Apple Sued Over iTunes UI 502
An anonymous reader writes "It apppears that Contois Music Technology is suing Apple Computer over the UI to its iTunes music software. The suit claims patent infringement over a patent owned by Contois."
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Apple Sued Over iTunes UI
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Life is a whim of several billion cells to be you for a while.
IANAL but ... (Score:1, Insightful)
Bullshit patent. (Score:3, Insightful)
Hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
This my friends is why we don't like software patents.
Good ! (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe if enough big companies get shafted through patent lawsuits they may consider working to get rid of software patents.
But then again....
It's about time we throw the baby out with the (Score:5, Insightful)
If the child is a brat, you discipline the child. If the child tries to stab you to death for disciplining it, you put the child in a mental ward for safe observation and help. If when the child (or in this case patent industry) is mature and tries it again, society prescribes the death penalty (in the US). Why shouldn't the patent system be any different?
The big IT corporations don't need patents to maintain their control because they are in a unique position to crush upstarts that few industries have. They industry as a whole has proven that they can't use them responsibly and the very fact that a hobbyist can turn their hobby into a business means that patents are bad. I'm sorry, but the ends justify the means here. Patent holders have time and again proven that milking their work and not innovating is their real goal, at least in IT. It's time that the entire system be flushed out and simplified.
good (Score:1, Insightful)
when america became nigeria (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Hmm (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:How is that solid? Music not in database (Score:3, Insightful)
Furthermore the bit about playing music in certain categories is very unlike playlists.
But a lot like the iTunes Music Store.
Patent Text (Score:5, Insightful)
Abstract
A computer system and method for controlling a media playing device. The system provides a user interface for allowing a user access to media pieces stored in a media database. The interface is also for controlling a media playing device, like a player piano or movie playing video device, that is coupled to the computer to play the accessed or selected piece of media. In one embodiment there is a computer interface that allows a user to display only music that relates to a selected category, like jazz or classical music. Another embodiment allows the user to direct the media playing device to automatically play selected music pieces that are related to a selected music category. Another embodiment allows a user to direct the media playing device to automatically play selected music pieces that are related to the selected music composer or artist."
My only question is: Where are the lawsuits against Microsoft's WMP, Realplayer, the Microsoft XBox Media Player, MusicMatch, etc?
iTunes has been out for over 4 years, and just now there's a lawsuit? I understand it takes time to find a lawyer that will accept a case, but *4* years? Hmmm, right at the height of popularity too, kinda amazing how it worked out like that...
Re:I can't believe the guts of this lawyer (Score:5, Insightful)
The patent was granted January 1999. It was actually filed Feb. 13, 1996, so you have to beat that date since that is the priority date and the date from which their 20 year term of protection begins. If you read the claims carefully, it is more than just a simple listing and selection of songs. In order to violate the patent, each and every element of an independent claim has to be present in what is alleged to be infringed upon. It is not as simple as you are making it out to be.
Re:It's about time we throw the baby out with the (Score:2, Insightful)
Because the system is run by the governemnt, which is run by the corporations, which make profits off of the patents.
It's like not giving the baby a death penalty because having the baby makes you eligible for welfare.
Part of the basis... (Score:3, Insightful)
The implication is that they saw his app and were so entralled at his genious to organize music by Genere, then artist, and finally album, that they quit their jobs, convinced Apple to hire them, and then applied such unique cataloging skills to iTunes.
Re:Good ! (Score:5, Insightful)
Their thinking is that if we get MORE software patents, the costs will offset and we win.
It's fundamentally just an arms race, where the one with the biggest wallet wins and consumers always lose.
Of course (Score:5, Insightful)
Contois is seeking a trial by jury.
Re:IANAL but ... (Score:5, Insightful)
If you have a 100 disc CD changer and write a computer program to allow you to choose and begin playing selections from that changer, you violate this patent.
