Microsoft to Pay $1.52 billion over MP3 Patents

[Phatfiddler]

"Microsoft must pay French phone equipment firm Alcatel-Lucent $1.52bn (£777m) after a US court ruled the IT giant had infringed audio patents."

Link: BBC mini-article (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6388273.stm)
Link: Bloomberg in-depth article (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a3OGdoKeH5AU&refer=home)


Discuss...

[PrinceArithon]

Good, but that still doesn't mean nothing. That's just a drop in the bucket for them. It should have been more....

Sorry...I guess this goes to show. You can't be too greedy or else things will happen back to you in return.

[Shay Stephens]

Three little letters:
ogg

[Polygon]

heheh, microsoft got patent owned. Its funny that microsoft would rather pay large amounts of money rather then go the open source route and just use a free open source audio format, like ogg or something.

[TBOL3]

I don't feel too happy, this is just money from one rich corporation to another.

[beercz]

I don't feel too happy, this is just money from one rich corporation to another.
I agree.

[Quillz]

Because they've invested too much in their own WMA format, which their Zune player uses.

[Polygon]

well thats wma format, they own that. the patent infringement is about MP3

[darkhatter]

Is there a huge patent war about to start?

[BoyOfDestiny]

Microsoft ordered to pay $1.5 billion in MP3 patent lawsuit
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070222-8910.html

Yes, I don't like MS
See here why:
http://www.groklaw.net/staticpages/index.php?page=2007021720190018
http://www.groklaw.net/staticpages/index.php?page=20070217195434855

With that out of the way, the patent system in the U.S. is broken. Hopefully this addresses why Ubuntu doesn't come with MP3 support out of the box...

:)

[EdThaSlayer]

That is quite a sum of money that Microsoft will have to pay. Although 100 million dollars is hardly anything 1.5 billion is quite a lot. So does this mean that we can get mp3 support out of the box now?I hope so.

[BoyOfDestiny]

That is quite a sum of money that Microsoft will have to pay. Although 100 million dollars is hardly anything 1.5 billion is quite a lot. So does this mean that we can get mp3 support out of the box now?I hope so.

Indeed a billion is a thousand million. It's just a huge huge amount of cash. I'm not sure if MS will have to pay it, depends on if they can get the case thrown out etc...

Either way Ubuntu Feisty has a friendlier option. Explains why mp3 doesn't play, and lets you enable universe and fetch it without mucking around with commandline or synaptic.

I think that's a safer bet than bundling it. Either way the mp3 patent should expire in 5 years if I'm not mistaken.

If anything, paying these guys off may prompt them to continue to sue others...

[the_darkside_986]

What would be better than an easy way of enabling mp3: presenting the user with a software that can convert all their mp3's to open source codecs like .ogg.

Not even M$ deserves to be sued over something as evil as a software "patent."

[Brunellus]

What would be better than an easy way of enabling mp3: presenting the user with a software that can convert all their mp3's to open source codecs like .ogg.

Not even M$ deserves to be sued over something as evil as a software "patent."
Transcoding lossy formats to other lossy formats?

On the whole, however, I agree. I use restricted formats only in the interests of backwards-compatibility; all my newly-encoded stuff for personal use is in free formats.

[dasunst3r]

But yet they continue to make threats against Linux without proving it (something about patents). In your English class, that's lack of elaboration, and it'll earn you a not-so good grade. Out here, I see it as slander (maybe libel), and it'll earn you a bad reputation (and maybe a lawsuit). So I think Microsoft deserves a little taste of their own medicine.

[nocturn]

That is quite a sum of money that Microsoft will have to pay. Although 100 million dollars is hardly anything 1.5 billion is quite a lot. So does this mean that we can get mp3 support out of the box now?I hope so.

Unfortunately, it's even less likely that we get it now as every distributor (including MS) has two companies to pay money...

I never got why manufacturers didn't flock to OGG years ago...

