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Apple Gives In to Absurd Patent Claims
gottabeme writes Apple has settled with a small Oregon company that claimed patents on simple aspects of iTunes, such as sorting and searching tracks, copying tracks to media players, and just plain choosing a track to play." From the article: "In the 10-page suit, lawyers for Contois said that David Contois, the owner, conceived of and developed a computer interface for playing music on an internal or external computer-responsive music device, which he then exhibited at the 1995 COMDEX trade show and the 1996 NAMM music industry trade show. According to the suit, persons who were at the time employed by or later became employed by Apple were present at both trade shows and viewed Contois' software. The suit charged that Apple later 'copied' the invention and used the design ideas in the interface for iTunes."
The submitter is jumping to conclusions. There's nothing here that indicates that they knuckled under at all. They may have just let him off without paying Apple's defense costs.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Apple didn't even create iTunes, they bought it several versions ago. How many of these "breaches" were developed by the original software team?
In other news, Apple is also being sued by Us Playing Cards because the iPod too closely resembles a deck of Bicycle cards.
AKA: finding a delegate for your dirtywork, or Micro-SCO
I think between this and the Creative patent, Apple is purposely setting a legal precedent, so other media player makers who aren't as cash-flush will be forced out of business. They don't have the massive bankroll Apple does because they were already less successful than Apple. So in the future, it will become even more difficult to jump to the top. Scorched earth. Dangerous, but brilliant in a really evil way.
Didn't those predate iTunes? You could sort and select stuff and burn things to CDs. not quite as fancy, but some aspects are there.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
""In the 10-page suit, lawyers for Contois said that David Contois, the owner, conceived of and developed a computer interface for playing music on an internal or external computer-responsive music device, which he then exhibited at the 1995 COMDEX trade show and the 1996 NAMM music industry trade show. According to the suit, persons who were at the time employed by or later became employed by Apple were present at both trade shows and viewed Contois' software. The suit charged that Apple later 'copied' the invention and used the design ideas in the interface for iTunes.""
Isn't this a similiar situation to what happened to Go computers?
Apple Gives In to Absurd Patent Claims
You're talking about the company that licensed "1-click" from Amazon. Why are you surprised?
Push Button, Receive Bacon
I became a mac user around OS 8.5, and i remember iTunes coming out back in 2001. Why did it take Contois so long to file against Apple? Couldn't this have been brought up well before the current date? Or is there another reason behind this?
In a world without walls and fences, who needs Windows and Gates?
I'm from Oregon! Where does it say this company's from Oregon? Did I miss something?
It seems that the point of contention in this lawsuit was the iTunes interface, which Apple did develop (although probably with the original team who they also acquired in the purchase). iTunes was originally Soundjam MP developed by Connectix. iTunes used the same base code but the interface is significantly different from Soundjam in many aspects.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
That's an interesting legal theory, to say the least. Where did you say you went to law school?
"Those areas included ... sorting music tracks by their genre, artist and album attributes."
Hi. I've invented third normal form. Pay me.
Always remember, I'm the only one allowed to index and sort database records by individual field contents, without a royalty.
-- Terry
Whenever a patent claim gets settled, then well, that same claim can't be made again by another company -- unless they take it up with the company that won the first claim.
Huh? Whatever gave you that idea? Unless the question is decided in a court of law (not just settled), these kinds of claims can be brought against Apple again and again.
But, then again, who cares? It's not like Apple is so well behaved themselves.
people claim "prior art" each and every time some other company than Apple goes to court - and here is an actaul case of prior art, and suddenly there is a whole bunch of folks running forward to defend apple?
Seriously - Prior art - its documented.
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
Apple is accused of copying someone's "look and feel"? Hmmm. Where have I heard that argument before? Oh, the thick, thick irony.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
As another poster mentioned, Casaddy and Greene was the manufacturer of Soundjam, not Connectix. Sorry for the mistake.
A menu selection process to allow the user to select music to be played - its a music player! File>Open is a damned menu! Please for a second picture a music player that doesn't allow the user to select the music to be played via a menu. mpg123 is all that comes to mind.
The ability of the software to transfer music tracks to a portable music player - wait any OS can do this - its copying files for crissakes. Again trivially File>Save As
This sorting by genre>artist>title is something I've done for ages with tapes and then CDs. The Creative patent was stupid and this one is too - Indeed I'm stunned they don't sue each other.
