A “Fraunhofer Society” refers to the overarching organization that manages a network of applied research institutes, while a “Fraunhofer Institute” is a single research unit within that network, focused on a specific area of study like materials science, healthcare, or digital technology; essentially, the Fraunhofer Society is the umbrella organization, and the Fraunhofer Institutes are the individual research centers under its governance.
They are credited with the creation of the MP3 format so maybe that’s where these supposed lawsuits are coming from?
DdCno1@beehaw.org 3 weeks ago
The relevant patents expired a long time ago. MPEG codecs were not free and the research society did sue those who used them without acquiring licenses:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP3#Licensing,_ownership,_a…
In response to these licensing costs, ogg Vorbis was developed as a free alternative. However, Fraunhofer also co-developed AAC, which is open source (although patents still protect it and require licensing for redistribution). You may have heard of if it you’re into watching movies.
Not that any of this matters, because as you can read in the excerpt above, Teuken-7B is released as both a research version and a version under the Apache 2.0 license, which permits commercial use and redistribution without any payments to the society.