Here's the first claim from the patent:
1. A computer user interface menu selection process for allowing the user to select music to be played on a music device controlled by a computer, comprising the steps of:
a) simultaneously displaying on a display device, at least two individual data fields selected from music categories, composers, artists, and songs;
b) selecting at least one item from at least one of the data fields;
c) in response to step b), redisplaying all data fields not having an item selected therefrom with data related only to the at least one item selected in step b), and simultaneously maintaining all items originally displayed in the data fields with at lest one item selected therefrom;
d) selecting an item in the songs data field in response to step c), and
e) playing the selected song item from step d) on the computer responsive music device.
Now come on. If you are going to use a computer for connecting to a music device, how obvious is a user interface that categorizes the data? 90% of what a computer does when it isn't playing games is categorizing data!
biting the hand that feeds you (Score:4, Insightful)
Apple is getting its just deserts from supporting the software patent system.
Re:Good ! (Score:2, Insightful)
Apple, Microsoft, and other established businesses can afford the lawyers, the fee, and/or the extra programming time. Lawsuits like this are just one of the costs of doing business.
For established companies an out-of-control patent system is useful, despite the costs. It helps block competition by increasing the costs that potential competitors face when starting new companies.
Jerry
Re:LOL! (Score:5, Insightful)
Woah! Those are really neat inventions. Must have required a lot of intellect to bring that intellectual property to paper.
Go patents go!
Re:I can't believe the guts of this lawyer (Score:3, Insightful)
There are a quadrillion patents for existing technology, now slightly tweaked or modernized. I'm sure someone got a new patent for the steam engine just as soon as they connected it to a computer. It's now a computer controlled steam engine. Then when they connect that computer to the internet, it's an internet enable steam engine. Then when they created a web interface for it, they got more patents.
None of your listed "problems" have anything to do with patent law. That's the problem. Yes, yes, obviousness is *supposed* to come into play, but that has obviously been defined out of existence. Your prior art would not be covered by this patent.
Yes, it's idiotic. That's the problem.
Re:I can't believe the guts of this lawyer (Score:4, Insightful)
They might have a case for copyright infringement if they can show their ex-employees took the code to Apple. Might even have a case for contract law, if Apple NDA'd to see the software at the trade shows.
But the patent was applied for in 1999. How long has winamp existed? When winamp first came out, how much information did it display on the screen? How long have ID3 tags been around, with Winamp using them to display song name, artist, title... ooops, we've already passed the two fields in the patent! And the buttons, of course the buttons! Buttons are clearly a novel way to control a computer!
The patent as described in the abstract would have been a pretty cool invention. "Control a player piano from your computer!" Too bad the patent lawyers sank their teeth into it and turned it into a steaming pile of crap, knowing that the patent office would accept it anyway. "A computer controlled device" in this language could mean anything from a piano to a pair of speakers.... and imagine that, the music comes out my speakers when I hit play in either iTunes or Winamp!
Re:Are you joking me? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is no joke; it's real, and it's why more needs to be done to stop software patents. If they're not stopped, there will be more and more lawsuits just like this one. If there are enough of these lawsuits, they will have a dramatically negative impact on the economy, because wealth will be flowing from those who are being productive to those who are really nothing more than leaches.
Software already enjoys the protection of copyright, it does not need patent protection as well.
Re:side by side image of the patented player & (Score:3, Insightful)
So does that mean that if you ever see something presented at a developer's conference, say SIGGRAPH, then you are automatically prevented from ever using any information that you saw there? This would mean that you would never be able to develop 2D or 3D image processing software ever again for having attended SIGGRAPH because some slimeball would have a patent on something that was presented and he'd find out how to make it apply to anything in the image processing world.
I'm sorry but this part of their case sounds just like what the SCO Group is trying to argue against IBM - that anyone who has ever had access to their Glorious Unix System V source code is tainted and can never work with anything that is similar to it again (Linux, *BSD, etc.) without their work becoming the property of SCO.
If scumbags like these people can ever make this argument stick then it will be the end of innovation in the software industry, at least in the US.
