Slashdot Mirror
Apple Admits iPod Is From 1970s UK
MattSparkes writes "Apple has all but admitted that a British man invented the iPod over three decades ago in the 1970s. Unfortunately, he let the patent run out. When another company tried to grab a portion of its iPod profits, though, Apple went running to him to defend them in court. In return, it looks like he's in for a share of the cash generated from the sale of 163 million iPods."
This guy's patents would have expired before the iPod reached the market. It sounds like Apple used the inventor's testimony to establish the prior art in order to invalidate some patentee's claims.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
The IPod may have made Apple plenty of money, but the concept isn't revolutionary- its evolutionary. Any person/company could have imagined such a music player. The only thing the world was waiting for was the right technology to make it a reality.
glad to see a patent by a small-time inventor FINALLY being used to promote progress and innovation!
what ever would we have done if this guy hadn't patented his idea??
Now we just need the news to break that this man was once employed by The Beatles' label and you will hear the sound of a thousand lawyers climaxing at once.
TFA suggests the patent was just for a method of storing music on a solid state storage device, which covers any number of MP3 players out there.
However, the fact that the patent lapsed and others got to use the tech seems to me to be an illustration of how the patent system is supposed to work. Although, the fact that he could have actually extended the patent if he had the money to is a little disturbing. How long can you extend international patents, assuming you keep paying the fees?
Huh? The patent would have expired two years before the iPod was introduced! At most, Kramer could have earned some royalties from Rio and those other early MP3-player makers whose names escape me.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
So..explain to me how this patent was granted? I was under the impression that in order for a patent to be granted, a prototype has to be built. I wasn't aware flash drives even existed back in 1979.
Many clever inventions. The banks however, won't touch anything but property with a ten foot pole.
Deleted
So - let me get this straight, he invented the "iPod" before stored music was even available? Before any substantial file compression existed? Right.. I actually, ummm, invented televisions back during the Taft administration.
This was interesting and innovative but should it have earned a patent?
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
iPod wasn't the first MP3 player, was it?
Need an automatic screenshot taker? Try here.
He didn't invent the iPod, he patented (and didn't actually develop if I understood correctly) a digital music player.
Here's what I don't understand : what does it have to do with the iPod, shouldn't every other digital music player be equally affected, the patent slipped in the public in 1988, so why on Earth is that guy getting compensated by Apple??
You just got troll'd!
This sounds like just a legal ploy. Find an old patent that has expired, and use it to claim that's where you got the idea from. Throw some cash at the person who filed the patent so that he testifies in court.
"Yup, yup. I invented that thinggummy 30 years ago!"
Yeah, sure. Sounds like a standard defense. On the bright side though, this defense can be used to defend Open Source projects against patents.
Of course there have been solid state chips that stored sounds before ipod - I mean you could buy one in Rat Shack in the 80's for a few bucks. Does this really make this guy an inventor of iPod? I don't think so. Its like crediting the guy who invented the wheel with creation of the Prius.
on the other hand (from the article):
Kramer isn't resting on his laurels, though. He is currently working on a new device which will record telephone calls and send the audio file via email. The device is expected to be used for business meetings and interviews.
I believe this is something that has been offered by most teleconference bridges and corp voice mail systems for at least 10 years. I know I was getting WAV files of my voice mail via email back in 1999.... not to mention "visual voice mail" on iPhones.
-Em
RelevantElephants: A Somatic WebComic...
More like third fail.
More amusing than this story is trying to imagine what a 1970's iPod would have been like. I'm sure its "ultra portable" battery would have needed wheels but the white headphones, which would be so heavy as to break your neck, would still scream "MUG ME!".
I mean, isn't it just an audio player like any other?
Swedish plasma phys. PhD student; MSc EE; knows maths, programming, electronics; finance interest; seeks opportunities
Bullocks. Everyone knows John Lennon invented the iPod:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuxnePjQidE
on something called a "transistor". Apparently Apple hovered in the wings waiting for the patent on this technology to expire so they could steal it.
Who is this Taco fellow and why can't he read for comprehension?
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Bang&Olufsen invented the click-wheel for their high-end cordless phones, but apparently did not patent the design. They probably should have...
Why do they compare a player that can play music from a solid state chip with an iPod? Such music players already existed before the iPod: MP3 players from Creative and many others. Apple just made a similar MP3 player and used its name to make it sell better. They're doing as if the iPod is the only such portable player in existance, which is exactly as ignorant as saying that World Of Warcraft is the MMORPG!
... in your collection of awfully stupid shit that you will write all over the internet. Congratulations.
According to the article, the guy came up with a digital music player in 1979. Everyone on Slashdot should know that Apple's wasn't the first digital music player, nor even the first commercially successful one, not by a long shot. So no news here, except that Apple hired this guy to help defend themselves against a patent troll.
