Slashdot Mirror
Apple Sued Over iTunes UI
An anonymous reader writes "It apppears that Contois Music Technology is suing Apple Computer over the UI to its iTunes music software. The suit claims patent infringement over a patent owned by Contois."
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
...this looks like a solid case. If the iPod was introduced in 2001, this is after the patent date. Seems like a settlement is in the future to me.
Anyone heard of a damn jukebox?
This seems to cover not only iTunes but WinAMP, FooBar2000, and just about any other player that can organize music and play only selected artists, albums, or genre's.
This my friends is why we don't like software patents.
Kyle
http://www.unlogikal.net/
Maybe if enough big companies get shafted through patent lawsuits they may consider working to get rid of software patents.
But then again....
---- There are 10 types of people in the world. Those that understand binary and those that don't
bath water.
If the child is a brat, you discipline the child. If the child tries to stab you to death for disciplining it, you put the child in a mental ward for safe observation and help. If when the child (or in this case patent industry) is mature and tries it again, society prescribes the death penalty (in the US). Why shouldn't the patent system be any different?
The big IT corporations don't need patents to maintain their control because they are in a unique position to crush upstarts that few industries have. They industry as a whole has proven that they can't use them responsibly and the very fact that a hobbyist can turn their hobby into a business means that patents are bad. I'm sorry, but the ends justify the means here. Patent holders have time and again proven that milking their work and not innovating is their real goal, at least in IT. It's time that the entire system be flushed out and simplified.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
not that i have anything against apple but we need big name cases like this to show what these patents will do. You thought that people would miss their blackberry, try telling everyone out there right now that they can't use their itunes anymore...
so much for 'the land of invention'. now its 'the land of scam artists'.
Furthermore the bit about playing music in certain categories is very unlike playlists.
But a lot like the iTunes Music Store.
I don't need a signature.
Abstract
A computer system and method for controlling a media playing device. The system provides a user interface for allowing a user access to media pieces stored in a media database. The interface is also for controlling a media playing device, like a player piano or movie playing video device, that is coupled to the computer to play the accessed or selected piece of media. In one embodiment there is a computer interface that allows a user to display only music that relates to a selected category, like jazz or classical music. Another embodiment allows the user to direct the media playing device to automatically play selected music pieces that are related to a selected music category. Another embodiment allows a user to direct the media playing device to automatically play selected music pieces that are related to the selected music composer or artist."
My only question is: Where are the lawsuits against Microsoft's WMP, Realplayer, the Microsoft XBox Media Player, MusicMatch, etc?
iTunes has been out for over 4 years, and just now there's a lawsuit? I understand it takes time to find a lawyer that will accept a case, but *4* years? Hmmm, right at the height of popularity too, kinda amazing how it worked out like that...
I like big butts and I cannot lie.
The patent was granted January 1999. It was actually filed Feb. 13, 1996, so you have to beat that date since that is the priority date and the date from which their 20 year term of protection begins. If you read the claims carefully, it is more than just a simple listing and selection of songs. In order to violate the patent, each and every element of an independent claim has to be present in what is alleged to be infringed upon. It is not as simple as you are making it out to be.
Similar to the upcoming US election results
Part of the basis of the infringement is that people who would eventually work for Apple, but didn't at the time, attended a trade show where this dude was exhibiting.
The implication is that they saw his app and were so entralled at his genious to organize music by Genere, then artist, and finally album, that they quit their jobs, convinced Apple to hire them, and then applied such unique cataloging skills to iTunes.
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
Contois is seeking a trial by jury.
Nearly every software patent I have ever seen is bogus.
Apple is getting its just deserts from supporting the software patent system.
MORTAR COMBAT!
Woah! Those are really neat inventions. Must have required a lot of intellect to bring that intellectual property to paper.
Go patents go!
diegoT
There are a quadrillion patents for existing technology, now slightly tweaked or modernized. I'm sure someone got a new patent for the steam engine just as soon as they connected it to a computer. It's now a computer controlled steam engine. Then when they connect that computer to the internet, it's an internet enable steam engine. Then when they created a web interface for it, they got more patents.
None of your listed "problems" have anything to do with patent law. That's the problem. Yes, yes, obviousness is *supposed* to come into play, but that has obviously been defined out of existence. Your prior art would not be covered by this patent.
Yes, it's idiotic. That's the problem.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
And?
They might have a case for copyright infringement if they can show their ex-employees took the code to Apple. Might even have a case for contract law, if Apple NDA'd to see the software at the trade shows.
But the patent was applied for in 1999. How long has winamp existed? When winamp first came out, how much information did it display on the screen? How long have ID3 tags been around, with Winamp using them to display song name, artist, title... ooops, we've already passed the two fields in the patent! And the buttons, of course the buttons! Buttons are clearly a novel way to control a computer!