Re:I can't believe the guts of this lawyer (Score:4, Insightful)
No, but neither does iTunes. According to their patent, the software must be capable of "b) sending a data stream from the computer to the computer controlled music device in response to step a) for controlling the playing of the selected song;". Or in other words, the external device must respond directly to the stream provided by the computer device.
iTunes does no such thing. It merely downloads the music to the player for storage, control, and later playback by the player. i.e. An iPod cannot be reasonably compared with directly controlling a "player piano".
Treatife on the Value of Ideaf (Score:3, Insightful)
What you will learn by the time you get to be an old geek is that you can't eat ideas. Even if you have a nearly endless supply of ideas, putting bread on the table with them requires a whole bunch of things you probably aren't as richly supplied with:
* Dedication
* Vision
* Experience/Judgement
* Cunning
* Persuasiveness
* Guts
* Capital
Basically, what I'm saying is that ideas are like the air we breath: essential, but economically speaking, not all that valuable. If you are out to "hire" ideas, pretty soon you find you have more of them around than you need. The "marginal value" of the next idea is a lot less than, say, a cunning, persuasive salesmen. The worst case is hiring somebody who has tons of ideas but none of the other stuff you need to turn ideas into cold, hard cash. Pretty soon you have ideas simply gumming up the works.
It's like buying a high speed printer -- for your car. That printer would be useful in an office providing services for lots of people, but there's only so much paper you can handle in a car. If the printer were a sentient being, it would treasure every page it created. "Look," it would say, "at the incredible sharpness of the letters; at the fine arches of the lower case letter. You'd need a magnifying glass to see the pixels. Breath in the aroma, so redolent of melted toner and paper on the cusp of charring." Then the user would glance at the page, realize it wasn't quite what he wanted, and toss it in the recycling.
So, getting back to answering your question, what if ideas are the only thing you really have to offer? Well, you're pretty much redundant.
Fortunately, our founding fathers were rather inordinately fond of ideas, and have provided, in Article 1, Clause 8 of the US Constitution for a kind of welfare program for people like you, along with that other class of soceital parasite, the lawyer.
And thus, the "Intellectual Property Company" was born.
Of course, in this deal, you make a small amount of money on any idea and the lawyers get the lion's share. This is fair, considering that the lawyers actually have to do most of the work to actually turn your ideas into money. If you are sufficiently fecund (as we all are here), you should be able to make a living, provided you can find some lawyer interested in exploting you. In fact, this is the weak point in the whole plan. There are millions of ideas created every day; almost none turned into products by the conventional way, so I believe we can discount this as an "idea sink". The number of ideas that are productized into "Intellectual Property" is much greater, but still a infintessimal fraction of the great mass of unharnessed, or rather unproductized ideas.
I can envision a future when every geek is assigned his own personal IP attorney, to follow him around and capture every idea that pops into his head.
The value of an idea is, of course, what the market will pay for it. In a state of nature, there is no limit on copying an idea, and so ideas intrinsically have no value. The creative genius who thought of jabbing pictures of game with spears to enhance hunting prowess probably never received so much as a bison skin or mammoth steak in reward. This sort of outrageous injustice could not happen in our modern, civilized society, because in their wisdom of our antecedents and betters have decided we ought to have an exclusive right to anything that pops into our head. Just like Franklin and his stove, they not sought direct personal gain from this, but allowed it to sit like manure on the commons, the economic benefit of all.
Re:I can't believe the guts of this lawyer (Score:2, Insightful)
Patents need to be for a novel, non-obvious invention (despite what the USPTO is granting these days); the 2- or 3-pane view above the track list is hardly non-obvious.
Read abstract (Score:4, Insightful)
The system provides a user interface for allowing a user access to media pieces stored in a media database
I don't think you can seriously refer to a directory as a "media database". They might have something if they had sued based on the iPod. To me that wordind in the abstract indicates intent and kills the claim.
