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Bose Sues New Apple Acquisition Beats Over Patent Violations
Bose has taken issue with some of the technology embodied in products in Apple's newly acquired Beats line of headphones. As Ars Technica reports, Bose is suing Apple, claiming that the Beats products violate five Bose patents, covering noise cancellation and signal processing
Although Bose never mentions Apple in the 22-page complaint, the acquisition price of the private company may have played a part in spurring Bose to sue. The suit doesn't include a specific damage demand.
Bose has also filed a complaint with the US International Trade Commission against Beats over the same infringement claims. That means the patent lawsuit filed in federal court will be stayed while the ITC case gets resolved first.
Maybe, but as a guy who writes DSP software for a living, I took a look at that first patent and there's nothing original or creative about it that could possibly justify a patent -- and Bose must have known that when they filed it. I bet the USPTO clerk didn't have a fucking clue about DSP and was just impressed by fancy words. "Minimizing latency" my ass.
Bose: They have infringed on our patents for crappy sound reproduction!
Beats/Apple: Crap! We got nothin'! We weren't expecting them to play the "blunt honesty" card!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Bose specifically alleges that Beats infringed on five US patents: patent 6,717,537, titled “Method and Apparatus for Minimizing Latency in Digital Signal Processing Systems;” patent 8,073,150, a “Dynamically Configurable ANR Signal Processing Topology;” patent 8,073,151, a “Dynamically Configurable ANR Filter Block Technology;” patent 8,054,992, which specifies a method for high frequency compensating; and patent 8,345,888, which covers “Digital High Frequency Phase Compensation.”
I can see why you think Dr. Dre is such a brilliant technilogical innovator and all, what with the "Dr." in his fake name and all, but ... you clearly have no idea what you are talking about. Dr. Bose (an actual Doctor, with an MIT Doctorate and everything!) is an innovator par excellence. If you go to their administration building at 100 The Mountain Rd. in Framingham Mass you will experience one of the coolest examples of his acoustic innovation. There is a very small word: BOSE set in stone on the floor. If you step on the B or E you will hear an audio reflection, and if you move ever so slightly over the the O and S it is 100% anechoic. All of this is done with zero electronics. Let's see you pull that off :-)
Just accross the parking lot is the Bose Research Building, where every design must pass a rigorous Design Assurance Engineering process. They have anechoic chambers, speaker torture (long-term testing) rooms where they do up and down, left and right, circular, and random vibration testing, CAD rooms and all kinds of research tools and methods you can't even imagine (e.g. Salt Fog testing for their Marine products)
In other words, you are about as far off base as a person can be on this one.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun