Speex dev - Aug 2004 - regarding CELP/ACELP/others patentes

Hi All,

First of all, I'm sorry if my question is offtopic on this list. In such 
case please ignore this post and/or contact me directly. I'm asking my 
questions there because I feel you had similar problem before starting 
developing Speex.

My story:
my friend developed 3gpp content creator and he would distribute it in 
binary form.
But there is problem with AMR licensing (the terms are unacceptable for 
him). VoiceAge asked him to pay some huge amount of USD for (as they 
said) AMR license.
He contacted me to clarify situation with licensing issue. (I'm working 
in video coding area. So, please be patient if I missed something in 
audio coding).

As I understood the problem is in ACELP algorithm which AMR uses in 
6.7kbs mode. Other modes use CELP. He can disable this mode and this 
will allow him to don’t break law. Am I right?

And second question: how can I get full list of patented algorithms used 
in AMR standard? Could you point me to some resource?


-- 
Best regards,
Andrew Voznytsa

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> As I understood the problem is in ACELP algorithm which AMR uses in 
> 6.7kbs mode. Other modes use CELP. He can disable this mode and this 
> will allow him to donÿt break law. Am I right?
No. AMR (like other proprietary codecs) is full of patents and I'm
pretty sure most of the modes actually use ACELP (otherwise, they'll
just be patented by someone else).
> And second question: how can I get full list of patented algorithms used 
> in AMR standard? Could you point me to some resource?
No idea, but I don't think it's realistic to go after each patent (there
are tons), so if you really want to use AMR, you have to pay the
"middleman" that will sell you the whole patent package. I don't
think
there's any other (legal) way to go. That's especially true for AMR (you
mean AMR-NB, not AMR-WB, right), which is a collection of codecs that
were already patented before going into the AMR standard.

Otherwise, there's Speex ;)

        Jean-Marc


-- 
Jean-Marc Valin
http://www.xiph.org/~jm/
LABORIUS
Université de Sherbrooke, Québec, Canada


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Andrew Voznytsa wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> First of all, I'm sorry if my question is offtopic on this list. In 
> such case please ignore this post and/or contact me directly. I'm 
> asking my questions there because I feel you had similar problem 
> before starting developing Speex.
>
> My story:
> my friend developed 3gpp content creator and he would distribute it in 
> binary form.
> But there is problem with AMR licensing (the terms are unacceptable 
> for him). VoiceAge asked him to pay some huge amount of USD for (as 
> they said) AMR license.
> He contacted me to clarify situation with licensing issue. (I'm 
> working in video coding area. So, please be patient if I missed 
> something in audio coding).
>
> As I understood the problem is in ACELP algorithm which AMR uses in 
> 6.7kbs mode. Other modes use CELP. He can disable this mode and this 
> will allow him to don’t break law. Am I right?
>
> And second question: how can I get full list of patented algorithms 
> used in AMR standard? Could you point me to some resource?
>
You don't seem to be American. Most countries have sane patents laws 
(notable exceptions are USA and Japan). So if your friend it's not 
planning to distribute it there, he's safe. But get Legal advice.
I had problems with american companies trying to use American law in 
Argentina. But they are usually bullies. As soon as your lawer sends 
them an aswer in your language plus a reciep (on some countries the one 
who looses has to pay both sides costs) they will stop whining.
--- >8 ----
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