matroska containers, et cetera. Hell, if they stored metadata outside of the container then they could even use raw AAC.
Not to say I don't agree with you in mp3 (here referring to MPEG1-III) being the de facto standard for portable audio players. It follows that it would not be unreasonable to speculate this is the reason for their choice.
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|AAC does not belong to Apple, in fact they have absolutely nothing to do with it aside from using it as the format for their iPod. It's an industry standard and is not infected with DRM. There is also ogg vorbis which is completely open source.
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|But the same (in principle) as MP3? Isn't it?
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|Well..in defense of WMA, there's no DRM there either. DRM is something that the IP owners apply. I have a rather large library of my own CD's ripped to WMA Lossless and they have no DRM restrictions.
As for all this my codec is better than your codec nonesense.... In a true blind test none of you could hear the difference between any of the lossless formats and most likely can't hear a difference in any modern codec above about 192kbps. You get a bit higher than that and the golden ears on oxygen free cables can't reliably tell them apart no matter what they claim as they all refuse ABX testing methodology which would prove otherwise.
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|From the studies I've seen on double blind tests, about 30% of listeners (a significant percentage) could tell the difference between CD and 192kbps MP3. Going up to 256bps, 27% could still tell the difference.
Personally, I rip (and buy) at 320kbps. My experience is that the higher rates help to capture some high frequency ambience, such as the crispness of a cymbal as it dies away.
--->In a true blind test .... most likely can't hear a difference in any modern codec above about 192kbps.
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|I agree that there is a difference, and as a jazz fan the sound of the cymbals is very important to me and is usually the most telling factor. That being said, I feel that the latest versions of codecs/encoders are much better than what was out there a few years ago. I really believed medium bit rate MP3 was crap until I started using a better encoder. Anyway....what I'm really getting at is that a majority of people who think they can tell the difference between codecs really can't. Some of them can say one sounds different than the other but they can't say which is which. I had to prove it to myself to become a beliver in my audio fallability.
I'd love to read through the studies you are quoting from if you have a link handy. For those of you who have never tried a true double blind test...it can be very revealing.
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|I found a few studies, for example,
http://pcworld.about.com/news/Oct022001id64123.htm
however you do make a good point that encoders have gotten better so there may be even less difference now then there used to be.
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|Wish they had put a review date and codec version numbers on that test report. Methodology was also a bit suspect over true ABX testing as they should have reconverted the compressed files back to wav so they were comparing nothing but wav files. Anyway...ABX testing is very cool and everyone should give it a try sometime to dispel any misguided notions you may have about your auditory prowess. Some of you may indeed have golden (and young) ears, but I suspect that most of you will be frustrated and humbled by your human normalicy.
If someone had told me a few years ago that my CD's would be sitting on a shelf and I'd be listening to nothing but WMA Lossless at home and immensily enjoying my URGE WMA 192kbps subscription service I'd have told you you were nuts. Truth is, I'm 47 years old, a former radio person who at one time owned over 10,000 vinyl albums, and I don't think I've ever enjoyed music so much and experienced so many different artists and styles as I do today, thanks to computers and codecs.
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