[nocturn]

On an off noted, MS is using patents to bully just about everyone else (the Novell-MS deal comes to mind), it's nice that they got bit by the very problem they are helping to create though...

[Mr Wrath]

I saw this in the news this morning and started laughing. It's about time that Microsoft gets nailed. I also laughed because of all the infringements...Speech, video, etc...this brightened my day.

[BuffaloX]

Unfortunately, it's even less likely that we get it now as every distributor (including MS) has two companies to pay money...

I never got why manufacturers didn't flock to OGG years ago...

Same here, I still don't understand why OGG hasn't become the dominating standard.
It's supposed to be better than mp3, and there is no license fee.

mp3 sucks big time, it's proprietary with nothing justifying any kind of license today.
Too many lousy encoders and decoders, because it's not free.
And mp3 pro was an even worse disaster. With very poor backward compatibility, and not much improvement to quality over old mp3.

I hope this will make mp3 die, and OGG becoming the new standard.

[v8YKxgHe]

While I agree OGG is a better format, it's eats battery life a lot which is not a good thing in "MP3" players.

[maniacmusician]

While I agree OGG is a better format, it's eats battery life a lot which is not a good thing in "MP3" players.
well, more technically, it takes more processing power to decode, which in turn consumes battery power faster than mp3 does.

[Phatfiddler]

http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=367933

This topic has already been posted :popcorn:

[dvarsam]

That is quite a sum of money that Microsoft will have to pay. Although 100 million dollars is hardly anything 1.5 billion is quite a lot. So does this mean that we can get mp3 support out of the box now?I hope so.

You know what I think...:
I think that everyone is trying to make money out of MS!!!
They use every kind of excuse to rip MS off!!!

MS has all the money in the world...
So, if you are out of cash or desperately need some, just sue Microsoft!!!
Come on, you can all think of something...
Besides, you all want to get rich, don't you? ;)
... and this is the easiest way to get some ca$h!

Thanks.

[ComplexNumber]

http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=367933

This topic has already been posted :popcorn:
i merged the threads. seeing as how the first one ended before this one started, merging them won't break any continuum.

[hardyn]

Unfortunately, it's even less likely that we get it now as every distributor (including MS) has two companies to pay money...

I never got why manufacturers didn't flock to OGG years ago...

same reason that mini-disks never caught on... the marketing guys jumped on to mp3... and rather than risk confusing the general public we be caught in legacy.

find a room of average people, ask them what an 'ogg' is... im betting 80% couldn't tell you. its just the power of marketing.

now we have MP3, WMA, AAC, OGG, this is getting confusing for non technical parents to buy gifts for kids... which is what the marketing guys are worried about.

[Trebuchet]

I'll be surprised if MS pays a dime to Lucent. After appeal and appeals to the appeal the only people who will get any money are the attorneys.

[Anthem]

I don't feel too happy, this is just money from one rich corporation to another.
No joke. Everybody hates Microsoft, and everybody loves to see them eat it. But this is VERY BAD for Linux, and open-source in general. It validates the business model of patent trolls, which is a danger to all of us.

This is a bad thing, no matter how much you hate Microsoft.

[DoctorMO]

Well I'd like to point out two things:

OGG requires floating point processing which is why it takes more power to decode, this also means it will never work on some mp3 players because the processors don't have floating point mathematics.

This recent patent troll isn't about the German owned mp3 format per say, Microsoft was already paying a license for that; and this is the patent that runs out in 2011/2012 and is also the patent that prevent the open source mp3 code from being included (no the mp3 decoder isn't proprietory, it is open source gpl)

This new patent is about how you encode data in order to compress it; I havn't looked into the details technically but it sounds so wide as it could cover other formats such as ogg, acc and even none music formats.

To be honest when formatting data patents should be strictly prohibitive, they don't let you patent music notes or English words for precisely this reason.

[saulgoode]

I am actually rather disappointed in the outcome of this case as I would prefer that software patents be eliminated.


I never got why manufacturers didn't flock to OGG years ago...