Now there's a sentence I didn't expect to see on Slashdot.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
"Apple was unavailable for comment at the time of writing."
What, the entire company?
Proverbs 21:19
Lots of people invent interesting devices. But inventing and bringing to market *at a point when the customer/market is ready to accept it* are two different things. Few items succeed merely on technical merits and most succeed purely on marketing (how else to explain the music top-40 list or clothing fashion?).
I'd say the iPod is the product of a Wurlitzer jukebox crossed with the Sony Walkman and fueled by the Napster music-sharing craze. Napster was the greater technological breakthrough, since it involved new economic as well as social dynamics and rocked an entire industry. The Sony Walkman enabled personal, portable music, and the jukebox gave access to a wide catalog. All were well understood ideas, but the iPod brought them together and Apple marketed it well. Breakthrough? Not really, I'd say it is an application and refinement of existing technologies enabling new behaviors but technology has allowed the device to scale to a point that it is practical.
http://www.kanekramer.com/html/development.htm
http://www.kanekramer.com/downloads/IXI-Report.pdf
A very interesting business plan had the RIAA not been so technophobic they could have had digital music in stores years before high speed internet and a recording format that probably
been harder to duplicate.
Then again I can only imagine...
"IXI music player new for 1992, 8mb of storage,
DOS, amiga and atari compatible...mac coming soon"
for anyone still confused by the summary, it would make more sense if you changed the title from "Apple Admits IPod Is From 1970s UK" to
"Patent Troll Foiled by Original Inventor of Digital Music Player"
Rule of Slashdot #0: You and people like you are not representative of the larger population. - A.C.
Apple has all but admitted that a British man invented the iPod over three decades ago in the 1970's. Unfortunately, he let the patent run out.
The only way to let a patent "run out" is to patent it in the first place.
Once you patent something, the patent will "run out" in 20 years. Patents expire and are never "extendable" except if the patent laws are changed via an act of government.
Let me see if I got this right Kane Kramer invented the digital-to-analog converter (DAC) in 1979 ..
davecb5620@gmail.com
As far as IP patents go. All a music player does, at its heart, when you go back this far, is maintain a file system for various sorts of files, and plays them back. To that end, one might well argue that unmanned spacecraft have been doing that at least through the 1970s, indeed, computers have been maintaining files and playing them back, even before. Digital music goes way, way back...
If anything is novel about the iPod, it is the user interface, and its bundling with iTunes. But the idea of a multimedia playback device being unique or patentable is utterly absurd. They are just computers, that's all.
This is my sig.
How is it that the phrase 'all but' is used to mean 'not quite, but almost'? It seems more appropriate that if something were 'all but' it would be basically 'everything except'.
That wagging dogs head is annoying .. I am never going to buy anything from that company - ever !!!
davecb5620@gmail.com
It's really unfair to say he invented the "iPod." Maybe at most he invented the digital-music player. It's really annoying that the brand name "iPod" has become synonymous with MP3 Player.
Apple has all but admitted that a British man invented the iPod over three decades ago in the 1970's.
Interpretation: Apple has not admitted that a British man invented the iPod.
Unfortunately, he let the patent run out.
Interpretation: Like all patents, this patent expired.
When another company tried to grab a portion of its iPod profits, though, Apple went running to him to defend them in court
Interpretation: Apple used "prior art" to invalidate someone else's claim that they recently invented a "solid state audio recorder/player".
In return, it looks like he's in for a share of the cash generated from the sale of 163 million iPods.
Interpretation: His patent pre-dated the technology to make a decent flash audio recorder/player, and therefore he was unable to collect royalties on his patent. Apple and the world may give him a pat on the back for inventing the solid-state audio recorder/player, but it would be financially irresponsible for them to give him royalties on a long-expired patent.
TFA states "...but it slipped into the public domain in 1988 when the firm failed to raise the £60,000 needed to renew international patents."
Would we have something different from ipod?
and see if you can figure out what he meant by "would have".
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
And the difference between a legal ploy, and prior art is:
Wait for it...
Wait for it...
$500 per hour! *rimshot*
If science-fiction were patentable, then Gene Roddenberry would be a billionaire (instead of just a multi-millionaire). Patents are supposed to be for the implementation of ideas, not the ideas themselves.
Apple's was the first (and only, so far) to become a cultural phenomenon
What about the Zune!? Oh, wait...
Star Trek invented the flip phone in the '60s, too. Not to mention the stun gun, the replicator, matter transport, and FTL. :-)
If that's the bit that is revolutionary.
Hell, IMO, if you can't keep it secret then you can't get a patent either. Patents were meant to be a counter to Trade Secret, where the risk was something new would be kept secret and have to be re-invented if the secret was lost in time. And so the right you have to use ideas is abridged to allow for the secret to be swapped for common knowledge in a patent.
