What's the current status of mp3-licensing issues?

[Tom "spot" Callaway]

On Thu, 2007-11-01 at 10:47 +0300, Peter Lemenkov wrote:
> What about US?

The Fraunhofer/Thomson patents have not expired in the US.
They are not willing to give us an unrestricted patent grant.

US Patent 5559834 expires September 24, 2013
US Patent 4942607 expires February 3, 2008
US Patent 5812672 expires September 2, 2015
US Patent 5579430 expires November 26, 2013
US Patent 5321729 expires June 24, 2011
US Patent 5706309 expires January 6, 2015
US Patent 5227990 expires July 13, 2010
US Patent 4821260 expires December 16, 2007
US Patent 5214742 expires May 25, 2010
US Patent 6185539 expires February 6, 2018
US Patent 5703999 expires November 18, 2016
US Patent 5924060 expires July 13, 2016
US Patent 5701346 expires February 2, 2015
US Patent 6009399 expires April 16, 2017
US Patent 5384811 expires January 24, 2012
US Patent 5736943 expires April 7, 2015
US Patent 5742735 expires April 21, 2015
US Patent 5455833 expires October 3, 2012

In addition, Alcatel-Lucent holds patents which may relate to MP3 and
MPEG encoding. This is still pending appeal (Alcatel-Lucent v
Microsoft). It is not clear whether they will give out an unstricted
patent grant.

US Patent 5341457 expires Aug 20, 2013.
US Patent RE39,080 expires April 25, 2023.

~spot