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

[Harald Hoyer]

Tom "spot" Callaway wrote:
> 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

So, in Fedora 28 we may be able to include MP3 support? :)

> 
> 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
>