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Microsoft Leveraging iPod Patent?
willie3204 was one of several readers who noticed this story about Microsoft cashing in on the iPod Patent that they apparently beat Apple to. Since this song looks to be played to the tune of $10/iPod, I imagine someone will be singing the appeal song.
Oh...it's the other shoe dropping.
Funny, when I said 'if you can't beat 'em, litigate 'em to death, I guess', in this discussion, several people took offense.
How's that crow taste?
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~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
yes, everybody must be native english speaker. especially this polish person.
dumbass
Rich
People in the US in particular seem to forget that the only real way to enforce anything is with force.
Errr its a nice attempt at a troll but you let yourself down here... the US is the FIRST nation to enforce by force... and the last to resort to justice.
And of course the last to learn that actually it doesn't work.
"You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink"
Its a little to scary to think that this isn't a troll and there are people this moronic who might be allowed to vote.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Open mouth, insert foot. Steve Jobs could take a dump in a white paper bag, tout it at the latest MacWorld, and it would be bought up by the thousand by zealots from the world over. Take the iPod for example: it shows Jobs' superiour marketing capabilities. The iPod has absolutely no feature over its competitors: technically, it is so far behind it's not funny, and there are players which are far easier to use than it. However, since it's perceived as "cool" thanks to the marketing genius of Jobs, all the techno-n00bs think about how they want one - and of course, again thanks to the marketing scheme of Apple, they don't know about the alternatives. Case closed.
Microsoft has lied in court before. Why should anyone believe them so easily now?
Guy asked me for a quarter for a cup of coffee. So I bit him.
Not true at all.
As others have pointed out, in the U.S. what matters is who invented the device or process first, not who filed the patent. The patent of course is easy proof that you had invented the device by the filing date, but it doesn't preclude someone from challenging the patent by showing evidence that they invented it first. I believe that the burden of proof is on the challenger of the patent, though, to show they invented it earlier.
Also as others have pointed out, the "earlier" invention needs to encompass all of the elements patented, not just a few, in order to invalidate it. Whether MS was smart enough to think of that and include in their patent some things which either aren't used on the iPod or weren't added until recently, I don't know.
Although I think Apple is clearly in the right here, and the legal system will be on their side, the whole situation concerns me. It just seems like one of those things that shouldn't be able to happen.
Funny how those things so often involve Microsoft, eh?
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."