Most of you are probably not lawyers, and these are not
really API questions, but someone may know the answers or where to find them.
As many of you are aware MP3 and AAC are covered by a
variety of patents that may require licenses for use in an application.
As I understand it:
-
MP3 requires a patent license for encoding, decoding or
transfer.
-
AAC requires a patent license for encoding or decoding,
but not for transfer.
(There are various classifications for the types of licenses
required for various application types and entities.)
Obviously the iPhone and iPod Touch have licenses for their MP3
and AAC decoder circuitry. Apple must also have a license for MP3 streaming to
cover their podcast support in Mobile iTunes.
Would any of those patent licenses be “platform
enabling” and cover decoding or transfer of MP3s by 3rd party
applications for the iPhone/iPod Touch? Or decoding of AAC by 3rd
party applications?
Would any such “platform enabling” patent
licenses also cover the use of a software codec for decoding rather than the
hardware decoder? How about encoding?
The answers to these questions were not clear from my
reading of the MP3 and AAC licensing sites
www.mp3licensing.com
and www.vialicensing.com/licensing/AAC_index.cfm
Any help, corrections or pointers would be greatly
appreciated.
Thanks,
-
Richard Lawler