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PTO Rejects Instant Live Patent

Jivecat writes "Instant Live, a service of the concert promotion company Live Nation, makes recordings of live concerts that are rapidly burned onto CDs to be sold to the audience before they leave the venue. It's a nice service for fans, but Live Nation holds the patent for a technology that places markers between songs so they can be written as separate tracks rather than one big track — in effect giving them a monopoly on in-concert recordings. Now, thanks to the efforts of the EFF and a patent attorney, who found prior work of similar technology, the U.S. Patent Office has revoked Live Nation's patent. This is good news for those who consider Live Nation to be the Evil Empire when it comes to concert promotion."

3 of 77 comments (clear)

  1. because by User+956 · · Score: 3, Funny

    PTO Rejects Instant Live Patent

    That's because the idea of granting it is patently ridiculous.

    --
    The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
  2. Evil Empire Yellow Book? by Bill,+Shooter+of+Bul · · Score: 5, Funny

    These days we seem to have a plethora of Evil Empires. Evil Empire of software, Evil Empire of Domain Registration, Evil Empire of Music Labels, Evil Empire of Movies, Evil Empire of Pizza chains, Evil Empire of dry cleaning, Evil Empire of Milwaukee area Dairy Producers. The list just never stops. We need a onestop resource to look up the Evil Empire of a good or service, if we want to keep it all straight, or if we want to keep our purchasing and use of services of Evil Empires to a minimum. So we should put them in a Directory book. Yellow is actually aready taken, so is blue and red, How about the chartreuse book of Evil Empires?

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    Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
  3. Re:A tragedy, actually by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    have you ever been to a Phish show?

    noone knows what the hell track they are playing, they are just 50 minute jams.