>On April 23, 2017, Technicolor's mp3 licensing program for certain mp3 related patents and software of Technicolor and Fraunhofer IIS has been terminated.
Does this mean that you can't get a license for MP3 anymore, or are they trying to say you don't need a license anymore? Are they opening it up, or are they shutting it down?
There are still patents left for mp3 encoding though.
Edit: apparently there are two patents left in relations to encoder optimizations[0] not mentioned on the wikipedia pages. Those are probably irrelevant to modern encoders on modern computers.
[0]: https://madfileformatscience.garymcgath.com/2016/0/05/mp3pat...
> However, as of 2016-11-10, Fedora is now able to include MP3 decoding functionality. MP3 encoding functionality is still not permissible, because it requires patented technologies and the patent holder has not provided licenses that are compatible with Fedora's requirements.
So it looks like there are some patents relevant to modern encoders.
Edit: The wiki page[0] links to the Fraunhofer page[1] saying that the licensing program has been terminated...
[0]: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Multimedia/MP3
[1]: http://www.mp3licensing.com/ which redirects to https://www.iis.fraunhofer.de/en/ff/amm/prod/audiocodec/audi...
See: https://madfileformatscience.garymcgath.com/2016/0/05/mp3pat...
The last two patents seem to be related to an encode optimization and are not needed to write a decoder.
Which means it is possible now to include an MP3 decoder in GNU/Linux distros, etc. without paying the $2,500 fee.
I don't think I know the technical details well enough to comment on 5,924,060, but I'll note that it has a priority date of 1986 and publication date of 1999... good riddance to submarine patents.
[0]: http://www.tunequest.org/a-big-list-of-mp3-patents/20070226/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP3#Licensing.2C_ownership_and...
Looks like the parents have expired as of 2 weeks ago