[Pkg-mythtv-maintainers] Bug#419597: MP2 patents

[Adam Williamson]

There seems to have been at least some discussion in the past about
patents that cover MP2 as well as MP3. The most useful discussion is
here, relating to MPC (an encoder that originated as an implementation
of MP2):

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=10072&st=0&

It contains reference to at least one specific patent that was
considered by at least some people to cover MP2, US patent 5,214,678 -
go to http://patft.uspto.gov/netahtml/PTO/srchnum.htm and enter that
number.

The patent is currently owned by Sisvel, whose page is at
http://www.audiompeg.com/website/homepage.htm . They only seem to be
asserting it in relation to MP3 - "The US patents licensed by Audio MPEG
and the Non-US patents licensed by Sisvel S.p.A. relate to digital audio
compression and among others are relevant for MP3 players, MPEG 2
compliant set-top boxes and satellite receivers, DVD players with MP3
capabilities, computers, PDAs, sound boards for computers, software for
encoding and/or decoding audio signals, and in general any technology
conforming to the ISO/IEC 11172-3 or ISO/IEC 13818-3 Standards (MPEG 1
and 2, Layer I, II, and III)." I'm not sure if this means they don't
think it applies to MP2, or if they just don't care about MP2.

It would be good for someone appropriately qualified to make a
determination about whether this patent affects twolame. The same
question regarding twolame's patent status recently arose in Mandriva
and I thought it'd be best to work together to determine the status.

I will mail the twolame maintainers for their opinion.
-- 
adamw