The patent as described in the abstract would have been a pretty cool invention. "Control a player piano from your computer!" Too bad the patent lawyers sank their teeth into it and turned it into a steaming pile of crap, knowing that the patent office would accept it anyway. "A computer controlled device" in this language could mean anything from a piano to a pair of speakers.... and imagine that, the music comes out my speakers when I hit play in either iTunes or Winamp!
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
This is no joke; it's real, and it's why more needs to be done to stop software patents. If they're not stopped, there will be more and more lawsuits just like this one. If there are enough of these lawsuits, they will have a dramatically negative impact on the economy, because wealth will be flowing from those who are being productive to those who are really nothing more than leaches.
Software already enjoys the protection of copyright, it does not need patent protection as well.
Despite what EULAs say, most software is sold, not licensed.
Add to that the fact that apple employees had been to the demo of this player the case may stand up a bit more.
So does that mean that if you ever see something presented at a developer's conference, say SIGGRAPH, then you are automatically prevented from ever using any information that you saw there? This would mean that you would never be able to develop 2D or 3D image processing software ever again for having attended SIGGRAPH because some slimeball would have a patent on something that was presented and he'd find out how to make it apply to anything in the image processing world.
I'm sorry but this part of their case sounds just like what the SCO Group is trying to argue against IBM - that anyone who has ever had access to their Glorious Unix System V source code is tainted and can never work with anything that is similar to it again (Linux, *BSD, etc.) without their work becoming the property of SCO.
If scumbags like these people can ever make this argument stick then it will be the end of innovation in the software industry, at least in the US.
infested with jello like fishes no melotron wishes
Does MOD4Win control an external music playing device (like a player piano or an iPod)?
No, but neither does iTunes. According to their patent, the software must be capable of "b) sending a data stream from the computer to the computer controlled music device in response to step a) for controlling the playing of the selected song;". Or in other words, the external device must respond directly to the stream provided by the computer device.
iTunes does no such thing. It merely downloads the music to the player for storage, control, and later playback by the player. i.e. An iPod cannot be reasonably compared with directly controlling a "player piano".
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Well, let's assume you're a young geek, full of great ideas.
What you will learn by the time you get to be an old geek is that you can't eat ideas. Even if you have a nearly endless supply of ideas, putting bread on the table with them requires a whole bunch of things you probably aren't as richly supplied with:
* Dedication
* Vision
* Experience/Judgement
* Cunning
* Persuasiveness
* Guts
* Capital
Basically, what I'm saying is that ideas are like the air we breath: essential, but economically speaking, not all that valuable. If you are out to "hire" ideas, pretty soon you find you have more of them around than you need. The "marginal value" of the next idea is a lot less than, say, a cunning, persuasive salesmen. The worst case is hiring somebody who has tons of ideas but none of the other stuff you need to turn ideas into cold, hard cash. Pretty soon you have ideas simply gumming up the works.
It's like buying a high speed printer -- for your car. That printer would be useful in an office providing services for lots of people, but there's only so much paper you can handle in a car. If the printer were a sentient being, it would treasure every page it created. "Look," it would say, "at the incredible sharpness of the letters; at the fine arches of the lower case letter. You'd need a magnifying glass to see the pixels. Breath in the aroma, so redolent of melted toner and paper on the cusp of charring." Then the user would glance at the page, realize it wasn't quite what he wanted, and toss it in the recycling.
So, getting back to answering your question, what if ideas are the only thing you really have to offer? Well, you're pretty much redundant.
Fortunately, our founding fathers were rather inordinately fond of ideas, and have provided, in Article 1, Clause 8 of the US Constitution for a kind of welfare program for people like you, along with that other class of soceital parasite, the lawyer.
And thus, the "Intellectual Property Company" was born.
Of course, in this deal, you make a small amount of money on any idea and the lawyers get the lion's share. This is fair, considering that the lawyers actually have to do most of the work to actually turn your ideas into money. If you are sufficiently fecund (as we all are here), you should be able to make a living, provided you can find some lawyer interested in exploting you. In fact, this is the weak point in the whole plan. There are millions of ideas created every day; almost none turned into products by the conventional way, so I believe we can discount this as an "idea sink". The number of ideas that are productized into "Intellectual Property" is much greater, but still a infintessimal fraction of the great mass of unharnessed, or rather unproductized ideas.
I can envision a future when every geek is assigned his own personal IP attorney, to follow him around and capture every idea that pops into his head.
