Apple, Burst Reach Settlement

An anonymous reader writes "In 2005, Microsoft settled Burst's lawsuit for infringements on media player patents for $60 million. Many thought that Apple would be a ripe target next. However, Apple successfully voided 14 out of 36 Burst.com's patent claims in their iPod lawsuit. Apple would have gone after the remaining 22 claims. Today, Market Wire announced that the case was settled out of court: "Apple agreed to pay Burst a one-time payment of $10 million cash in exchange for a non-exclusive license to Burst's patent portfolio, not including one issued U.S. patent and 3 pending U.S. patent applications related to new DVR technology. Burst agreed not to sue Apple for any future infringement of the DVR patent and any patents that might issue from the pending DVR-related applications." The big winner would be the lawyers who reduced the settlement to approximately $4.6 million."

a new patent troll is born...

[timmarhy]

... everytime a company settles like this.

Clarification to summary

[RealGrouchy]

"The big winner would be the lawyers whose fees reduced the settlement to approximately $4.6 million."

There. Fixed that up a bit.

- RG>

Re:Odd.

[ceejayoz]

GPL says nothing about making something similar.

When the GPL on WordPress gets used to shut down Blogger.com and MovableType, then we'll talk.

Re:Odd.

[$1uck]

Really??? are you trolling or do you not understand the purpose of GPLv3? Are you being willfully ignorant? GPLv3 is all about preventing this sort of behavior. It is trying to bring about change by working with in the existing framework (one that the authors of GPLv3 dislike). Turning the existing IP laws against themselves. I'd hardly call that hypocritical, some would call it poetic.

Re:Odd.

[QuantumG]

If you think the GPL (any version) is "extremely restrictive" then you haven't read many software licenses.

Yeah. But no.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not in this case. Burst is not a patent troll, they developed the IP in question, but outfits like Apple, MS, et all helped themselves to it, thinking they were too big for a little company like Burst to take on. I'm dissapointed Burst accepted the settlement: they had an open-and-shut case.

you don't understand

[m2943]

It's funny how

There's nothing odd about it.

When I attach the GPLv3 to code that I have written and you don't like the GPLv3, you're no worse off than if I had never existed. (Furthermore, even though you may not like the GPLv3, but it still is a lot less restrictive than just about any commercial license for copyrighted materials.)

When Burst takes out bogus patents on digital video transmission, everybody is worse off because Bust can now prevent other people from doing things.

but when MegaCorp or someone else who owns IP tries to enforce terms of ownership, it's an evil bad thing...

There is nothing evil about enforcing legitimate property rights; quite to the contrary.

What is evil is that these companies obtained these "rights" in the first place due to a breakdown of the patent system.

Re:Clarification to summary

[tehwebguy]

Indeed -- hopefully the next company they sue will go the whole nine yards and end this.

Re:Odd.

[QuantumG]

About a million...

Hint: proprietary software have licenses too.

Re:Yeah. But no.

[Kadin2048]

they developed the IP in question

Bull. They just patented something that apparently everyone else thought was too basic, stupid, or obvious to try and patent. They're practically the definition of a patent troll.

You couldn't design a video-over-IP system without infringing on the Burst patent, even if you had no idea who Burst was.

That said, Burst is nothing but a bunch of scoundrels, but I can't really fault them for playing the system to its full extent; if they hadn't done it, somebody else would have. The real shame is on the patent system in general and the USPTO in particular for letting this remain de rigueur for so long.

Another hurdle?

[BearRanger]

To Apple, Burst now represents an additional barrier to entry into the same market. It won't make a difference necessarily to a large company, but a small potentially more innovative competitor will now have to pay off Burst before using similar features. It seems that Apple's lawyers could have taken out all of the patents, given how successful they were with the 14 they invalidated. They took out just enough to reduce their liability, paid Burst a token sum, and then left Burst enough ammo to challenge others--ultimately to Apple's benefit.

They've done this before. This doesn't seem that different from their settlement with Creative over hierarchical lists for sorting music.

Ballmer

[put_the_cat_out]

If I was Ballmer, I'd be throwing chairs at my incompetent attorneys. They wasted over $50 million by not picking apart Burst's patents and settling for way too much money.