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Burst.com Sues Apple Over Patent Infringement
AWhiteFlame writes "Techdirt is reporting that Burst.com has filed a lawsuit against Apple for Patent Infringement. From the article, 'Burst.com is known for having patented a method for moving large pieces of content online at faster speeds [...] Last year, they approached Apple, suggesting that the company pay it 2% of iTunes' revenue. Apple then went on the offensive in January, proactively asking a judge to either invalidate Burst's patents or declare that Apple wasn't infringing. Just to make the litigation circle complete, after a few months of trying to reach a middle settlement ground, Burst has now gone ahead and sued Apple on its own.'"
1) vanilla load balancing
2) automatically resuming a download
3) playing a download while the entire file is saved to disk (regardless of how much is actually viewed?)
4) caching downloads (and/or partial downloads) on disk instead of asking the server again
I can't bring myself to actually read the patents since my Patentlawyerese-to-English translator is broken but they have a list of them here (pdf).
So some speculator pooled together the [cough]bullshit[/cough] IP of several defunct startups and hopes to sue everybody.
For whatever it's worth, back in January Cringely wrote that Burst does have something worthwhile:
The reason Apple changed its MacWorld announcements at the last minute was because the company sued little Burst.com a few days before, trying to invalidate the Burst patents. But since Apple sued Burst, Burst shares have gone UP by 30 percent. The market is rarely wrong. Suing Burst was an enormous mistake for Apple, casting a pall on their video strategy and potentially costing the company strategic alliances with networks and movie studios. Apple realizes this now and is struggling internally to find a way to change course and put a positive spin on the course correction. Apple will lose and Burst will win, and Apple won't be able to afford to wait for the courts to decide anything, since time is critical in staking out Internet video turf. I predict that Apple will eventually take a license from Burst, that is UNLESS SOME OTHER COMPANY (Google? Real? Yahoo?) doesn't snatch up Burst first.
Here's something I've noticed lately: Big companies believe in patents as long as they are talking about THEIR patents. Because Burst is three guys in an office in Santa Rosa, companies like Microsoft and Apple tend not to take them seriously. They forget that Burst spent 21 years and $66 million developing that IP, and the company has code that is still better than anything else on the market -- code not even Microsoft has seen. Unless someone buys the company first, Burst is going to win this and eventually license the world. They are in the right, for one thing, and in practical terms they now have as much money for legal bills as any of their opponents. Apple can't win this one.
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
It seems like Microsoft looks at a little company that DOES have some chance of winning a case, and rather than fighting it and letting some court assign a big fat award to them, just pays them off early on, when $60M seems like a big number. Burst can't sue Microsoft again, but since so much of the industry is built off of borrowed technology and ideas, they have just as valid a claim against Apple - which has a much bigger stake in the market - and is much less willing to settle. Take them to court, let the judge think that "Apple has profited illegally off of their IP" and get a big fat settlement. But where to pay for such a long, drawn-out lawsuit? Microsoft's early-on pittance.
I don't think Microsoft is nefariously "funding" the IP vultures, I think they just realized that they could get away a lot cheaper by settling early on and not having to deal with it. Most people never even heard about the MS v. Burst - but you can bet Burst will whip up a shitstorm about Apple stealing their IP and thus owing the success and health of their company's only profitable sector to Burst's crackpot IP. Apple will look bad, shares will suffer, and then Apple will settle...for more than the 2% Burst originally asked...to make it all go away.
Has anyone patented "Pulling an NTP" yet? I mean, prior art and nontriviality no longer seem to determine patentability, so someone out there with the time and money to exploit the patent system should.
It may seem like Burst.com is simply another NTP or patent troll, but I don't think that's really true. They actually did have a product but were driven out of the market by MS and WMP
And while their technologies may seem obvious now, they may not have been so obvious when they patented them. In fact, during the tech bubble, many though Burst would be another hot company. In fact, they argue that they were driven out of business because windows media player purposely was built to be incompatible with their technology (this is second hand information not verified by me.)
I'm not sure if Burst.com actually deserves to have these patents or win these lawsuits, but it definitely seems more justified than NTP in suing MS and now Apple
The USA will fall behind because ever more intellectual property will be locked up behind a multitude of corporations and individuals effectively ruled by lawyers who are more interested in earning legal fees rather than bothering to actually manufacture anything.
Other Governments and Europe's bureaucracies will not hesitate to forcibly acquire the necessary intellectual property needed get things done for large projects
Other countries and even Europe's parliament will also not hesitate to adopt more liberal intellectual property structures if you demonstrate that doing so will better benefit their economies as a whole, instead of just a few major corporations.
The USA administration and even more myopic major corporations will continue to let more and more manufacturing, service industry and development to be off-shored resulting in importing permanent poverty into the USA.
You want to see the future of the USA? Visit the remnants of Detroit motor city works, Ye Mighty, and despair