All of these patents are obvious and entirely frivolous, and really ought not to exist. So much as I dislike Apple and support underdogs I've got to side with Cupertino because this is ridiculous.
Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.
I imagine this might help slow competitors to market as well, proxy war fair .
The submitter assumes Apple caved, when actually we don't know the terms of the settlement and neither side is talking. Apple recently counter-sued for defense costs, maybe they dropped that in exchange for him dropping his lawsuit. After all, Apple didn't develop iTunes, they bought it. So the claims that Apple employees saw it at a trade show and ripped it off are completely false. Just wait and see, does dude go home and buy a new car and a boat? Or does he go back to his music store and keep working 9 to 5?
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
on that the patent laws should be revised.
Vote for the Pirate Party if you got one in your country.
Given Apple's litigious history, I don't think there's any reason to consider these claims absurd. Apple went as far as trying to claim rights to pretty much all graphical user interfaces without even having invented them.
This, in addition to another few patent claims involving Apple lately, have begun to make me a bit concerned.
In the short term, it might seem like it makes sense to "just settle" with a litigant with an absurd or overly broad patent, rather than fighting it. However, I'm not sure this is really a good idea in the long run -- it just invites more people to try the same trick over and over, damning you to a death by a thousand small wounds.
Compare the difference to IBM's staunch opposition of the SCO lawsuit. I realize that the cases are different, but philosophically they represent very different approaches. IBM seemed to realize, at the very beginning, that even if it cost more to fight SCO's claims than to settle with them, it would be a worthy expenditure, because to settle would be to roll out the Welcome mat to every other numbskull with an axe to grind. Apple seems to be only looking for the immediate cost: will it cost more to fight a particular case, or to settle it?
I think this might be because, while IBM realizes that it is a giant corporation with impossibly deep pockets, and thus a massive target, Apple has for so long been a relatively small player that it seems they haven't gotten their minds around the fact that a short term loss might be worthwhile, if it headed off similar future attacks.
I'm not a shareholder in Apple, just someone who's reasonably fond of their products. However, if I was, I'd be very concerned that in making the quick out-of-court settlement their M.O., they're painting a bulls-eye on themselves, which can only get more inviting the bigger and more profitable they get.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
From linked article from TFA: "The lawsuit was filed in June 2005, and the litigants met in court for a daylong hearing a year later to define terminology and set parameters for future court proceedings. Such hearings in patent cases are considered critical, and Judge William Sessions III issued a ruling July 24 that favored some of Contois' positions over Apple's.
The parties met the next day to begin discussing a resolution, according to court records. A first session was unsuccessful. A second session, which began at noon Aug. 16 and ended at 3:30 a.m. Aug. 17, led to the settlement. Lawyers filed court papers about the agreement last week, and Sessions dismissed the case. "
Apple proceeds like any other case like this, expecting an easy win because they honestly believe (I hope) that they've done nothing wrong. But, once rulings start coming back in favor of the other guy, Apple has to look at this and say, "Hey, we're making money hand over fist with iTunes, and this could easily get ugly like Blackberry... only our user base is slightly less addicted and will be angry with us if suddenly, like with Echostar, we have to turn off parts their devices on the next update. So, let's just ask them exactly what they want, and maybe just pay them off."
First meeting: We want $1 billion dollars!
Second meeting: Ok, we'll settle for OUR attorney fees, $x00,000, and stock options from Apple to cover future profits.
SOLD!
BTW, I think that last meeting went to 3:30am because some lawyer, not thinking, brought in an iBook and everyone wasted hours talking about favorite bands, and checking them out on iTunes.
I8-D
that same claim can't be made again by another company -- unless they take it up with the company that won the first claim
That's patently false.
Amazing. People will sue for all kinds of crap these days, eh?
Call me stupid, but this sounds like a rerun. The same thing happened with automobiles...George Selden tried to sue Henry Ford because Selden held the patent to the first automobile, even though it was built after Ford's. Messed up American patent system. The supreme court ruled that Ford and anyone else with the crazy hair across their ass to do so could build a car without paying Selden royalties. Because, and I quote from wikipedia.org, "automobile technology had improved so significantly since the design of Selden's patent, that no one was building according to his early designs."
