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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."
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If I were Apple, I'd fight this one in court. I'm not a patent lawyer, but this seems to be a rediculous patent. The primary claims seem to be:
1. That a computer program can have buttons to start and stop music.
2. That a computer program can display two or more data fields about that music during play.
There is another claim about controlling a player piano (!), but that seems irrelevant to this case.
The problems I see with this patent are:
1. The claims argued are blatently obvious. It's one step above a patent for displaying and manipulating data on a screen. The only difference is that this adds music! (rolls eyes)
2. Plenty of prior art exists. For example, MIDI and CD players throughout the 90's were capable of "controlling the playback of music" and "displaying two or more data fields about the song". Not to mention MP3 player that existed prior to January 1999.
3. The primary focus of the body of the patent is on player piano control. AFAIK, iTunes does not run player pianos.
4. The patent points to MIDI or a MIDI-like device as the stream being controlled. Digital audio is not a method of controlling a digital instrument, but rather a synthesis of a complete sound environment.
Perhaps the best reform would be to allow for reprocussions against the patent holder should his patent be found to be issued in error or inapplicablE? For example, if the patent holder was forced to pay court costs, he may think twice before initiating a baseless suit.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
The patent points are generally vague and do seem to apply to other players. However, looking at the image at the bottom of the article, the two interfaces are strikingly similar. Add to that the fact that apple employees had been to the demo of this player the case may stand up a bit more.
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.
Except that WinAMP was released in 1997 and the patent was filed in 1999. Not to mention the original MP3 Player, WinPlay3, which had been released several years prior. There's nothing wrong with the current patent system, just that the existing rules need to be better enforced. The attempts to invalidate patents through a review process are the most promising to date.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
I wonder if this might be a case of prior art from 1995?
http://www.soton.ac.uk/~newrep/vol13/no4news.html
Scroll down to the article "Jukebox is a sound success"
Does anyone have any more details about this? Does it cover the same claims as the Contois patent?
As far as I know, iTunes' fundamental browsing structure is based on the concept of mspaces - see http://mspace.fm/
mspace is a research project at the School of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton, England.
I believe the patent is BS and the lawsuit as well but, if I recall correctly Apple has sued several companies for copying the "look and feel" of Apple products, and those cases IMHO had about just as much merit.
Am I the only one that finds it mildly ironic that Apple also has a patent for the iTunes UI? Granted the patent was awarded only last year, so depending on the results of this (crap) it could in theory be revoked.
I suspect that his sketch won't do so well in the courts. That both designs display using a Miller column browser (with different content!) and can show an image won't be sufficient.
n _patents_.html
Design patents prohibit a third-party from making, selling or using a product of the protected design. To infringe a design patent, the infringing container and the container shape shown in the design patent must look alike to the eye of the ordinary observer.
In Gorham v. White (1871), the Supreme Court set the standard for design patent infringement:
"If, in the eye of an ordinary observer, giving such attention as a purchaser usually gives, two designs are substantially the same, if the resemblance is such as to deceive such an observer, inducing him to purchase one supposing it to be the other, the first one patented is infringed by the other."
Just having similar functions and a vaguely similar appearance is not sufficient, as shown by the amusing "Colida v. Sharp Electronics and Audiovox" (Fed. Cir. March 9, 2005):
http://patentlaw.typepad.com/patent/2005/03/desig
The functional features described in a design patent are not particularly relevant. (They would be in a functional patent, of course.) To infringe on a design patent, the infringing product has to look so much like his sketch that the infringing product would deceive the customer into thinking it was the patented product.
An example of a product which might be found to infringe on a well-known design patent might be:
http://www2.luxpro.com.tw/e_575d.htm
It's a patent for a computer system not a computer program. That's all Apple has to say in my opinion. A computer system and a computer program are two totally different things.
I agree wholeheartedly. The sad thing is that there is not even the slightest bit of this nation's original intent in place in our government or even our people. Individual liberty is simply no longer as important as group power.
We individual citizens are but the lowlings in a feudal system. Corporations and goverment organizastions are the lords. It may sound a bit dramatic since many of us lead pretty good lives, but it is only because we are grudgingly allowed to, it is no longer an inalienable right. And it will degrade over time.
If it sounds like I'm whining over nothing, think about how many non-violent people have been put into a physically abusive prison system and emotionally ruined because they smoked a home-grown weed that has been proven time and time again to be less harmful than tobacco or alcohol (both the domain of large corporations).
What does that have to do with patent law? It's just another manifestation of our nation's loss of it's original dream: to protect the individual from powerful groups.
At some point there will backlash, I hope, large enough to change things.
Cheers.
...their patents back in the 1980s.
SIDPlayer and SID Symphony on the Commodore 64.
The 64 could control a MDI device, it could transfer MIDI data from one device to another via it's serial line, it could even move digital music from the C64 to a portible music player (A Walkman cassette player) via the sound out port and a patch cable.
Sounds like a WHOLE lot of WAY prior art to me.
Guaranteed! This comment 100% Anthrax free!
In the mid 80's (if not earlier) 85 or 86, you could hook a MAC with Hypercard to a Video DISC player (analog) and via serial connection use button and other methods in the Hypercard "stack" to control the play back of sound, music, video, etc.
http://www.hawknest.com/
Here is his website:
http://www.emusicgear.com/
He has a storefront, in Essex and has been there a great many years. I don't know much more about him, but obviously he is looking to get something from Apple for this alledged infringement.
I have been in the shop a couple of times, both times I didn't feel welcomed... I've never been back - there are other places to buy what he's selling.
This my friends is why we don't like software patents.
This AC couldn't agree more. Such patents do little more than cost taxpayers money, and establish huge amounts of FUD in attempting to engineer anything these days.
I'm counting on Apple to win this case. It'll help demonstrate how software patents don't work, and how especially frivolous ones (like the one mentioned in the article) shouldn't be taken seriously.
I agree
Contois Music Technology who? What did they ever do for me?
To be fair, maybe they have done quite a bit but I just do not know about it. From my current perspective, however, this is just another entity that comes up with a described, but still rather imprecise concept, never does anything with it, and then sues a second entity that implements something different than originally presented but close enough to fall under the patents' over-reaching definitions.
Show me that Apple suppressed Contois Music Technology's product and I will gleefully applaud any punitive action; we don't need another Microsoft. But, until that time, this is just another example of why software patents should be discontinued.