Apple Loses Patent Lawsuit... Over Playlists
from the yeah,-that's-innovation dept
East Texas is famous for its patent lawsuits, and even though the Federal Circuit had suggested in the past that district courts be more willing to transfer patent cases out of East Texas, companies keep coming up with tricks to stay in East Texas. Take, for example, the company Personal Audio. Despite not actually being based in East Texas, the company set up "offices" in East Texas two months before suing Apple and others over two patents (6,199,076 and 7,509,178) concerning music players, where playlists can be pushed to the players.Those new offices had no employees and just so happened to be "based" in the same offices as their patent attorneys (shocking coincidence, I'm sure). But, because of that, the case was allowed to stay in East Texas.
And... of course, there's a reason why they wanted it in East Texas. Because Personal Audio has been awarded $8 million from Apple for those patents. It's not a huge ruling, of course (which might also suggest a reason for Apple to just pay up, rather than appeal), but it's yet another example of the problems of the patent system today.
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Filed Under: east texas, patents, playlists
Companies: apple, personal audio
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Yay for innovation!
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Playlist = File
What next? Is someone going to patent the power switch? The patent system has gone completely mad.
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Re: Playlist = File
Close. Microsoft patented OS shutdown.
See, for example:
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/09/01/1456235/Microsoft-Patents-OS-Shutdown
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Re: Playlist = File
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Poor Apple
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No support for your non-sequitor assertion:
To jump to end of the obvious chain of reasoning: your notions -- EVEN IF CORRECT -- just plain don't take human nature into account, and so you come up short. People will always try to get easy money.
Yes, lawyers game the system by shopping for venues. They're /lawyers/, Mike, trained blood suckers.
Yes, patents are mostly idiotic. -- I've given my solution: require working physical models, automatically rules out software.
But mainly, there's no "good" side to take: Apple is just another corporation that's as criminal as they dare to be. Apple "stole" a BSD Unix for their OS, or they wouldn't have one at all able to compete. It's possible to STEAL from the public domain, because Apple is NOT the public, has NO right to use public property: it's a corporation that exists only by permission.
The solution is to limit BOTH lawyers and corporations, before they ruin the system for we the people.
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Re: No support for your non-sequitor assertion:
[Citation needed]
Mac Os X is based around the Mach kernel, as are many other Os's (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mach_kernel).
I agree with your sentiment (corporations are scum) but get your facts straight, or you'll just end up looking like a nut.
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Re: Re: No support for your non-sequitor assertion:
Apple's OSX is an hybrid kernel(Mach and BSD) posix compliant.
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Re: No support for your non-sequitor assertion:
Those of us who have contributed to BSD have done so with this license in mind -- that is, we are fully aware that anyone who wishes to may use BSD, within the terms of the license, and thus may use our work as part of that.
This is not to say that I'm entirely pleased with Apple: I'm not. But that is a separate matter from whether or not they are in compliance with the BSD license, and to the best of my knowledge, they ARE in compliance.
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Re: No support for your non-sequitor assertion:
You pointing out that Apple could have infringed is a non-sequitor in and of itself. The point of the article was that from the first paper being filed to the gavel banging on the judge's bench, this has been a sham. This company went out of their way to keep this suit in Texas even though there is nothing about the whole thing that has anything to do with Texas. At all. Nadda. Zero.
And the info you put up about Apple stealing stuff for OS? Really not sure how that fits into this at all. So… yeah. Non-Sequitor Pot, meet Non-Sequitor Kettle.
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East Texas has an average IQ of 58 (peak of 72)
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Innovation at last!
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How will they cope I wonder....
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Re:
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Texas has its own reality
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I keep wondering..
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WOW!
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rubbish
If Apple doesn't pay to to write this rubbish, they should.
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no surprise
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Steve's Biography
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