On Wed, Feb 04, 2015 at 04:40:02PM -0500, Stewart Russell wrote
But are the licences included with the Odroid, or have they just implemented the code without paying Fraunhofer their dues?
Depending where on the planet you are, MP3 patents may have already expired in your jurisdiction as per http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP3#Licensing_and_patent_issues This is not legal advice; see a real lawyer for that.
The initial near-complete MPEG-1 standard (parts 1, 2 and 3) was publicly available on 6 December 1991 as ISO CD 11172. In most countries, patents cannot be filed after prior art has been made public, and patents expire 20 years after the initial filing date, which can be up to 12 months later for filings in other countries. As a result, patents required to implement MP3 expired in most countries by December 2012, 21 years after the publication of ISO CD 11172.
An exception is the United States, where patents filed prior to 8 June 1995 expire 17 years after the publication date of the patent, but application extensions make it possible for a patent to issue much later than normally expected (see submarine patents). The various MP3-related patents expire on dates ranging from 2007 to 2017 in the U.S.
-- Walter Dnes <waltdnes@waltdnes.org>