Licensing Pardon me but MP3 is already public domain It is a file format You can not patent a file format as far as i know that would be like Adobe saying they have a patent on PDF or Microsoft saying they have a patent on WMA or DOC files You simply can not patent or copyright or in any other way protect your idea if it involves a format of storing data Just as you can not patent things like NTFS or FAT or HFS you can not patent MP3