Re: MP3

[Joe Hart <j.hart@orange.nl>]

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Michael M. wrote:
> On Fri, 2007-03-02 at 18:44 +0100, Joe Hart wrote:
>> I didn't know that Lucent bought Frauenhover though.  That is
>> interesting news.
> 
> 
> Huh?  Lucent does not own Fraunhofer.
> 
> Thompson handles mp3 licensing for Fraunhofer:
> 
> Questions about MP3
> 
> End Users: Fraunhofer IIS is a research institute. Although MP3 was
> developed here, we do not sell any MP3 products to end users. MP3
> encoders are available from various companies. They are integrated, for
> example, in Apple iTunes, Windows Media 10 and MusicMatch Jukebox.
> 
> Companies: Thomson (http://www.mp3licensing.com/) is our software and
> patent licensing partner for MP3. Please direct your enquiry to them. On
> the web site, you can find the current MP3 royalty rates and the contact
> details of Thomson.
> 
> http://www.iis.fraunhofer.de/fhg/iis/EN/bf/amm/projects/mp3/index.jsp
> 
> Thompson has two rates for software mp3 licensing (not counting the
> mp3PRO version):
> 
> mp3 patent & software license:
> Decoder:  US $0.75 per unit or US $60,000 one-time paid up
> Codec:  US $5.00 per unit
> 
> mp3 patent-only license:
> Decoder:  US $0.75 per unit or US $50,000 one-time paid up
> Codec:  US $2.50 per unit
> 
> The minimum royalties are US $15,000 per calendar year.
> 
> http://www.mp3licensing.com/royalty/software.html
> 
> 
Michelle is partially right as are you.

Thompson does sell the licenses, but Freunhofer (with an f and not a v)
is not the only party involved in the patent.

<Quote>

Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS is a German research
institute that helped develop the MP3 audio compression technology along
with Bell Labs, once part of Lucent Technologies, which merged with
Alcatel last year.

</Quote>

That's why MS was ordered to pay $1.52 Billion to Alcatel-Lucent recently.


Joe
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