On Mon, Jun 7, 2010 at 10:10 AM, a cutler22 <[email protected]> wrote: > > > Bob - when will the AMBE patents expire? I know its years away, but are we > talking 5-10 years or 20?
It'd have to be closer to 5-10 years than 20; D-STAR came out in the early '00s (1999?), so AMBE had to exist (and be patented) prior to that. Patents in the US are either 20 or 14 years, depending on the type, so if AMBE was brand new when D-Star started using it, you're looking at 4-10 years at this point. Here's a list of AVSI's patents, if anyone's interested: http://www.google.com/patents?scoring=2&q=inassignee%3A%22Digital+Voice+Systems+Inc%22 My suspicion based on the timing of the patent filings is that the patents in question date from the early '90s, making it much sooner, but I don't know enough about AMBE or codecs in general to interpret the patents to figure it out. 73, Bob N2KGO