There's a saying: "Couldn't you see the elephant in the living room?" Meaning it's kinda...obvious. I cite this, because the basics for iTunes are pretty simple to think up by yourself, without having to steal it. It's not that hard to think up an idea that you would want to organize, move around, and play your music all in one program. It's a basic concept. Sure, this company may have came out with it first, but look at how iTunes has evolved with it, and added on so much more functionality, like the music store, and interfacing with an external device to create playlists.
So I guess you could say that Apple is painting the elephant in the living room a different color. And adding some piercings.
There's a lot of fucked up shit on the internet. And I've downloaded it all.
Of the visible comments at my thresholds, I see absolutely no one defending Apple. The closest I see are people explaining why this might have been a smart move for Apple.
Or do you mean this small company is showing prior art for these retarded patents? Problem there is, it was in common use in WinAMP and XMMS before then -- but no one was evil enough to patent the idea. Thus, Apple even bothering to acknowledge these guys is somewhat evil -- but the guys who have these "patents" are even more evil.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
AM and FM radio stations have been using these kind of "computer devices" for DECADES! They are known as program automation systems and they date back to the PDP-8 days in the 1970's! How can this patent even be considered? This kind of stuff was prior art DECADES ago! I think either Gates Radio (Harris) or International Good Music (IGM) had patents on the original automation systems, but they've long since expired. Can someone else re-patent something based upon an expired patent? It sure sounds like this happened here!
"Apple has settled with a small Oregon company that claimed patents on simple"
Funny the article says Apple Computer has settled a lawsuit filed by a Vermont-based business owner.
Wonder how many submitters actually read the article first, instead of just trying to copy/paste.
Vermont... Oregon... they're like the same state anyhow. Only 3,200 miles apart, after all.
It's only the title of the article, after all.
Apple may be crazy like a fox here.
Once upon a time Two shirt makers named Smith and Wesson built themselves a gun empire.
They did it by finding a guy who had a patent on revolvers that had cylinders bored all the way through. The gun the patents were listed for was horrible, and the patent was questionable at best. There was ample examples of prior art for one thing. They realized however that if they honored the patent and bought a license it made the quality of the patent vastly stronger.
The deal they made was that they would pay a fairly generous license fee for exclusive rights, but the patent holder would pay for all the patent challenges. The patent holder spent all the royalties on lawsuits and retired a pauper, but Smith and Wesson had a monopoly on revolvers for 20 years.
By honoring this patent and arranging for exclusive rights they may be able to keep others from even building other music players. Assuming patent law hs not changed, this could actually shoot the Zoon right through the head.
Yeah, I agree with the other responders who called bullshit on this.
If your claim were true, then the most obvious thing for any company to do with any new product would be to provide seed funding for a small company to sue it with a bogus patent claim, but settle it in order to remain bullet-proof against any future claims. Life is never that easy.
Where did the submitter get Oregon? TFA says it's a Vermont company.
Most people don't even think inside the box.
Apple was a major player in the (to date) failed effort to establish software patents in Europe. Seems to me that their recent spat of losing patent violation cases is their just rewards for being idiots.
Well, well.
It appears that most anyone who created multimedia with Director and audio from Sound edit in the early 1990's has prior art for many of those "inventions"
I know I have priors from late 1995 (even demoed by Phill Shiller at that time) but that may not be early enough.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
. . .if I wanted this shit I'd be visited www.sycophanticapplefanboy.com.
You lying bastard. You got me all excited for a minute, but it turns out you just made the place up.
die.die.die
KFG
Or do you mean this small company is showing prior art for these retarded patents? Problem there is, it was in common use in WinAMP and XMMS before then -- but no one was evil enough to patent the idea.
Their patent isn't any more retarded than people who don't know how to use basic math to determine which came first. Since you obviously don't know, go RESEARCH WTF you are talking about, starting with when WinAMP and XMMS even came into existence, then research the date of the patent, then come back here and say the following:
I will stop asumming all the "common knowledge" spread by slashtards is correct.
Thus, Apple even bothering to acknowledge these guys is somewhat evil -- but the guys who have these "patents" are even more evil.
Is it more evil than suing someone for copying "look and feel"?