The value of an idea is, of course, what the market will pay for it. In a state of nature, there is no limit on copying an idea, and so ideas intrinsically have no value. The creative genius who thought of jabbing pictures of game with spears to enhance hunting prowess probably never received so much as a bison skin or mammoth steak in reward. This sort of outrageous injustice could not happen in our modern, civilized society, because in their wisdom of our antecedents and betters have decided we ought to have an exclusive right to anything that pops into our head. Just like Franklin and his stove, they not sought direct personal gain from this, but allowed it to sit like manure on the commons, the economic benefit of all.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Patents need to be for a novel, non-obvious invention (despite what the USPTO is granting these days); the 2- or 3-pane view above the track list is hardly non-obvious.
You might be right, I read only the abstract from the top of the linked page which stated:
The system provides a user interface for allowing a user access to media pieces stored in a media database
I don't think you can seriously refer to a directory as a "media database". They might have something if they had sued based on the iPod. To me that wordind in the abstract indicates intent and kills the claim.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Lots of it.
For instance, in the mid 80's I was using a Macintosh with a Midi sequencer called Vision to control a bunch of musical devices including a digital sampling keyboard (Mirage) that played entire song segments and also displayed copious information about the songs on screen.
Its too late to patent midi, or software sequencers.
I think RMS should just come up with a succinct "this example demonstrates exactly how the patent system is broken" reply, which /.ers can then copy and paste into their posts as a show of solidarity.
I haven't read this patent, but if it is just an integration of UI elements (as people seem to be saying), Apple's use of a few of those elements would not be infringing. If Apple's UI is substantially similar to the whole UI, then it may be infringing.. If this is a really obvious combination of UI elements that doesn't warrant a patent, then maybe Apple will pony up some cash to lobby congress for a more meaningful patent review process. So, I can't say this is a totally bad thing.
Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
Since these songs reside only on my iPod, it is most certainly controlling the music device.
Bzzt! You're not controlling the iPod, you're interfacing with its database.
When I push Play/Pause/Skip in iTunes, the song on the iPod is played/paused/skipped.
But you're still not causing the iPod to play the music. You're causing your own computer to stream music from the iPod's database.
The patent is quite clear on this issue. When you press the play button, it must force the player piano to begin playing. Using the computer to capture and process what is currently being fed into the player piano's punch-tape feed is not covered by this patent.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Honestly, I really don't care for apple about this. They have their own patent arsenal and they aren't afraid of strong arming people with litigation. The only time we'll ever get reform is if all these companies end up getting sued so much that they need reform.
I'd have to say that apple itunes did in fact pretty much copy what the patent holder had.
Rubbish!
The interface looks like almost any browser would if you wanted to select items based on any type of catagory system. The general appearance for this type of browser was constructed (note: not invented) long ago and used in many places, starting with the SmallTalk Browser. The original "inventor" was probably Alan Kay at Xerox Parc back in the '70's.
It was not regarded as a patentable invention because anybody that is given the task of constructing a browser in a graphical interface environment would come up with a similar thing.
The iTunes interface seems to be almost a ditto copy of their interface...
What's patented is patented I suppose, but having said that, remember: just because you do something first doesn't mean it's patent-worthy!
Patenting a display of track info? A play button? Please. Where's this "non-obvious" clause that's supposed to be enforced?
If you were Apple, you would not fight this in court. Settling out of court, paying a patent license fee, or cross-licensing are all far less expensive than fighting this in court and, therefore, much more attractive ways to deal with this nuisance. Each of these outcomes individually or collectively are more likely to occur than seeing this through to the end in court.
Remember one of the examples we learned about in RMS' discussion of the problem with software patents (transcript): Briefly, Paul Heckel threatened to sue Apple over a patent he held which covered something in Hypercard; Apple initially brushed him off but when he threatened to sue Apple's users for patent infringement Apple listened up and paid him off.
It has to be pointed out that this is just another reason to not do business with Apple. /. readers bend over backwards to not find fault with Apple but Apple's actions harm users because Apple wields the same patent power that Contois Music Technology is using against Apple here -- Apple holds patents which cover font hinting which adversely impact free software users who want smooth fonts on the screen. Apple also claims patents on the "Enterprise Object Framework" which adversely impacts the GNUStep work and thus serves as another obstruction to free software users.
Digital Citizen
If the interface layout was part of the original '96 filling, then it's very clear that the patent was infringed upon. Just because the one being sued here isn't MS doesn't mean it's a farce or a scam to make quick money.
Mozilla stole tabs from NetCaptor. So what? Right?
For many years before 1996, Sony has been putting a LANC network control on their jukebox CD players. Many utilities we written (including old hypercard mac apps) to control music jukeboxes. You could select a CD, play, stop, pause. Some of these utilities even let you see album covers, details, etc. All, well before 1996. I think I remember seeing products using LANC to control music on a PC back in the early 90's.. like 91-92, actually.