But if you can't keep a secret, what do the public get from their abridged rights? Nothing that they couldn't get if patents didn't exist at all.
Everyone knows that most technologically revolutionary things were invented by the British :)
That is all this story is about.
I'm glad this man managed to get some money back indirectly for his invention back in the day, even if he couldn't make anything of it back then (unsurprisingly for the UK, no entity with money will take a risk, but if he had renewed that patent the investing entity would have made millions by now).
So we should be happy that a patent troll presumably got a lot less money for their trolling patent, that a man made money from his hard work a long time ago, and that hopefully some lawyers went home with a lot less money than they had hoped for.
Evidence is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuxnePjQidE
Considering this was the 70's, perhaps it was a few MIDI songs? Scratch that... the MIDI 1.0 specification wasn't around until 1982. So what kind of "music" did this thing play, anyway? Considering audio compression didn't debut until the 80's as well, I wonder how much of a "song" even fit on this thing?
> Apple has all but admitted that a British man invented the iPod over three decades ago in the 1970's.
Poorly math. 1979 is not "over three decades ago."
and keep it a secret.
When you get a big company interested, they will pay for it to be patented and share the revenue with you.
And NDA's, unlike patents, do not expire.
Why do people like you keep pulling the same lame old excuse? Hell, this patent didn't bring in enough money to pay for a renewal, so the little inventor with patents is STILL screwed.
So if he's already screwed by BigCorp, why worry about a change that will screw the little inventor? It's no change from the current situation.
FTA:
"Kramer isn't resting on his laurels, though. He is currently working on a new device which will record telephone calls and send the audio file via email. The device is expected to be used for business meetings and interviews."
Buh, wha-? That sort of thing's been around for at least a decade now. Hope he holds onto those iPod monies, he's gonna need them.
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
See Kane Kramer's website for a sketch of his digital audio player:
http://www.kanekramer.com/
[--- PGP key and more on http://www.root42.de ---]
Hogwash. The Internet was invented in October 1969 if you take ARPANet's going live into account, or 1983 if you want to consider the cutover to TCP/IP the birth date of the Internet. Considering that the basic infrastructure was the same and it was merely a cutover to a new protocol, I'd consider the ARPANet to be the birth of the Internet. In any case, 1979 does not predate 1969 at all, and if you want to consider the cutover to TCP/IP to be the birth of the Internet (sorry, it doesn't; internet email predates TCP/IP), 1979 is not "many" years prior to 1983.
What a crappy sensationalist rag. By their logic, I'd consider Tracy Dick to be the origin of the cellphone because he had a wrist telephone back in what, the 1930s? (1931; I just googled to verify). Also, what about wireless sound/data gadgets in Star Trek or even buck rogers? Both predate that "ipod" drawing by more than a decade (in the case of Buck Rogers, it's many decades).
A doodle != an invention, IMHO. If it is, then the time machine has already been invented, along with interstellar spacecraft and death stars.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Doesn't the Apple iPod run on advanced microcontrollers whose capabilities were only available on million dollar computers in the 1970s?
Doesn't the Apple iPod store data on memory chips that millions of times the capabilities of the ICs available in 1970s (never mind the 'little beads in a wire-loom' memory used at that time)?
Doesn't the Apple iPod store music on tiny hard disks that were inconceivable in the 1970's?
Doesn't the iPod use an interface to access these thousands of music files from the hard disk that was completely unforseen in the 1970s?
Then where does this schmuck get off claiming that he 'invented' the iPod in the 1970s? (which is what a patent is all about, inventing this and that).
This is the weakest patent claim 'prior art' ever! Why is Apple taking this seriously?
Maybe this guy who is claiming that he 'invented' the iPod actually is an old 'pal' of Steve Jobs who is blackmailing him with something that Steve did long ago and this is way to pay him off (and take a tax deduction as well.)
It's the only thing that makes sense to me. Yes, I's quite confuuused about the whole thing.
FTA: He is currently working on a new device which will record telephone calls and send the audio file via email.
My VOIP already does this. I check my voicemail by playing .wav email attachments.
War as we knew it was obsolete
Nothing could beat complete denial
- Emily Haines
It was probably Irish.
(And fully tanked up, at that.)
A horse can't be sick, you know, even if he wants to.
Tens of thousands of years ago pre-ice age man invented the first iPod when he remembered the very first song and was able to play it back on his iBrain+iMemory+iVoiceBox, aka the first iPod. In addition to being the first singer he was the first song writer. At the time it was an Earth Shattering event and it spread fast and far beyond his pod. Of course all was not well since the iMemory wasn't perfect to say the least. The iVoiceBox also wasn't so good. Man would evolve and get the full iBrain + iMemory + iVoiceBox upgrades that were needed for the likes of Prince and Michael only to be obsoleted by the Apple iPod! What's next? iPod inBrain!
