Apple, Burst Reach Settlement 74
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."
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Shame shame shame
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a new patent troll is born... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Yeah. But no. (Score:5, Informative)
Bit more than, err, one-click I think. And check out the dates on those patents.
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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
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Obviously.
It's very common to file "continuation" applications or "continuation-in-part" applications drawn to different aspects of the same invention. It would be very unusual to see a continuation without a word-for-word identical specification. They are not a way to get "time extensions" on your patent. They will expire at the same time a
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Re:Yeah. But no. (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
I can fault the scoundrels. (Score:2)
And if someone else did, I'd fault them too.
You can't say "the system allows crooks to get away with this, so it's not the crooks' fault". The fact that something happens to be legal doesn't make it acceptable.
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bs, Anonymous Coward. You're either just trolling or you work for Burst. Hmm, either way I guess you're a troll!
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They got the corporate equivilent of 'here, have a dollar, now piss off and stop sleeping on my lawn'. The lawyers got most of it anyway, and even for them it wouldn't be much. It only sounds like a lot to ordinary people.
And they lost 14 patents. If they pull this stunt again they might lose more. Honestly it seems it might be worth more to sell these patents then try this another time.
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Let's assume that Burst was scaling its payoff demands to each company's earnings (which is a fairly common metric). In that case, with the Microsoft settlement having been $60 million, the amount Burst would have been looking for from an Apple settlement would have been about $15 million. $10 million isn't a heck of a lot less than that.
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Microsoft's Three High Profit Monopolies [roughlydrafted.com].
If Burst had any real claims, Apple would have been the fat target to jump on. When Microsoft settled for $60 million, it appeared clear that Burst expect
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Right, because the inclusion of Windows Media Player and Windows Media Services with Windows for [unspecified, magical reason] didn't expose Microsoft's Windows license revenue to Burst's claims at all. I understand.
it appeared clear that Burst expected to jump from Microsoft into big money with Apple, and pundits threw around numbers like $1 billion.
Some blovating morons
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Note that I am an Apple fan, and have been using MacOS for 20 years. In this case they're pretty clearly in the wrong.
Clarification to summary (Score:4, Insightful)
There. Fixed that up a bit.
- RG>
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Another hurdle? (Score:3, Insightful)
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Circle of life (Score:2)
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When the GPL on WordPress gets used to shut down Blogger.com and MovableType, then we'll talk.
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Re:Odd. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Odd. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Hint: proprietary software have licenses too.
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If you download a project and it is GPL, then feel free to ignore the fact that it is GPL, and use it under whatever provisions your local copyright law gives you (perhaps "fair use" if you are in the US, in Australia you get some "fair dealing", etc). Now do you feel more or less restricted?
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I cannot do this with any GPL software, it violates the terms of the licence. The GPL is therefore more restrictive than the BSD licence. This is an unassailable fact.
Now don't get me wrong... I don't have a problem with this - if someone makes the code, that person gets to say how the c
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Actually it is very much assailable. The BSD license gives you more rights to the code as a software developer, but as a software user, GPL guarantees my current and future rights better over that code.
BSD is more developer-friendly perhaps, but GPL is more user-friendly. That doesn't mean you can't make money over my GPL code, you just
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I wasn't complaining. You were supposed to glean that from the bit where I said "I have no problem with this".
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What I was taking issue with was the assertion in the parent post to mine, vis: "The GPL only grants you rights that you wouldn't have had without it. It doesn't take any of your rights away.". This is quite clearly wrong - if no rights are taken away from you when you download and use GPL software, you'd be able to do anything with it that you could do with self-authored software.
You're wrong yourself, here. You do not have that right to start with - there is no default right to do whatever you like with someone else's copyrighted code. Thus, the GPL cannot take it away - you never had it.
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You clearly do care about the political agenda, because the political agenda is what allows you to use the code in the first place, otherwise the code would all be closed and you wouldn't be able to touch it.
you don't understand (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Oh boy... I dealt with these guys before... (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:OT: Help, how do I get control panel for commen (Score:2)
Trolling? (Score:1)
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Ballmer (Score:2, Insightful)
not a loss, maybe a victory? (Score:4, Funny)
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.
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