Karl-Erik Tallmo on Tue, 28 Aug 2001 01:41:37 +0200 (CEST) |
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[Nettime-bold] Re: <nettime> a musical tribute digest [cramer vs recktenwald x2] |
> >Quoted from http://www.mp3.com/news/095.html : > >> Dear Ladies and Gentlemen, >> >> As you may know, both the Fraunhofer Institute and THOMSON have done >> important work to develop MPEG Layer-3 audio compression (before and >> after it became part of the MPEG standards). This work has resulted >> in many inventions and several patents, covering the MPEG Layer-3 >> standard. >> >> From your publications and your web-site we learn that you >> distribute and/or sell decoders and/or encoders that use the MPEG >> Layer-3 standard. >> >> Our files do not show that you have a valid license agreement with >> us. This means that the products infringe the patent rights of > > Fraunhofer and THOMSON. >snip > > >> We look forward to hearing from you soon. >> >> Best regards, >> - Martin >> >> --- >> Martin Sieler >> Fraunhofer IIS-A, Audio & Multimedia >> email: sir@iis.fhg.de >> phone: +49 9131 776-610 >> fax: +49 9131 776-699 >> www: http://www.iis.fhg.de/amm/ > >-- All this sounds as an echo from '94, when Unisys and Compuserve tried to charge developers and end-users (or rather end-distributors) of gif files for the use of their patent of the compression algorithm LZW which they had developed. Back then, creative netizens developed an alternative algorithm within a couple of hours, that was supposed to be very easy to convert all the gif files into - if necessary. I think it was called GEF. Unisys/Compuserve backed off then - at least from some of their demands. Maybe this will happen here too... Karl-Erik Tallmo -- _________________________________________________________________ KARL-ERIK TALLMO, Swedish writer, lecturer MAGAZINE: http://art-bin.com _________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________ Nettime-bold mailing list Nettime-bold@nettime.org http://www.nettime.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nettime-bold