OK, I don't know if Arthur C Clarke or Robert Heinlein or Isaac Asimov or Frank Herbert invented the iPod too, but I would be absolutely shocked if there wasn't something in a SF story from the '50s or '60s that looked like a handheld digital music player. Hell, you could probably find one in the original Star Trek.
"Computer... Shuffle... The White Album, Dark Side of the Moon, and Hotel California."
MattSparkes writes "Apple has all but admitted that a British man invented the iPod..."
Are you f***ing serious?
Can we leave the cheesy hack headline generation to Computerworld and its ilk??
In this case, it's not just more anti-Apple FUD, it's bad practice. A literary bait-and-switch.
Forget the fact that the point was not "an admission" of any kind from Apple -- Apple is the one that brought this guy forward. He was "happy to" (his own words) testify for them. So obviously the happiness went both ways.
Now get over yourself, stick to the story and you may yet do something useful.
-Matt
Stole the Commodore logo key to make the Apple logo keys in the Apple //e.
Stole the compact design of the Vic-20 and Commodore 64 to make the Apple //c.
Stole the Amiga design to make the Macintosh II and Apple //gs computers use 4096 or more colors and co-processors and most of the OS in ROM like Amiga Kickstart.
Stole the Amiga Video Toaster to make the iLife and Mac OSX video applications and hardware.
Stole the Mac OSX interface from AmigaOS/Workbench and AROS.
That helped drive Commodore out of business, and Microsoft had a hand in it as well taking features of AmigaDOS/AmigaOS/Workbench to make Windows 95 and Windows NT/2000/XP.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
Soon it will run on 'kick-ass', instead, as you'll be all out of gum.
A horse can't be sick, you know, even if he wants to.
The Jacquard loom never had anything to do with business punch cards, but as a hoopskirt to hide under, it saved IBM's bacon.
``Tension, apprehension & dissension have begun!'' - Duffy Wyg&, in Alfred Bester's _The Demolished Man_
cough....
Burn as an "Audio CD"
Its a pain, but you loose very little quality if you encode correctly. My car has mp3 cd so I had to convert.
hint: If you don't eject the meta-data(track names etc) follow.
http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2005-08-29-n64.html Da Vinci invented it. ipodious
In return, it looks like he's in for a share of the cash generated from the sale of 163 million iPods.
If by 'a share' you mean (X hours of his time) * (Y billing rate) =< ~$50,000, then, yes. People with expired patents in other jurisdictions do not get royalties. Not even 0.0003% royalties.
Talk about your baseless article summaries.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
The guy had an earlier invention and they turned to him for prior art defense. He did not help invent the iPod.
Many of those creatures he attempted to boldly go to bed with fought back.
He may have been a degenerate visiting planets and taking their women in the finest traditions of 1930s pulp Martian invasion comics -- but at the end of the day Kirk earned that right by killing thousands of hairy monsters and blobs during those five years of peaceful exploration.
I will never tolerate such libels against the first TV character that respected that interspecies communication went beyond the verbal.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
Last night I was at a restaurant and being one of those people who can't spend more than one minute of idleness without something to read
*sob* And I thought I was alone in this world...
What? Is there someone who purposefully set's all my posts to "troll"? It was "funny +2" earlier today. What happened? Whomever is setting my comments - like the above one - to troll is out of touch. Seriously.
Not to mention .... genetically engineered supersoldiers.
I'm damn sure there is prior art on that one.
THIS clearly approves that time travelling is possible today.
Clever, indeed.
I can't get the pages on TFA to display any content unless I switch my User Agent to IE. Anyone else having this problem? I tried Firefox on XP and Vista as well, but no go.
Imagine the journalist's call
Journalist: hello Apple, I wanted to speak to someone in your PR dept about ipod royalties to Kane Kramer Apple: I'm sorry, there is no one available to comment at the moment J: Well ok what about someone in the management team Apple: I'm sorry, they're not available to comment at the moment J: Well ok what about someone in the legal department Apple: I'm sorry, they're not able to comment at the moment J: marketing teams? Apple: I'm sorry, they're at lunch J: Administration teams? Apple: I'm sorry, they're busy J: Technical teams? Apple: I'm sorry, they're not to be disturbed J: Oh for goodness sake, no one is "available" to make a comment about Kane Kramer? Apple: I'm sorry, everyone's too busy to make a comment J: What about you, can you make a comment? Apple: I'm sorry, I'm not available to make a comment at this time J: KHHHHAAAAAANNNNNNNNNNNNNNNMy ism, it's full of beliefs.