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Australian Firm Targets Apple and Google Cloud Music Services

Posted by Unknown on from the can-i-patent-urls dept.

littlekorea writes "The online music services of Apple and Google are likely to be challenged by a Sydney-based company that has been granted three new patents around file hashing and deduplication. The patents are being managed by Kevin Bermeister, of Altnet/Kazaa fame, who believes that the technology behind P2P music services has been commercialized by the music industry without license." In semi-related patent troll news, Google is being sued over using interactive panoramic images in Streetview. Because QuickTime VR didn't exist years before the patent was filed.

6 of 37 comments (clear)

  1. Sigh, how did I know this was a patent troll by bruce_the_moose · · Score: 4, Interesting

    just by reading the title? I hoped "Australian Firm Targets Apple and Google" meant they were going to, oh, I don't know, produce a product and compete? But, no, targeting can only mean one thing any more: lawsuits.

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  2. Something has got to give. by pablo_max · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Seriously, this is getting to be freaking ridiculous. No one is allowed to do anything. No one can have any service because some fuck tard has a patent for some idea which he either was never able to implement or bought from some other fuck tard who was not able to implement it.
    This system is completely broken. Something has got to give.

    1. Re:Something has got to give. by Wovel · · Score: 3, Funny

      I have a trademark on the phrase fuck tard used in any online communication. Please visit imatroll.com to pay your license fee.

  3. Getting completely ridiculous by ClaraBow · · Score: 2

    I don't think any company can introduce a new service or product without being hit with a lawsuit! The only winners here are the lawyers who are makings lots of money at the expensive of the consumer as companies just pass on the costs. Seriously, we need some reforms -- now!

    1. Re:Getting completely ridiculous by Rich0 · · Score: 2

      Well, avoiding the US market isn't exactly a smart move - it is a pretty huge segment of the profits considering the buying power people have, plus the cultural power the US exerts over the rest of the world. Do you think that iPhones would be as fashionable in Denmark if some famous actor in the US didn't use it?

      Don't get me wrong - I'm not saying that the rest of the world just gets up every morning and reads People magazine to tell them how to think. However, a dollar invested promoting a product in the US gains a lot of mindshare among people that have money to spend.

      All that said, agree totally that the US legal system is in need of MASSIVE reform. It seems like half our economy is lawyers and finance - two industries that don't actually create anything of real value. Sure, R&D is a "service" and isn't terribly tangible, but the fact is that mankind as a whole benefits incrementally when somebody comes up with a new kind of transistor, or even a new kind of toothpaste.

  4. Google May Not Be Effected by DuckFOO · · Score: 2

    I recently read an article on Ars about this and the thought there is that Google will not be doing deduplication in order to avoid lawsuits. Link: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/07/are-google-music-and-amazon-cloud-player-illegal.ars

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    "Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so."
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