NOTE - I'm not defending patents like this, I personally think they're ridiculous, but if you're talk about a subject like a bigshot expert throwing around words like "retarded", don't be a retard yourself. Make sure you know WTF you are talking about. Too many slashtards are pulling this shit. This site has gone way the f*** down hill.
Prior art: According to Knuth (Vol3, "Sorting and Searching"): "One of the first large-scale software systems to demonstrate the versatility of sorting was the Larc Scientific Compiler developed by Computer Sciences Corporation in 1960."
0
More prior art: In 1960 Quicksort was developed. Working for the British computer company Elliott Brothers, C. A. R. Hoare developed Quicksort, an algorithm that would go on to become the most used sorting method in the world.
http://www.computerhistory.org/timeline/?year=196
9/11 Eyewitnesses to Explosive WTC Demolition 1 of 2
giving in to these silly claims only gives support for more silly claims to be made.
Quick someone patent "silly".
It can be done, even though its an action not a thing.
iSue and iLitigate
That's how they got a patent.
Sore loser are you?
... Bad, bad, BAD precedent.
I guess I don't follow the geek consensus about Soundjam. I found the interface, with all those windows, a huge pain the ass. Also, "skinnability" struck me as pretty much a total bore. When Apple brought out iTunes -- BEFORE the iPod -- I used it to load up the Rio 32 MB player I had, and it was pretty keen. But it was the interface that just killed me: everything clean, clear and obvious.
When I got the first iPod, ordered the day of the unveiling, and used it with iTunes, I knew they had a hit.
But then, I know, most geeks love Eudora, too. I get lost in all those windows popping up.
fucking failures.
Information incorrect. See above posts with dates. Winamp 1997. XMMS 1997. Claim is 1995.
I just tried going to www.sycophanticapplefanboy.com and I noticed that it wasn't found.
Do you think their server has been Slashdotted?
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
No, I don't think even slashthink can override the stupidity of these patents.
The summary says it's a small Oregon company, but the article says it's a Vermpont-based company. Probably this company. http://www.contoismusic.com/
Do not anger the worm.
Apple has plenty of questionable patents of its own. Here's a handful out of about 1000 that have been granted:
7,100,113: Systems and methods for using media upon insertion into a data processing system
7,099,869: Method and apparatus for managing file extensions in a digital processing system
7,086,008: Multiple personas for mobile devices
7,034,814: Methods and apparatuses using control indicators for data processing systems
why companies do this? The stand to make far more money off thier own absurd patents since they're bound to have more of them (they've got lawyers who work all day to come up with them).
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
troll-tastic
I'm not an expert but TFA uses the phrase "design patent" but the patent in question appears to be a utility patent. While I find many, if not all, software patents distasteful and often harmful, AFAIK it's perfectly legit to patent improvements or combinations to existing, even patented, ideas. This patent seems to describe coordinating a spreadsheet's capability with external music devices. (The patent specifically includes several parallel claims substituting player pianos for "music device".) One famous example is the intermittent windshield wiper patent, which described the combination of a timer and the windshield wiper (which itself, I suppose, was a combination of a motor and a squeegee). Drug companies are allowed to patent improvements for their rival's patented drugs but are often kept in check by the old patent's remaining claims, e.g. needing to use the rival's patented manufacturing processes. I'm not saying I agree with this patent, but the way US Patents work this one may not have been trivially absurd.
Mod parent up: Insightful. Apples are for fags.
This is the same thing that happened with NPT and RIM/Blackberry. It's also how Amazon.com got to patent the 1-click shopping method (though it looks like they might not have that anymore). This has got to end. It's time for patent reform.
I really don't know how I managed to turn Vermont into Oregon; sorry about that. At least I can laugh about it; I honestly didn't think Slashdot would even post it. Someone wondered if I had read the article instead of copying and pasting. Well, if I had copied and pasted, I probably wouldn't have made that 3,000 mile mistake. :) I must have gotten interrupted somehow while I was typing my blurb.
Speaking of blurbs, Slashdot unfortunately cut part of what I said, which made a point along the lines of, "This is one time where you wish the big guy had squashed the little guy, because the little guy is the one with the absurd patent claim. But Apple has a few of those absurd patents it likes to enforce too, doesn't it?" If Apple squashed these silly patents, that might lend credence to those who'd like to do the same to Apple's silly patents.
What a fine mess.
