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 (659436)]

... everytime a company settles like this.

Re:Yeah. But no.

[jcr (53032)]

The patents in question are bullshit, 100%. Even more egregious than Amazon's "one click" patent. They have a fucking PATENT on sending video faster than real-time. Sorry, there's no way that passes the "non-obvious" requirement.

What Burst demonstrates is the desperate need for competent examiners in the USPTO.

-jcr

Re:Yeah. But no.

[QuantumG (50515)]

Burst alleges that Apple's iTunes Music Store, iTunes software, the iPod devices, and Apple's QuickTime Streaming products infringe Burst's U.S. Patents 4,963,995 [uspto.gov]; 5,995,705 [uspto.gov]; 5,057,932 [uspto.gov] and 5,164,839 [uspto.gov].

Bit more than, err, one-click I think. And check out the dates on those patents.

Re:

[optimus2861 (760680)]

OK, I really don't know squat about how patents are done. But I did take a look at the two highest-numbered patents there. What did I see?

The abstract: word-for-word identical.

The description: word-for-word identical.

The claims: claim #1 is the same, but there's a lot more verbiage in the second patent. Patent #1 then goes on to claim method #1 over a whole slew of different communication channels, each as their own claim - this patten repeats itself throughout patent #1. Claim #8 in patent #1 is the sa

Re:Yeah. But no.

[Kadin2048 (468275)]

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.

Re:

[seanadams.com (463190)]

I'm dissapointed Burst accepted the settlement: they had an open-and-shut case.

bs, Anonymous Coward. You're either just trolling or you work for Burst. Hmm, either way I guess you're a troll!

Clarification to summary

[RealGrouchy (943109)]

"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:

[by Anonymous Coward]

More like the big winner would be Burst, who can collect future licensing fees from other companies, since they will continue to hold the remaining 22 patent claims.

Re:

[tehwebguy (860335)]

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

Another hurdle?

[BearRanger (945122)]

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

Circle of life

[thatskinnyguy (1129515)]

So far, from my layman's perspective, my Tivo can pwn burst for some of its products. Ahh the business circle of lawsuits... or was it life. I'm not sure here.

Oh boy... I dealt with these guys before...

[by Anonymous Coward]

Back in 1998/9 when Burst thought they had a 'novel' idea, they were making the rounds pimping their wares (so to say) to all the large satellite broadband providers and anyone else in the video and content delivery industries.

They tried for an NDA, but the company I was at didn't believe in signing anything to preview some software from a bunch of nobodies. Their software was alpha quality at best, the so-called 'SDK' didn't exist (IIRC the one 'document' provided with the photocopy-labeled cdrom), and the components were nothing more than a simple windows server and client providing a delivery pipe. They also couldn't seem to grasp the fact that one-way satellite networks did not have a backchannel. Yes friends, you need to get your files to the other side with a unidirectional transport. You could compare this to someone giving you ftp.exe+ftpd.exe and telling you you should license them for P2P delivery.

I ended up tossing their stuff aside because after about a dozen emails attempting to educate people on the deficiencies of their system one just has to well.. give up. The only novel point was their 'instant on', but most datacasters like us already had this kind of technology, or didn't need it period. I will say that the demo was canned and only used a few codecs. So it was very hard to ascertain the level of bullshit in the client-server demo.

Regardless, I now find it extremely interesting that they are sueing people who signed NDAs with them and/or had talks with them. I am sure other companies had the same experience we did. What a bunch of douchebags.

not a loss, maybe a victory?

[rilister (316428)]

Whoah people. Burst didn't win this one by my reckoning. $10m is a tiny fraction of what they hoped to get by enforcing their patents across the 100 gazillion iPods that Apple is 'infringing' their patents with.

I'd call this:
Burst: Pay us $1bn dollars, or we'll take a license off every iPod that you ever sell.
Apple: FOAD. We'll send our lawyer hoards after your patents, dumbasses.
Burst: Pay us! Pay us now!

Apple: OK, how many more of your patents do you want us to wipe off the face of the earth?
Burst: erm, how about $10m?
Apple: Since that's less than our lawyers fees, ok. Don't EVER try that again.

Re:

[ceejayoz (567949)]

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.

[Ash-Fox (726320)]

Intellectual Property

Stop talking in riddles and say what you mean.

Re:Odd.

[$1uck (710826)]

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 (50515)]

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

Re:

[QuantumG (50515)]

About a million...

Hint: proprietary software have licenses too.

Re:

[jamar0303 (896820)]

I don't know... Apple's?

you don't understand

[m2943 (1140797)]

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:

[calebt3 (1098475)]

Don't want to Burst your bubble...

Re:

[jmv (93421)]

It's funny how a lot of people here insist that extremely restrictive licenses like the GPLv3 ...as opposed to the "Microsoft source code license" which allows you to freely distribute Windows source code in your own proprietary software, right?

Re:

[Techman83 (949264)]

If I hadn't burnt my mod points earlier you'd definitely getting -1 troll. I'd recommend you actually read up about the license. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License#Version_3 [wikipedia.org]

Re:

[QuantumG (50515)]

There's no-one else posting on this story.

Re:

[renegadesx (977007)]

Dont slander scum like that!! Shame on you, comparing politicians, lawyers and clergy to poor innocent scum.

Shame shame shame /Hinchism