neutrino38's Journal: Microsoft to pay royalties to Alcatel for MP3 what a mess

I guess everybody read about this huge royalty fee that Microsoft has to pay to Alcatel Lucent for embedding MP3 in Windows Media Players.

What a mess !

Some slashdotter would probably rejoice that Microsoft has been burned by patent fee as they are playing the same game with others. Personally I find it very stupid. How many years is the MP3 format around? More that $1 billion for supporting a file format and a compression technology.

Well one reader of Le Monde newspaper summarized my own opinion:

[fr] Le point positif de cette affaire: faire prendre conscience du danger que représentent les "brevets logiciels", qui sont autant de monopoles posés sur des idées abstraites et en général tout à fait triviales - brevets que les lobbies en propriété intellectuelle voudraient désormais légaliser à Bruxelles. Enfin, ironie du sort, c'est l'un des plus fidèle partisans des brevets logiciels qui est ici condamné. Juste retour des choses ?

Xavier Roche 23.02.07 | 11h01

I am not fully against technology patents but here we can see how absurd it can becomes when a company seek legitimate interoperability with a widespread format, it gets punished.

My view is if they want to make a format a standard then all patents about it and the associated technology should be dropped. In order to reward the developpers of the standard, I would propose that each company that seeks interoperatbility should pay a one time fee to standard body which in turns would transfer back the money to the standard developpers.

Update:

Microsoft already paid $16 Million dollars to Fraunhoffer Institute for MP3! This is becoming more ridiculous. So the guys who sold the patent fee said: "Ok, we take the money" Then a few years later "Euh... by the way, it was MUCH MORE expensive. Can you give us MUCH MORE money? You disagree? Fine. I'll sue."

I am not aware of any major improvement regarding MP3 format in the meantime so this monies does not match any actual work. Stupid !

Emmanuel BUU
IVèS