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
what is it with you freaks?
you have some sort of a problem with Apple so not only do you NOT block the stories, you actually read them and then post about them.
it's the same on digg.
Ok, let's talk about selecting an item from a playlist. This particular feature has been around for much longer than CDs, even. This page mentions vinyl LPs in the 1930's, and LPs do come with a track listing and the ability to skip to a chosen song by picking up and moving the needle -- kind of like how we do it today by moving a mouse.
What a lovely rant, from someone claiming everyone else is going downhill. But this particular debate about who's retarded and who's a "slashtard" should end now, it's making us both look bad.
Tell me one thing, though: Am I wrong? Is this particular patent at all valid? Would it be reasonable to entertain the idea that it might be valid for long enough to actually do the research?
It's one thing to tell me you disagree with my (admittedly lazy) research techniques, but it's quite another to actually say you disagree with me, and you haven't said that yet. It looks like you actually agree with me, but you're just that desperate to find something to hate about Slashdot.
I'll change my language, if that makes you feel better: Apple even bothering to acklowledge these guys is somewhat evil, but the act of patent-trolling is even more evil. Other evil things that Apple or others have done is completely irrelevant to this discussion.
You know very well what I meant.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
The very idea, concept and mass acceptance of patents, especially "intellectual" patents; in a so called "Free Market" "capitalist" economy is absurd, not to mention disturbing.
Though, given the quality of american public education and "free" thinking, not surprising.
That "these" patent claims are absurd, compared to the vast majority of "intellectual" patents, is "absurd" and "laughable", though in no way is it "funny".
I'm a registered owner of SoundJam for OS9. I found out that my registration fee wouldn't entitle me to upgrades, because Apple bought the MP3 player. If you look (not very hard), iTunes is SoundJam enhanced a bit. Even if they don't share any of the same code today, iTunes 1.0 probably did.
Even if Apple did see this "product", it's clear that Apple engineers didn't "rip off" this guy... it was someone else. Can you really blame a company for its acquisitions?
Why isn't this chump going after Nullsoft / AOL / Time Warner? I'm pretty sure that WinAmp predated both iTunes and SoundJam. Why does every waste of sperm have to try to get a piece of other people's success?
It's one thing to imagine a computer playing music... it's another to actually make it work. I imagine having sex with my laptop. I'm not going to file a patent though, since I have no idea how to make it work. I'm sure not going to sue the genius that fulfills my dreams. I'll just buy their product and be done with it.
Anyone posting so far actually look a the patent? IN the drawings section, the fourth drawing shows a user interface that, with a few tweaks, is the main iTunes user interface. Show the regular "person in the street" a drawing of the Contois interface and iTunes, and they most likely would not be able to tell them apart. Show that person the drawing of the Contois interface (fourth drawing) from the patent, and they would very likely say, "Oh, that's iTunes" or "Oh, that's an early version of iTunes." Someone give it a try, and post the results--it's been 14 years since I was around a college dining center to get a real sample.
In fact, the Contois patent is arguably more infringed-upon then the Creative patent--Creative's patent is largely someone implementation of the software that would underly sorting the catagories displayed in the Contois interface. (The Creative interface itself is pathetic--multitudinous buttons used to implement a box/tree structure.)
Now whether any of this crap should be patentable is a whole different debate; however, it seems pretty settled that under our current patent administration and legislation this crap IS patentable, so it was smart that Apple paid, even though just about every other music player software also uses some other variation of the same interface.
Horn presents the history as Jobs coming to Xerox, seeing a bunch of Smalltalk windows, and then becoming inspired to write the Mac GUI. Much of the design of modern GUIs didn't even come from Xerox, it came from people like Doug Engelbart at SRI and Alan Kay in his pre-Xerox days. Furthermore, Jobs didn't just see Smalltalk, he saw Xerox's prototype office workstations, which did offer WYSIWYG editing, icons, direct manipulation, and Finder-like functionality.
I guess Horn has two axes to grind, coming from both Xerox and Apple, but his version of history is self-serving bullshit.
In reality, Apple's first commercial GUI-based product, the Lisa, was based on a combination of published work, ideas copied from Xerox, and some significant but incremental improvements. Apple's second commercial GUI-based product, the Macintosh, wasn't ground-breaking anymore, it was simply a stylish mass market version of those products that cut a lot of corners in the engineering department.
