Open jgranick opened 7 years ago
Actually, I think they are all expired.
Further research seems to show the last two remaining patents actually expired late last year 😎
Quick sanity check: are they expired in all jurisdictions, not just the US?
The basic MP3 decoding and encoding technology is patent-free in the European Union, all patents having expired there by 2012 at the latest.
I haven't seen details about any other countries
Updating this issue, we should find a native library we can use to decode MP3 (preferably one with a permissive license) and plan on integrating it into Lime's native library.
The changing landscape of MP3 patents means that it seems we will be able to use MP3 decoding either now, or by the end of the year. Nearly all of the patents for MP3 are expired, and the last four are expiring this year.
http://www.tunequest.org/a-big-list-of-mp3-patents/20070226/
We could consider SMPEG, or perhaps there's another library we would prefer with better performance?