The Fraunhofer Institute of Integrated Circuits said in a filing that its "licensing program for certain MP3 related patents" had been obsolete and "terminated".
After more than two decades after its first inception, the German research institute that funded MP3 dropped ownership of it.
MP3 remains as the popular format for music sharing, but there were "more effective audio codecs with advanced features available today". There are also plans to create formats with more efficient storage capabilities while retaining better audio quality.
A statement from the Institute said:
"Those can deliver more features and a higher audio quality at much lower bitrates compared to mp3."
MP3 was developed during the 1980s and 90s, and was released in 1993. It quickly became the standard file type for audio and proliferating online music downloads. While the initial aim had been for a way to deliver music signals over telephone lines, the team of six researchers was able to develop and market the widely popular MP3 code.
The format later became popular for music players such as Apple's iPod at its 2001 release, selling millions of copies. MP3 took up 10 percent of the storage space of files, a massive reduction at the time compared to the regular audio files
MP3 format has also led some other major breakthroughs, such as the proliferation of peer-to-peer file-sharing sites like Napster. The format is also popular in the rise of the internet and digital piracy.