At least that part, Horn realizes to some degree: "In my opinion, the software architectures developed at Xerox for Smalltalk and the Xerox Star were significantly more advanced than either the Mac or Windows." Well, that's an understatement. The point of Smalltalk was to open up the machine, to make it easy to add new functionality. Even with Xcode, Cocoa, and Applescript, Apple is still as far away from that as they were when they came out with the Lisa.
I dreamt I had sex once, and I'm gonna sue everyone of you that has done it since! /.
Oh, wait. I'm reading
That term is previously claimed by an earlier poster, how about the functionally equivalent:
That's patently maybe.
- These characters were randomly selected.
I don't know about you guys, but I have an idea of what my husband's reaction would be if I were to say I was going to smoke a dick. I don't think it would be pleasant, so I don't believe the parent poster's advice is good.
I dream of a better world... one in which chickens can cross roads without their motives being questioned.
No. You need a server in order to have it slashdotted.
Loads of +5 informative comments saying how bad the patent is and claiming prior art based on TFA's incorrect descriptions of what the patent is about.
Meanwhile people who took a look at the patent languish on +1 or lower (including myself obviously, or why else would I be posing this?).
It's a funny old place.
ccalam - acoustic versions of new songs.
I have patented the mamal respiratory design. Anyone interested in continue using mamalian respiratory functions (breathing) should pay me a royalty in the sum of a mere 1 dollar per use. Since it is a known fact that every use provide circa 4 litres of oxygen, and many of you would like much more, we can work out a payment plan. Please contact our sales department at 1-800-PWNAGE
there is no issue with my network
Well, you think wrong: From the transcript of "Triumph Of The Nerds Part III":
"Steve Jobs had co-founded Apple Computer in 1976. The first popular personal computer, the Apple 2, was a hit - and made Steve Jobs one of the biggest names of a brand-new industry. At the height of Apple's early success in December 1979, Jobs, then all of 24, had a privileged invitation to visit Xerox Parc.
Steve Jobs
And they showed me really three things. But I was so blinded by the first one I didn't even really see the other two. One of the things they showed me was object orienting programming they showed me that but I didn't even see that. The other one they showed me was a networked computer system...they had over a hundred Alto computers all networked using email etc., etc., I didn't even see that. I was so blinded by the first thing they showed me which was the graphical user interface. I thought it was the best thing I'd ever seen in my life. Now remember it was very flawed, what we saw was incomplete, they'd done a bunch of things wrong. But we didn't know that at the time but still though they had the germ of the idea was there and they'd done it very well and within you know ten minutes it was obvious to me that all computers would work like this some day.
It was a turning-point. Jobs decided that this was the way forward for Apple.
Adele Goldberg
Founder, PARC Place Systems
He came back and I almost said asked, but the truth is, demanded that his entire programming team get a demo of the Smalltalk System and the then head of the science centre asked me to give the demo because Steve specifically asked for me to give the demo and I said no way. I had a big argument with these Xerox executives telling them that they were about to give away the kitchen sink and I said that I would only do it if I were ordered to do it cause then of course it would be their responsibility, and that's what they did."
What Steve and his folks saw looked like this.
And before anybody else claims that this rule applies only to trademarks, please go read about laches.
Because the new element is "on a handheld device".
The problem with that idea, though, is that in order for the fake company to sue the real company, wouldn't the small company actually have to have the patent in question? Maybe that was the poster's idea, that you can't get sued by two different comanies for the same patent infringement, since that would require both of those comanies having a patent on the same thing. Not that I would put it past the USPTO to manage to screw up like that, but it would certainly create a pretty big legal mess.
I'm working on patenting the 'if....then' statement. ALL YOUR CODE NOW BELONG TO ME!!!!
Well this IS Taco's blog. BTW slashdot is exactly why I feel that bloggers aren't journalists, and the news media have nothing to worry about.
YOU WIN THE INTERNET!
