RE: Potential IP issues with OpenAL or FMOD?

Folks,

I3DL2 was developed by IASIG, which, as a "Work Project" of MMA, 
follows MMA IP Policy (www.midi.org/aboutus/policies.php) and the
IASIG working group process makes sure all participants are aware
of such obligations. Of course, an organization can only know the 
IPR status of its own members, and can not assert that someone 
somewhere else does not claim IPR in the work. But that said, 
OpenAL's reference to (or use of) I3DL2 should be no problem for W3C.

To have a reasonable expectation that *all* of OpenAL is "IPR-free"
(again, "IPR-free" meaning just that none of the participants have 
any basis to claim they own essential IPR) you would need to know
what IPR rules were in place for developers of OpenAL, and how the
development process was managed. Off the top of my head I don't 
recall, but I know people who were involved and can ask them to 
remind me.

One possible issue that comes to mind is that Creative Labs claims
to have some IPR in the way they do some things related to 3D sound
positioning, but I do not know for sure if such IPR is part of 
OpenAL (and if so, in which version).

I will see what I can find out, and let everyone know. But I doubt
there is much reason to be concerned. After all, the "Open" in 
OpenAL *is* supposed to mean "no restrictions".

- TW

> -----Original Message-----
>
> In one of our previous meetings, Chris Rogers mentioned he drew upon 
> specs like OpenAL and FMOD in his Web Audio spec. The question of 
> whether this would lead to any IPR issues (the resulting w3c 
> spec will be royalty-free) was raised, and Chris suggested you'd be 
> able to gauge whether there may be any such issue.

Received on Friday, 3 February 2012 23:29:47 UTC