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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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Who gives these people the right to "create" a totally vague, ambiguous, and obvious "idea", then fail to actually create anything of substance utilizing that "idea" and then sue others for doing the same thing? Oh... our government.
Well, uh, duh.
That's the whole point. The patent is so obvious and broad that if you want to display a list of music, selectable by category/artist/title/whatever, along with some buttons to start and stop the music, then you're going to end up with SIMILAR INTERFACES.
This is a PERFECT example of what needs to be fixed abou the USPTO, people generate the massive portfolios of these software "patents" that are then horded untill such a time that they see some big company doing what their "patent" covers and then they immediately pounce for a big settlement. This leads to a more liquid company that can acquire more patents and stifle innovation further. It's going to come to a point where NO software will be free because it takes an army of patent attorneys years to search through ALL the patents EVER made to see if there is a section of the software to be written that might possibly conflict. It's going to get like our medical system. Since everyone sues over every little thing causing mass expenditures of capital, there will be a higher charge to everyone so that they can cover the frivolus lawsuits.
What makes matters even WORSE, they don't have to show ANYTHING in the way of proof to force a company to expend resources to go to court and get the item thrown out. Even if the case is dismissed in 5 minutes, you still have to pay the lawyer's research time, retainer, travel costs, court time, breif preparations.... etc.... etc... ad nauseum!
Cliff Claven
K.E.G. Party Chairman
Founding Leader of: Koncerned for Egalitarin Governance
I'm generally not one to jump to conclusions (especially since I've never used iTunes and have no idea what its UI looks like), but if this is at all accurate, it's pretty damning evidence of Apple ripping off the patent-holder's interface design...
I wouldn't.
iTunes can't control an iPod; if you tell it to play music, the music is not played through the iPod but only through the computer. As such, it's hard to argue that iTunes commands the iPod; it solely loads data to and from the iPod, and if that's patentable, we're all fucked.
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Mod me down, you fucking twits. Go ahead. I dare you.
(I read with sigs off.)
Apple (along with Microsoft, IBM, Adobe, etc) is one of the companies in Eicta who are backing the effort to get software patents going in Europe.
RMS continues to be a guiding authority for how the free software community interprets software patents
Doesn't matter. He's not a lawyer, nor is this discussion about free software. As a result, his opinions are irrelevant in this situation.
you show your stripes well enough by not explaining why you disagree with his arguments.
I'm not disagreeing with him at all. I'm ignoring him because his opinion has no bearing on the subject at hand. If there's some part of his opinion that you think has bearing, then it is your responsibility to bring it into the discussion. I'm not going to wade through his speech and praise his opinions all day long.
IBM says they get an order of magnitude more value from cross-licensing than pursuing lawsuits. This article clearly illustrates the value of cross-licensing.
Except that Contois is not looking for cross-licensing deals. They're suing Apple for money in a baseless lawsuit where they're claiming damages because Apple invented something that sorta, kinda, not really looked like a method of streaming MIDI files to Yamaha Keyboards. (Exhibit: http://www.contois.com)
If you have a point, please make it. But please don't waste people's time by demanding that they be an RMS fan in order to hold an intelligent discussion.
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