This is just another incident in a long list of legal disputes which have been in the courts of late. The American way of doing business seems to have shifted from actual invention and innovation over to one that seems to resemble nothing short of extortion: we hold the patent on this and your new piece of software infringes upon it - so pay us. The biggest one that comes to mind at the moment is probably the SCO vs. IBM suit. Normally, I stick up for the little guy - the one that actually did invent something that the big fish tried to call their own. This view is changing, however. There are just too many nonsence suits (consider for a moment the suit in which an American company actually got a Federal judge to hear discussions on allowing them to patent human thought - because the same company held the patent on dopamine) going on and it's becoming much more difficult day by day to tell who is right - or rather appears to be right. The Americans patent office needs to 1.) remove certain patents from exclusivity and place them into a common, public domain for use by other developers, and 2.) alter the means by which they are filed and 3.) restrict the language that is use in the patent definition. Until then, I hate to say it, but it will remain a point of significant amusement for the rest of the world, and stifle real innovation. There are a number of efforts going on now which see software development moved outside of the US so that they can get around these restrictions. As a programmer, it is very, very difficult to actually develop a piece of software in the US without stepping into someone elses - patented - 'processes', concieved of 'process or method by which' something works. End result - the consumer pays for it with a consistent lack of choice, and the developer pays for it when the application never makes it to market. What ever happen to the days when the USPTO did not grant software patents?
So? Big deal that technology allowed automation systems to get smaller. The first TV sets were the size of cars, yet Sony couldn't patent the Viewman (handheld TV set), because it was the result of the advance of technology. How is this any different?
I read your comment, and it does quote the patent (that's informative) but doesn't go further than that. Since you have experience in patents, perhaps you can comment on it in a bit more detail? Also, is that the original patent or an amended one? The original patent, as I recall, only involved downloading the file to a music player... not playing it directly.
To me, that patent seems to be based on applying IBM's old "Query By Example" to a relational database containing track information. That's prior art dating back to the '70s.
This is as frivolous a patent as the one on applying the well-known principle of the crank to steam engines that led to James Watt playing around with his "sun and planet" gear scheme.
This is the patent mentioned in the linked article, I'm not sure what you mean by 'the original patent' - are you talking about Creative's patent? If so then the two aren't linked at all.
Anyway this patent is just about the user interface for a music player and it's pretty specific - you have to display "at least two individual data fields selected from music categories, composers, artists, and songs", then let people select, update the list etc. This is exactly what the ipod does.
Personally I think it's fairly obvious, it's just not as obvious as people are saying, and it doesn't cover any of the examples I saw people giving of prior art.
ccalam - acoustic versions of new songs.
What a lovely rant, from someone claiming everyone else is going downhill. But this particular debate about who's retarded and who's a "slashtard" should end now, it's making us both look bad.
I'm not spreading misinformation and using my karma modifier to do it. I'm also not using words like "retarded" while I talk out my ass on a subject that I clearly have no real knowledge of.
You know very well what I meant.
Right, that the patent is evil because that type of interface in that implementation seems so obvious now that you've been exposed to it for 10+ years that you figure it was as obvious 10 years ago. Except that, it doesn't work that way.
You asked me if the patent is valid, I have two answers for you:
1)YOU have failed miserably to convince me that it isn't. Comparing it to lifting up the play needle and moving it across the surface of the record? Are you fucking serious? If you are, then the debate over whose retarded has just officially ended and you lost.
2)Based on my current understanding of US patent law, including past precedent, this guys patent looks valid to me, for the following reasons:
a)There is no clear prior art. Your record analogy is like basically saying that a car is the natural evolution of the horse and buggy, so therefore, it's not really innovative. Which is absurd. They are not the same, and neither is an LP and an electronic interface to digital music, despite the very minor and vauge smiliarities.
b) He had and more importantly demoed, a working prototype of his idea. This means that he wasn't just an idea factory, he actually believed enough in his idea to implement and demo it.
Now if you meant to ask me whether my moral sense thinks it's valid, I don't believe our current patent laws are good for this day and age. I believe they are old and outdated and have placed all Americans at a huge disadvantage in the global marketplace of ideas. I believe that most Americans won't realize this until we have already entered deep into a severe economic downturn that we will not be able to innovate ourselves out of because of starving companies blocking innovation through massive patent lawsuits.
Despite this, I also believe that if people are going to talk about a subject, they should make very basic efforts to make sure they are not taking part in the repetition of misinformation, and actually make an honest attempt to engage in objective thought.
