Burst Sues Apple for iTunes, iPod, Quicktime Patents

[billyboy]

burst would have been a great punt on the stock exchange. Some journo was writing about them and their intention to sue MS, price was like 30 cents. I was thinking how interesting, never thought anything more, then 2 days later they hit about $1, and as the case went on it hoverede around 1.60 but the time they won hit about $4 and dropped like a stone as they had no future worth on the horizon I guess. They have started edging up again. I wish I was as big a gambler as the guys at burst, but i feel that Apple have been quite shrewd and surely the judges are going to have Burst's number by now and say bye bye. opportunist +++++++ Then Bursts 2 employees will be out of work.

 

[bowzer]

you think some of that $60million would be spent on a nicer website. good god.

 

[ragland]

Nice research rag! This is getting more interesting as the day goes on.
Hope it don't hurts me stock

"Think Alike... BE Different!"

Thanks NVRsayNVR,

I am long both comapnies. I have to believe they will settle. Also, since Bono is part of a hedge fund (Elevation Partners), he should have access to some very smart people who might be able to advise the company.

My guess is that they settle and Apple agrees to license the technology but then begins looking for an alternative.

The market cap on the stock is only $80M but insiders own at least 40%. Barry Ritholtz is a director. He is always on CNBC and is pretty well connected on Wall Street.

The thing that scares me is the recent Research In Motion ruling might set a precedent for a ruling against Burst.

 

[neomancer]

Relativity it's so relative....

I think you meant zero mass, not infinite mass. As you approach speed of light, all your mass gets converted to energy.

No, "faster than real-time" means that when I order my song on iTMS today, the song should have appeared on my iPod yesterday. Elementary, really.

On the other hand, it could just mean "buffering"....

Actually neither thing happens. This is how it works:
The relativistic energy needed to move an object at certain speed is given by

E=(mo c^2) / sqrt(1-v^2/c^2)

mo is called the "rest mass" of the object v is its speed and c is the speed of light. (I'm using ^2 to denoted "squared" and sqrt to mean "square root").

As the spped of the object approaches the speed of light the term v^2/c^2 gets closer to 1, which in turn means that sqrt(1-v^2/c^2) gets closer to zero. As this happens the energy gets bigger and bigger.

To understand this do this mental exercise: suppose (mo c^2)=1, and for certain v sqrt(1-v^2/c^2)=0.1. The energy will be E=1/0.01=10. Lets increase the speed so that sqrt(1-v^2/c^2)=0.01, the energy will be E=1/0.001=100. As you can see, increasing v will increase E.

When v is really close to c (say v=0.99999 c <--- 0.99999 the speed of light), v^2/c^2 = (0.99999)^2=0.99998 which means that sqrt(1-v^2/c^2) =sqrt(1-0.99998)=sqrt(0.00002)=0.00001. That means the energy is E=100000. Eventually v is so close to c that E tends to infinity. It doesn't get there though because when v=c --> sqrt(1-v^2/c^2)=0, and you know what one of the lost commandments (there were 20 instead of 10) says: "Thou shall never divide by zero!"

What does it all mean? Well it means that to move a mass at the speed of light you need an infinite amount of energy !! Which means that nothing, except electromagnetic waves (of which light forms part), can move at (or above) the speed of light.

Now some people write the energy equation as E = m c^2 (Einstein's famous equation), where m = mo / sqrt(1-v^2/c^2). This "mass" changes dramatically as the speed v increases (just as E). When v=c the "mass" m is infinite. Let me point out that this is no the actual rest mass of the object is just a mathematical abstraction. In any case, E = m c^2 only stipulates that energy and mass are part of the same thing it doesn't mean that the mass of the object will be converted to energy at the speed of light.

 

[alfismoney]

Shouldn't a court ruling on a lawsuit of this nature take into account that Burst.com wouldn't even have a product if WMV and MOV files didn't exist? I suppose it goes back to all of the writing on software patents of late, namely that the patent office is not smart enough or computer savvy enough to properly issue patents anymore. Microsoft settling this out of court was about as reasonable as McDonalds paying out on the coffee lawsuit; they shouldn't have settled and they set a very bad legal precedent for the industry by doing so.

Most likely Microsoft made a strategic decision to settle early so Apple would take a bigger blow in their role as market leader. Apple stands to lose much more than $60m if this has a negative effect on their online sales and Microsoft is definitely smart enough to realize this. They may have no innovation but they do have a very shrewd financial outlook.

