[asterisk-users] is g729 codec free? or under license???

[Steve Underwood]

On 04/09/2014 06:54 PM, Tzafrir Cohen wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 09, 2014 at 10:19:59AM +0800, Steve Underwood wrote:
>> Hi Jeff,
>>
>> On 04/08/2014 12:13 PM, Jeff Brower wrote:
>>> Darrel- The G729 essential patents were *granted* in 1996, but
>>> applied for prior to June 8 1995. That means their lifespan is
>>> either 20 years from their application date, or 17 years from
>>> their grant date, whichever is greater
>>> (http://www.uspto.gov/main/faq/p120013.htm). Either way, they
>>> expire in 2014. -Jeff
>> Where did you get the cutoff date of June 8 1995, and how does 20
>> years from that date lead to the last of the patents expiring in
>> 2014? Nobody uses G.729. They use G.729A. The G.729A spec is
>> somewhat later than the original G.729, but I don't know if there
>> are any additional patents which specifically relate to Annex A. You
>> could use G.729 instead, but it roughly doubles the compute needed.
> If it allows me to avoid the trolls: I'll pay that performance hit. In
> many caces there are CPU cycles to spare. But the licensing is a hard
> limit.
Well, you do get the benefit of higher quality for your extra compute. 
G.729 sounds distinctly better than G.729A on a lot of material.
>> There are various things on the web saying the last of the patents
>> on G.723.1, which was around in draft form long before G.729,
>> expires in 2014. However, there seem to be patents related to that
>> codec which don't really expire until some time in 2015. Its really
>> hard to find solid information. The ITU patent database rarely
>> identifies the actual patents being claimed, so its damned hard to
>> look them up.
> Nice.
>
Regards,
Steve