Yeah, Apple does have that reputation. At least, that what my mole at PARC tells me.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Casady and Greene was also to a huge extent, a remarketer, a publisher rather than a developer. Their business model was very much like Ambrosia Software, providing a distribution point for independantly developed shareware and software, rather than building everything they sold from the ground up.
Casady and Greene put discs in boxes, advertised the goods, and distributed to retailers. It is always possible they were not the fountainhead for SoundJam.
Defininately untrue. Commodore died in 1994, the Amiga died many years later (and there are probably a handful of holdouts that say it hasn't died yet, though I can't quite see it their way).
My Amiga's CPU was pretty stressed by MP3 decoding (and my hard disk capacity was still limited to a couple gigabytes), so in the 1990s (probably starting sometime around 1996), playing music CDs on my Amiga's CD-ROM was my normal way to play music. Since I had no trouble getting the necessary software from Aminet, I can conclude the capacity had been around for quite some time, though I don't know how long.
Also keep in mind that before Commodore died, they actually released two generations of integrated Amiga-CDROM console machines. The CDTV (1990? 1991?) was a pretty neat machine, and the CD32 (1992?) was the first "double-speed" CDROM console on the market. That's before Nintendo, Sega, or anyone else.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
This is one of those situations where, from the outside, it looks like Apple should have squashed these fuckers like a bug. That makes my "inner paranoid" think they gave up intentionally, to support and legitimize frivolous patent or look-and-feel attacks.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Spreading misinformation is not my intent, and I've earned my karma modifier. Here, where I'm wrong, I should be modded down, and I should lose karma, whereas if you're wrong, you just fade back into anonymity. There's a reason it's called "Anonymous Coward".
And this is my only Slashdot account.
I was taking this to an extreme, but there are more recent examples. CD players have been able to do this for as long as I remember having a CD player.
In any case, back to WinAMP. Are patents at all like trademarks? That is, do you lose them if you don't protect them?
See, now you're just calling names, which is why I shouldn't be responding, but I'm just that bored.
I would say that you should not be able to hold a patent over a car. You can patent a specific implementation all you want -- if you've patented the internal combustion engine, it shouldn't apply to an electric car. But simply adding a generic motor? I'm not sure.
At what point does it become truly new? Do we really get to patent all the same inventions over again just because "this time it's with computers"? Or with your car example, "this time it's with motors"? Let's try something else -- can I walk all over anyone's software patents by doing it this time in AJAX?
That would tend to lend more credibility to this. But then, depends what a "demo" ends up being. I can demo quite a lot of things that don't actually work yet. And there are plenty of patent trolls which have working implementations that are entirely obvious and took ten seconds to implement.
True, my mistake. But if people are going to talk seriously about anything, I think we should avoid name-calling without cause. You still haven't clearly given a reason why I'm retarded for bringing up the idea of LPs.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
I'm not sure what you mean by 'the original patent'
A patent may be amended. For example, there's a gentleman by the name of Warman who had a patent on attaching a protective screen to a curved CRT monitor, using adhesive tabs. Some time later... allegedly after seeing people using screen protectors, he was awarded an amendment to the patent that covered screen protectors on PDAs that basically replaced the original patent. Google for "warman screen protector patent" and read your fill.
That's why I'm asking, because my memory of this when it first came up was that Contois' patent did not actually say anything about playing music from the interface... it covered selecting a playlist to download to an electronic instrument. Was the patent you were quoting from his original patent or an amended version?
Just a few days ago, I read an article on slashdot about Apple paying Creative Labs a pile of money for the same thing. Is this somehow the same case, or are they going around and taking care of anyone who ever had anything similar to cement their position?
Maybe a souless multi-billion dollar corporation stole ideals from other companies and used slave labor in a totalitarian state to make Gigadollars from it. Nahhh, that never happens in the real world.
you have some sort of a problem with Apple
No problem with Apple itself, just the dumbasses who spend every waking moment defending DRM.
Also, whenever a programmer thinks, "Hey, skins, what a cool idea", their computer's speakers should create some sort of cock-shaped soundwave and plunge it repeatedly through their skulls. -- makali
I fully support your proposed audio-cock technology. -- jwz
It's bad enough that iTunes isn't using Apple's standard toolkits, let alone Cocoa, so it'll run on Windows... make it skinnable and I'd be forced to fetch the diesel oil and shredded fiberglass.
I would like to congratulate Slashdot on another impartial headline.