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The MP3 format is officially free

19.05.2017

The Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits officially said goodbye to the MP3 codec and file format. Key MP3-related patents expired at the end of April. It is reported by National Public Radio.

MP3 (MPEG-1 Layer III) is a popular codec and audio file format that is widely supported around the world. The vast majority of media player developers (both software and stand-alone devices) include MP3 support in their product.

Different patents related to MP3 were owned by different companies, which gave rise to constant disputes and lawsuits. As a result, some device manufacturers (such as MP3 players) did not pay for an MP3 license at all, while others paid a royalty of several tens of cents per device. Alcatel-Lucent, for example, sued Microsoft for $1,53 billion.

The Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits said in a statement that the licensing program associated with the MP3 patents has officially ended. According to representatives of the Institute, the future belongs to codecs that compress audio more efficiently, such as AAC or MPEG-H, which is being developed.

Despite National Public Radio's announcement of the "official death" of MP3, in reality, the expiration of patents (and the termination of the licensing program) means that MP3 support can be built into your products without any royalties to the organizations holding the patents.

Recently, another common technology, the Adobe Flash Player, officially became a thing of the past. The product has been repeatedly criticized for a large number of known vulnerabilities in the code, and Adobe at the end of 2015 recognized the victory of HTML5 over Flash.

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