Prior art (Score:1, Insightful)
For instance, in the mid 80's I was using a Macintosh with a Midi sequencer called Vision to control a bunch of musical devices including a digital sampling keyboard (Mirage) that played entire song segments and also displayed copious information about the songs on screen.
Its too late to patent midi, or software sequencers.
Re:LOL! (Score:3, Insightful)
I think RMS should just come up with a succinct "this example demonstrates exactly how the patent system is broken" reply, which /.ers can then copy and paste into their posts as a show of solidarity.
Re:I can't believe the guts of this lawyer (Score:3, Insightful)
I haven't read this patent, but if it is just an integration of UI elements (as people seem to be saying), Apple's use of a few of those elements would not be infringing. If Apple's UI is substantially similar to the whole UI, then it may be infringing.. If this is a really obvious combination of UI elements that doesn't warrant a patent, then maybe Apple will pony up some cash to lobby congress for a more meaningful patent review process. So, I can't say this is a totally bad thing.
Re:I can't believe the guts of this lawyer (Score:3, Insightful)
Bzzt! You're not controlling the iPod, you're interfacing with its database.
When I push Play/Pause/Skip in iTunes, the song on the iPod is played/paused/skipped.
But you're still not causing the iPod to play the music. You're causing your own computer to stream music from the iPod's database.
The patent is quite clear on this issue. When you press the play button, it must force the player piano to begin playing. Using the computer to capture and process what is currently being fed into the player piano's punch-tape feed is not covered by this patent.
They had it coming (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I can't believe the guts of this lawyer (Score:1, Insightful)
Rubbish!
The interface looks like almost any browser would if you wanted to select items based on any type of catagory system. The general appearance for this type of browser was constructed (note: not invented) long ago and used in many places, starting with the SmallTalk Browser. The original "inventor" was probably Alan Kay at Xerox Parc back in the '70's.
It was not regarded as a patentable invention because anybody that is given the task of constructing a browser in a graphical interface environment would come up with a similar thing.
Re:I can't believe the guts of this lawyer (Score:3, Insightful)
The iTunes interface seems to be almost a ditto copy of their interface...
What's patented is patented I suppose, but having said that, remember: just because you do something first doesn't mean it's patent-worthy!
Patenting a display of track info? A play button? Please. Where's this "non-obvious" clause that's supposed to be enforced?
Corporations preclude competition on the cheap. (Score:3, Insightful)
If you were Apple, you would not fight this in court. Settling out of court, paying a patent license fee, or cross-licensing are all far less expensive than fighting this in court and, therefore, much more attractive ways to deal with this nuisance. Each of these outcomes individually or collectively are more likely to occur than seeing this through to the end in court.
Remember one of the examples we learned about in RMS' discussion of the problem with software patents [gnu.org] (transcript [cam.ac.uk]): Briefly, Paul Heckel threatened to sue Apple over a patent he held which covered something in Hypercard; Apple initially brushed him off but when he threatened to sue Apple's users for patent infringement Apple listened up and paid him off.
It has to be pointed out that this is just another reason to not do business with Apple. /. readers bend over backwards to not find fault with Apple but Apple's actions harm users because Apple wields the same patent power that Contois Music Technology is using against Apple here -- Apple holds patents which cover font hinting [gnu.org] which adversely impact free software users who want smooth fonts on the screen. Apple also claims patents on the "Enterprise Object Framework" which adversely impacts the GNUStep work [gnu.org] and thus serves as another obstruction to free software users.
This is not a joke! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Corporations preclude competition on the cheap. (Score:3, Insightful)
2. Legal battles are not always expensive. Most large corporations keep lawyers on staff anyway, so it never hurts to see if you can get the judge to make a speedy decision. If the case shows signs of dragging out and costing the company huge amounts of money, *then* a settlement can always be reconsidered. If the other party doesn't want to settle (which is almost never the case in a baseless lawsuit), then it will likely hurt their case in front of the judge.
Re:Good ! (Score:2, Insightful)
Sony LANC did this before 1996 (Score:2, Insightful)