 

[wedge antilies]

Lawyers

I just hate patent lawyers. i work for mid-size company, and we have patented an electrical product and spent $$$$$ for years on getting all the patents correct (and all the Aust and NZ safety regs.), Then a MUCH bigger electrical company releases an EXTREMELY similar product, so we go back to our lawyer who says: "Well, there isn;t much we can do, unless you want to spend $000,000's and years in court." So my boss asks "Then why did we go through all this patenting work?".
And THIS was his reply NO JOKE: "I'm a patent lawyer, of course I am going to tell you to get more patent protection!"

I hate patent lawyers.

 

[Marky_Mark]

Actually neither thing happens. This is how it works:
The relativistic energy needed to move an object at certain speed is given by

E=(mo c^2) / sqrt(1-v^2/c^2)

mo is called the "rest mass" of the object v is its speed and c is the speed of light...

Yeah, thanks for that. Clear as mud.

 

[gnasher729]

Microsoft settling this out of court was about as reasonable as McDonalds paying out on the coffee lawsuit; they shouldn't have settled and they set a very bad legal precedent for the industry by doing so.

McDonald's was actually convicted for causing massive injuries to an elderly woman. She sued McDonald's to get the $25,000 back that she paid in hospital bills. When the court found out that McDonald's had been told about SEVEN HUNDRED times that their practices were putting their customers in danger, when it was found that they had on several occasions paid out unknown amounts of money in settlements in different cases, and continued their dangerous practices because they enabled them to make higher profits, things became a bit more expensive. And very rightfully so.

 

[bosrs1]

Al Gore should sue them all...

MS, Apple, Dell, IBM, etc, etc...

Al Gore did invent the internet afterall and they're all infringing on his creation.




Seriously though, this generic patent crap and the patent holding company BS has got to stop. All it does is give royalties to people who do not deserve them and stifle progress both creative and technological.

 

[CellarDoor]

This is a remarkable comment. "Apple is the master of marketing".

I think you'll find that this is a recent phenomenon. Throughout most of Apple's existence.... they survived despite terrible marketing.

Excellent point. Apple's marketing team didn't really get it together until steve came back. After that they've had quite a few marketing coups (and also some flops).

 

[generik]

Read the full article at MacWorld

Yet another company who is trying to prosper from Apple's ingenuity

What ingenuity?

While there has been a spate of submarine patents surfacing of late I do think Burst's is a real deal. Where were you in 1991? Heck, where was Apple and companies like Akamai even?

Their ideas were original and novel, and Apple really deserved what they got when they file that lawsuit. Bet they never saw this coming.

 

[reyesmac]

"I am embarrassed to be a capitalist."

You don't have to be. Software patents are a government-granted monopoly designed to prevent competition and restrict the free market. That's fascism (national socialism), not capitalism.

Do you think Apple would keep making computers for "the rest of us" if everyone else could copy what they are doing?
The original patent idea works, but they don't expire as quickly as they used to back when corporations didn't run the government.

I think this company is bogus, they can sue anyone with a patent like that. If nobody can come up with a solution that does not infringe on Bursts patents the patent should not be allowed to exist.

 

[Tupring]

An improved video recorder/transmitter with expanded functionality including a capability for editing and/or copying from one video tape to another using only a single tape deck.

Are they sure they have the right company here?

 

[Aztechian]

I think this company is bogus, they can sue anyone with a patent like that. If nobody can come up with a solution that does not infringe on Bursts patents the patent should not be allowed to exist.

Thats just silly. Think about it from Bursts point of view... that's exactly why patents exist in the first place!

 

[Austin.xstone]

Can't see this getting very far, will be interested to see though...

 

[ginjg]

You can not patent streaming or faster than real time. You can only patent a means of doing so.

If Apple demonstrates that their method is different or was arrived at with out use of Burst's code then they will win. And Burst will be even deeper in debt.

 

[aegisdesign]

Uh oh, streaming media over the internet. Did they come up with this "technology", or did they just point out the obvious next step in internet technology, and then put it on paper? Seriously, throw this one out. I can't believe MS just paid them so easily.

Of course they paid them. $60M is nothing to Microsoft and it gives Burst $60M to fight Microsofts competitors for them. Win-Win as far as Microsoft is concerned.