There are two main reasons:

First, when MP3s were initially introduced, the fact that it was based upon patented technology wasn't widely announced. It was only after the format saw widespread popularity that the patent holder sought royalties from codec producers.

Second, the algorithms for decoding OGG Vorbis required floating-point arithmetic whereas the MP3 decoders could get by with just fixed-point. This made MP3 more desirable for portable players and cell phones (and perhaps even to minor extent, desk top players). About a year ago, a modified Vorbis format was introduced which could be decoded with fixed-point processors.

[Phatfiddler]

There is now a fear of this lawsuit spreading to other companies that may be using the patents is question. Apple and RealNetworks now face the possibility of paying up as well! These are just 3 major US companies, and if the lawsuit(s) push through, several hundred companies could be faced with paying up to Lucent.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6389501.stm

[Ob1]

Didin't microsoft do this before with some German company? somewhere in 2005.

[MrHorus]

People are ignorant - they don't actually care about decent quality music and that's why things never catch on.

My collegue has a Zune and I have told him how MP3 is lossy and how after flashing my firmware on my iPod I can now playback Ogg and especially FLAC.

His take is that only audiophiles can hear the difference and people that say otherwise are imagining things that aren't there.

I told him that the music really *ISN'T* there with MP3 as it's lossy and I can clearly tell the difference between a 128kbit and a 256kbit MP3 and between same 256kbit MP3 and a FLAC-encoded track and if you spend a small amouny of money on headphones (£30/$55) then you can tell the difference all the more.

I care about my music and I want to enjoy it in all it's glory - that's why my media centre has a 160GB hard drive that I am slowly filling up with FLAC as and when I rip new CDs that I buy.

[Foudre]

hmm, they messed up, of course if it were up to me formats wouldn't be restricted, i always wondered who owned mp3 right since its always protected, germans, it seams, too bad mp3s are so popular infact people call any media device an mp3 player for some dumb reason now, but people are dumb, I never really liked mp3, i like the small file size but ogg sounds better and doens't have all this crazy crap about it over who owns it, for being a free format 2nd in popularity only to mp3 i'm surprise ms never thought to include codecs for ogg in media player expessially when alot of their games audio is encoded in ogg

[Erunno]

stuff

Many people use their audio players in noisy areas (on the street, while driving etc). The difference in quality between MP3 and OGG usually becomes in my opinion negligible when the music is partly superposed by environmental sounds. In case you have optimal listening conditions (no other sounds, good loudspeakers, decent equalizer settings etc) you'll probably want to use the original medium anyway instead of the lossy OGG/MP3 files.

[Brunellus]

People are ignorant - they don't actually care about decent quality music and that's why things never catch on.

My collegue has a Zune and I have told him how MP3 is lossy and how after flashing my firmware on my iPod I can now playback Ogg and especially FLAC.

His take is that only audiophiles can hear the difference and people that say otherwise are imagining things that aren't there.

I told him that the music really *ISN'T* there with MP3 as it's lossy and I can clearly tell the difference between a 128kbit and a 256kbit MP3 and between same 256kbit MP3 and a FLAC-encoded track and if you spend a small amouny of money on headphones (£30/$55) then you can tell the difference all the more.

I care about my music and I want to enjoy it in all it's glory - that's why my media centre has a 160GB hard drive that I am slowly filling up with FLAC as and when I rip new CDs that I buy.
I run lossy formats--ogg vorbis, quality 5. The compromise you make is between quality and portability.

I prefer ogg vorbis because it gives me better quality with smaller filesizes, at the cost of greater demand on my player's processor (and thus less battery life). When bitrates come down, ogg vorbis really shines compared to mp3: fewer compression artifacts. Ogg vorbis is also easy to split and join, and with appropriate playback software, gapless playback is not a problem.

Again, other people would rather trade off file size for processor load (mp3).

FLAC isn't really that necessary to me unless I intend to make archive copies of my recordings--something I might want to look into doing.