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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.
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
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?
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.
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.
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!
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.
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
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
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.
Information incorrect. See above posts with dates. Winamp 1997. XMMS 1997. Claim is 1995.
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
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.