 

[gnasher729]

Their ideas were original and novel, and Apple really deserved what they got when they file that lawsuit. Bet they never saw this coming.

Since Burst offered a license for their patents to Apple, and Apple refused to buy a license, and promptly sued Burst to get these patents invalidated, I am sure they saw a lawsuit coming. And I am sure that Apple is confident iTMS does _not_ infringe any of Burst's patents and that they will win, otherwise they would have paid.

 

[AlmostThere]

And I am sure that Apple is confident iTMS does _not_ infringe any of Burst's patents and that they will win, otherwise they would have paid.

I would have guessed exactly the opposite. Apple almost certainly infringes their patents, which is why they have tried to get them invalidated.

 

[minipri]

--

WTF!!! Who are the five that voted positive? And WHY?!

Five? Twentyfive you mean! ...wtf!

And who? Well, ...
Maybe it was Bruce himself, his lawyers and there retarted relatives.
Wild guess though.


[ dim. ]

 

[minipri]

!!!

...

...

In this case, Apple has acted quite clever: They sued Burst first to invalidate Burst's patents. There is a good chance that Burst's case cannot be handled until Apple's case has gone through (because obviously the question whether Burst's patents are valid or not is extremely relevant to the question whether Apple is infringing on Burst's patents or not), so Apple will not find itself in the same situation as RIM.

Is this for real? Did Apple do this?
I'd say COOL!
...bad Burst.com. Burst has been bad. You shouldn't patent the internet.

[ dim. ]

 

[minipri]

lol

you think some of that $60million would be spent on a nicer website. good god.

It's true!
Will you look at this s**t! ...got to be friggin kidding me.

http://www.burst.com/new/home.htm

[ dim. ]

 

[mcarvin]

Probably the same kind that can't spell moron.


I kid I kid!

Vive le Fark cliche'

On a lighter note...
- TiVo, Replay TV, DirecTV, Comcast and others offer apparati to acquire, store and replay compressed digital A/V content through the means of an electronic network including but not limited to fiber optics, coaxial cable, traditional CAT5 and modem via POTS. Said content can be transported via a variety of WORM media including but not limited to magnetic, optical and solid-state. Oh, and digital cameras. And wireless phones with camera/camcorder functionality.

- Forget about traditional streaming media formats and consider this problem using good ol' plain ASCII. What about shell scripts that generate and transmit ASCII characters in a way that simulates a primitive video stream like this: telnet://towel.blinkenlights.nl?

MrCrowbar started me thinking on this - IIRC, PDF files in Acrobat reader used to kind of "stream" down back in the days of slow connections and huge files. Doesn't that apply, and wouldn't Adobe be liable? It's not A/V content, but it the end effect is similar in nature to streaming media.

 

[sockerguy5]

your idiot

Well guys, these "idiots at the patent office"....you're talking about me. I work at the US Patent and Trademark Office in Washington DC in art unit 2183, computer architecture and instruction processing. I'd like to shed some light on a few things.

"I can't believe people can be so stupid. The next idiot in the patent office probably grants patent on "breathing" and then some lucky bastard sues the whole world. There should be a law against such morons."

There is. It's 35 USC 102.

"Natural processes (breathing) cannot be patented"

Lets take this a step further. Sofware can not be patented. Its considered non-statutory subject matter under 35 USC 101. Take a closer look at any patent ever granted. They are patenting the hardware capable of using the software at best.

"I suppose it goes back to all of the writing on software patents of late, namely that the patent office is not smart enough or computer savvy enough to properly issue patents anymore."

I have a degree in Computer Engineering from one of the top universities in the country and spend 8 hours a day reading technical documents about computer architecture that aren't available to the general public. If you think you can do better, the patent office has job openings.

"This is silly. And MS probably paid them because they didn't want to fight another battle. It's probably easier for them to just pay people off."

Do any of you really know what these court battles are about? When a company like Microsoft or Apple is sued for a patent infringement, their team of high payed lawyers spend countless hours trying to find just one document (that's all it takes) disclosing the same information and predating the patent. Instead Microsoft payed. This means that these lawyers had no choice but to confirm that the patent examiner did a great job in granting this patent.

 

[superwoman]

Actually neither thing happens. This is how it works:
The relativistic energy needed to move an object at certain speed is given by

E=(mo c^2) / sqrt(1-v^2/c^2)

Thanks for pointing out my ignorance. Learn something new every day