Now that Alcatel-Lucent won an unprecedented $1.5 Billion patent infringement lawsuit (one of six lawsuits) against Microsoft, this will boost their claim against all other companies using MP3 technology. The patents in question govern the conversion of audio into the digital MP3 file format on personal computers.
We’re already seeing reports that Apple, Samsung and Sandisk are also being sued by Texas MP3 Technologies, although this seems to be from a different but related MP3 technology.
This begs the question “will this be the doom of MP3?“, which is arguably the most popular audio format for decades. If Alcatel-Lucent eventually wins all the cases, it could ran after all other companies that feature mp3 conversion technology. Are we moving to another format like Apple’s AAC. How about Ogg Vorbis?