Recently the MP3 standard used by millions for their digital music has come under attack from companies seeking to gain additional patent licensing fees. The one that hit the news for the most part was of course the Alcatel-Lucent case against Microsoft where Microsoft was told to pay $1.5 billion for infringing a patent it thought it had already licensed from the Fraunhofer Institut. However the Register reports that another company has also started trying to get a piece of the action:

The world's major MP3 player manufacturers have been sued in a patent infringement case by a company that began the case the day after it acquired the patent.

Apple, Samsung and SanDisk have been sued by Texas MP3 Technologies which bought the US patent from two Korean inventors. The patent was originally lodged in 1997, was bought by Texas MP3 on 15 February this year, and the suit was filed on 16 February.

This patent appears to have originated with SigmaTel, who then sold it to a patent licensing company, and seems to be remarkably broad as it describes a
"portable audio device suitable for reproducing MPEG encoded data includes a plurality of inputs, a data storage, a display, an audio output, at least one processor and a battery". I have some doubt about whether such a patent would be enforceable, although, as the original inventors seem to be related to the ones who beat the Diamond Multimedia RIO to market in 1998, the patent may well be seen as valid (I'm unclear about the relationship between the patent filers, SigmaTel, and the Korean Company Saehan but this Sigmatel webpage spreads some light on the issue).

In the light of the Alcatel-Lucent/Microsoft decision an article appeared in Wired recently about possible successors to MP3 where it named the choices as either AAC (MPEG 4 audio), Microsoft's WMA or Ogg Vorbis. This article has some interesting conclusions but since it seems to be unaware of the Sigmatel patent claim it seems to rank the open source Ogg Vorbis codec lower than it might otherwise be placed. From my reading of the Sigmatel patent, Ogg Vorbis would seem to be an ideal solution since it has nothing to do with the MPEG body and it is sure to be available to all royalty free (the drawback of the Microsoft codec, which Microsoft can choose to license or not). Although the Wired article does make clear that MP3 patent holders may consider Ogg Vorbis to infringe or at the least attempt to convince a court of that fact:

Added to the technical and political hurdles are non-technical obstacles to Apple and other manufacturers embracing Ogg Vorbis. Montgomery, who has had a lot of experience trying to convince manufacturers to adopt the codec, said the first problem with Ogg adoption is that "lawyers are paid to say 'no.'"

The second is that the same patents now being squabbled over by licensors of the MP3 codec could eventually threaten Ogg Vorbis. "To this day, we still have lawyers tell us they won't support Ogg because Thomson would come after them," Montgomery said.

One thing is sure however, and that is that the MP3 hardware has decreased dramatically in cost. I bought a 1GB flash MP3 player (see below) in the local supermarket today for €36 - not a great deal more than one might expect to pay for a 1GB flash drive on its own. It seems unlikely that intellectual property costs make up a large proportion of that price tag, which means that consumers are likely to complain if aggressive patent enforcement pushes up the price tag for digital music.

According to a thread today in the Skype Windows Forum, Skype users (and that includes me) have been receiving bogus skype chat messages which ask users to click on a link. If you do so you apparently get a rootkit which is only recognized by the very latest virus software versions.

In my case the chat message allegedly came from a friend and had a vaguely plausible subject, however it was clearly not genuine becuase the link was odd and becuase the user immediately left the chat session after sending the link. An example that I received this morning is:

[10:05:37] XXXX says:

Check up this:
http://24243.psadionkderunhdetionkdase.com/7/7849

[10:05:40] XXXX left this chat

Needless to say you should not even think about following the link which downloads either an .exe or .pif file that presumably includes the rootkit.

Probably one of the biggest changes at 3GSM this year was the near disappearance of Siemens as a separate entity. Two years ago in Cannes Siemens had handsets and network equipment. Last year in Barcelona the handsets were BenQ but with a certain amount of Siemens logo/styling visible, and the network business was still proudly independent. This year the handsets have disappeared completely and the network part is now a joint venture with Nokia (logo above). This is a step from last year where we noted that Siemens and Nokia were sharing sponsorship of a pillar: