Lawyer Brags About The 'Obvious' Downloading Patent He Forced Apple To Buy

from the ugh dept

Fri, Dec 1st 2006 9:38am — Mike Masnick

Another day, another ridiculous patent situation. Back in the summer of 2005, Apple was sued for the iTunes interface. Apparently, some guy had patented a "Computer control system and user interface for media playing devices," and accused Apple of "stealing" the idea. Earlier this year, Apple settled the case, realizing it was cheaper to just pay up than bother fighting it (which is why patent trolling often works). Now, jeff gladnick points us to a press release from the lawyer who wrote the patent and sued Apple bragging about both the patent and the settlement -- and basically pointing out that the patent had nothing to do with the actual invention.

Apparently, the settlement wasn't just a licensing deal. They sold the actual patent to Apple, and the lawyer believes that Apple can now use it to sue everyone else, claiming it's a "billion dollar patent." Of course, there's no evidence that Apple actually plans to use the patent against anyone else at this point. He also goes on to brag about how brilliant he was in the way he wrote up the patent, noting that it was really just supposed to be for a computerized system to let someone select a genre of songs to play on an electronic piano, but he was smart enough to write the patent to be so ridiculously broad that it eventually covered all sorts of music and movie downloading. In fact, he carelessly tosses out the word "obvious" to explain how he took the concept of music downloading for the patent and "realized that downloading movies was an obvious variation." That's a pretty poor choice of words on the part of a patent lawyer who should realize that obvious ideas aren't patentable -- especially if they're obvious to the lawyer, rather than the inventor who is actually the "skilled practitioner." In the meantime, though, the patent is apparently no longer in the hands of this guy, and hopefully Apple recognizes the wisdom of just sitting on it -- but it's another victory for a patent holder who did nothing related to the innovation at hand, but forced the actual innovator to pay up. These stories are all about taking money away from the companies that actually innovate, and giving it to lawyers who can stretch a patent to cover a ridiculously broad range of technologies. It's not clear how that helps "To promote the progress of science and useful arts."

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

12 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

Anonymous Coward, 1 Dec 2006 @ 10:11am

Can't apple sue him for fraud now?
If he has openly admitted that the patent was obvious, then isnt that an admission that he fraudently obtained the patent?

Also, he "sold" it to apple under fraudulent circumstances.

I think Apple should sue him for it, just to set a positive legal precedent.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Petréa Mitchell, 1 Dec 2006 @ 10:20am

Unfortunately, no
IANAL, but it seems to me that unless and until the court system rules that patent to be invalid, he sold Apple a real patent that is in fact a potential gold mine.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Sanguine Dream, 1 Dec 2006 @ 10:36am

Angry...
This just makes me angry...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Mike Brown, 1 Dec 2006 @ 10:43am

Not obvious...
realized that downloading movies was an obvious variation." That's a pretty poor choice of words on the part of a patent lawyer who should realize that obvious ideas aren't patentable
You've missed the point here - he said that he had realized something was an obvious variation on the inventor's invention , not that the invention itself was obvious. Therefore the variation is not independently patentable as a separate invention - but that says nothing about the patentability of the underlying invention.
especially if they're obvious to the lawyer, rather than the inventor who is actually the "skilled practitioner."
If a variation on the invention is suggested by the lawyer in the course of preparing a patent application, the variations are often obvious - if it were not so, I would find myself in competition with my clients as to who the inventor is. It's not an unusual situation, and I've made many such suggestions. I think what the lawyer here was saying is that his client invented a system for organizing content by genre, which is (presumably) novel, and in preparing the application the lawyer said, "wouldn't this work for movies?" In fact, there was a recent court case which held that patent attorneys are never to be considered inventors when they suggest variations to a client, for just that reason.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 1 Dec 2006 @ 10:46am

Where is the link to this press release? The link provided goes to a Macworld article. The Macworld article quotes the lawyer as having said that he wrote the patent to include "obvious variations" of the patents basic ideas. He's not saying the patent itself is obvious, at least not in the links provided.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Mike (profile), 1 Dec 2006 @ 11:53am
  
  Re:
  Where is the link to this press release? The link provided goes to a Macworld article.
  
  Macworld was just reprinting the press release (without admitting it was a press release). You can see the same thing here, which clearly is a press release and is the identical text.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
Joe, 1 Dec 2006 @ 11:47am

total bs
what a slimeball -

"Computer control system and user interface for media playing devices"

are you f-ing kidding me?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Matt Bennett, 1 Dec 2006 @ 12:09pm

Kinda like a car salesman who sells you a lemon for twice the price, he sux.

But, on the other hand, he is right to brag.....he did his job well. And he doesn't care if it's found to be obvious now or not, he's sold it. I'm sure any liability for it being invalid was part of the settlement.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Rob Tsai, 1 Dec 2006 @ 2:02pm

Great report.

I wrote about our absurd patent system when Netflix sued Blockbuster for violating its patent on renting DVDs over the Internet.

http://zenrob.typepad.com/zenrob/2006/09/thats_lame_netf.html

Rob
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 1 Dec 2006 @ 3:29pm

The press release does basically say the same thing, so I would agree with what I said before (and with Mike Brown). He's not saying the patent is obvious, but that he added value to the patent by including some obvious variations on the patent idea.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
foobar, 2 Dec 2006 @ 7:24am

Its obvious that lawyers are bottom feeders. Its also obvious that existing patent law, as well as copyright law, needs re-evalution due to recent, unpatented innovations.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
nbmonger, 7 Dec 2006 @ 8:39pm

The patent has value -- that is why Apple bought i
Apple had plenty of high priced lawyers look at this patent and in the end the decision was made to settle and buy the patent outright.

Claims 1 and 11 (see US 5,5864,868) are both interesting and may provide Apple an opportunity to license or restrict competition.
www.patentmonkey.com
[ link to this | view in chronology ]