There seems to have been at least some discussion in the past about patents that cover MP2 as well as MP3. The most useful discussion is here, relating to MPC (an encoder that originated as an implementation of MP2):
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=10072&st=0& It contains reference to at least one specific patent that was considered by at least some people to cover MP2, US patent 5,214,678 - go to http://patft.uspto.gov/netahtml/PTO/srchnum.htm and enter that number. The patent is currently owned by Sisvel, whose page is at http://www.audiompeg.com/website/homepage.htm . They only seem to be asserting it in relation to MP3 - "The US patents licensed by Audio MPEG and the Non-US patents licensed by Sisvel S.p.A. relate to digital audio compression and among others are relevant for MP3 players, MPEG 2 compliant set-top boxes and satellite receivers, DVD players with MP3 capabilities, computers, PDAs, sound boards for computers, software for encoding and/or decoding audio signals, and in general any technology conforming to the ISO/IEC 11172-3 or ISO/IEC 13818-3 Standards (MPEG 1 and 2, Layer I, II, and III)." I'm not sure if this means they don't think it applies to MP2, or if they just don't care about MP2. It would be good for someone appropriately qualified to make a determination about whether this patent affects twolame. The same question regarding twolame's patent status recently arose in Mandriva and I thought it'd be best to work together to determine the status. I will mail the twolame maintainers for their opinion. -- adamw -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]