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Thomson's and Fraunhofer's multimillion dollar MP3 patent business at risk
By Business Wire HONG KONG Oct. 13, 2005 Sisvel, a well reputed
company in the business of licensing patented technology,
announced today that it has filed suit against Thomson (Paris:
TMM.PA) and Fraunhofer before German and Italian Courts asking
for the invalidity and the revocation of the patents owned by
these two companies in reference to the popular MP3 audio
compression technology.
Up to now these patents have been licensed by Thomson on behalf
of Fraunhofer and have been the source of a multimillion dollar
business in license revenues for Thomson. If Sisvel's legal
actions are successful, Thomson stands to lose one of its more
profitable sources of income.
"After a complete study of Thomson's and Fraunhofer's patents
related to the MP3 audio system," says Mr. Paolo d'Amato,
managing director of Sisvel and well renowned scientist in the
field of broadcasting technology, "our experts arrived at the
conclusion that the contribution by Thomson and Fraunhofer to
the MP3 system is trivial and does not deserve patent
protection."
"MP3," continued Mr. d'Amato, "is the commercial name of MPEG
Audio layer III, which is an additional level of compression of
the MPEG Audio system invented and developed by Philips
(Amsterdam: PHIA.AS) , France Telecom (Paris: FTE.PA),
Telediffusion de France, and IRT, and adopted by the ISO/IEC
standard committee under the reference ISO/IEC 11172-3. The
searches conducted by Sisvel's experts on the status of the
technology at the time these patents were filed, using
prestigious facilities such as the Austrian and Swedish Patent
Offices, have made clear that the contribution of Thomson and
Fraunhofer to the development of MPEG Audio layer III was based
on already-known technology and is therefore not patentable."
Contact Sisvel, S.p.A. Paolo D'Amato, +39-011-98-63-728 email:
paolo.d_amato@sisvel.it
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