nosoftwarepatents-award

English

Deutsch

Home

Software Patent
of the year 2006

August – Patent 1

EP0719483 – Method for determining the type of coding to be selected for coding at least two signals

EU-Patent on software (algorithm)
Application to European Patent Office on 06/07/1994 by Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der angewandten Forschung e.V. (Germany)
Granted on 07/05/1997
Date of priority: 15/09/1993 (valid no more than until 15/9/2013)
Patent attorney: Dipl.-Ing. Fritz Schoppe
Patent specification provided by EPO/espacenet
Prizes: Deutscher Zukunftspreis 2000, Deutscher Internet Special Award NEO 2001, Sputnik Innovator Award 2004

Advice on the reading of patent specifications:

The decisive element are the claims, as they specify which actions are forbidden within the framework of the patent.
Violating one single claim is sufficient to be considered a patent violation. Generally, claim number 1 is the decisive main claim which covers all other claims relating to special cases.
The description is intended to help the reader interpret the claim. At the same time, it is supposed to document and disclose the details of the invention. This disclosure is the original purpose of the entire patent system.
In practice, a patent specification contains no detailed information on how the patented procedure could be implemented (even if the patent owner allowed the implementation). In particular, a software patent contains no program code (reference implementation), but merely describes the idea of a software.

Patented idea: Evaluating the similarities of two music data streams on the basis of audible differences

Main claim (claim 3): Including familiar findings of psychoacoustics in the calculation of the similarity measure of two music signals for the purpose of choosing a suitable compression method

Further claims:

Out of two signals, at least one is compressed, including coding errors. Decompressing this signal and including the result in the evaluation of similarities
Various approaches of using the findings of psychoacoustics
Collective compression, if the signals are classified as being "similar", otherwise separate compression

Description: The standard procedure in compressing stereo-music is to compress the average and the difference of channels instead of individual channels. This makes sense, if the channels are similar. It is patented the idea to consider the findings of psychoacoustics – which are assumed to be known – in the decision "similar or not?".

This patent is just one out of at least 20 patents related to the MP3-stabdard for the compression of music. The innovation prizes mentioned above relate to the entire patent portfolio. Imsofar it is worthwile to study other patents of the MP3-pool, e.g. EP0287578 and EP0803989.

Everyday parallel: A music fan wants to thin out his collection of music (compress). The imprints on two sound carriers make him doubt whether they are identical recordings of the same piece of music. Therefore he listens to both of them and decides "by ear"whether the two recordings are "similar enough", so that he can sell one of them.

Examples for patent infringements:

Every software used for the production of MP3-files
The music data format Ogg Vorbis was developed specifically as an alternative to MP3 which is not patented. According to the patent owner Ogg Vorbis is also affected by the group of MP3-patents, to which the above patent belongs. A juridic clarification is still expected.

Back to survey results

Next Patent