Patent Suit Filed Against Apple Over iTunes Interface

[psxndc]

American Bar association has estimated that there are aproximately 1,000,000 lawyers in america roughly 100,000 more than there were only ten years ago in 1995. In 1972 roughly 70% of the people in this country did not have lawyers and did not even know how to find one, yet America survived. The United States contains 70% of all of the lawyers in the entire world even though we are only 5% of the worlds population.

So a 10% growth over 10 years? Doesn't sound that bad to me. I'm curious where you got your numbers from and I'd like to see similar numbers for the last 10 years for computer programmers.

From the U.S. Department of Labor site :

"Employment in professional, scientific, and technical services will grow by 27.8 percent and add 1.9 million new jobs by 2012. Employment in computer systems design and related services will grow by 54.6 percent and add more than one-third of all new jobs in professional, scientific, and technical services. Employment growth will be driven by the increasing reliance of businesses on information technology and the continuing importance of maintaining system and network security."

A 50% growth in 9 years (stats from 2003)?? That must be AWFUL! I'm sure 70% of the people in this country 30 years ago didn't know where to find a computer scientist either. As for comparing population to profession percentage, how many lawyers do you think there are in China, which has a quarter of the earth's population? Since it is a communist regime where everyone is equally scrwed, I'm guessing it is not many.

TV is filled with lawyers preeching the evil of insurance companys who will try to cheat you of the money you deserve, not mentioning the handsome precentage they will take off the top if they win.

OK, let me explain something that people don't seem to get. 1) Not all lawyers work on contingency, which is this handsome cut you are talking about. 2) If the lawyer loses, he may not get anything. I'm sure you think this is a great concept, except that when the case is all the lawyer is working on for 3 months, if not longer, guess who doesn't have a paycheck for that time. Could contingencies be lower? Sure. Of course they could. But doctors could charge less too, right? 3) You are basing your hatred of lawyers on a) TV b) a small subset of the profession. Aside from personal injury lawyers, there are: estate planning lawyers, contract lawyers, criminal prosecutors, tax lawyers, real estate lawyers, criminal defense attorneys, labor attorneys, sports lawyers, corporate lawyers, intellectual property lawyers, and many many others, all filling very important roles depending on if you are the person in need of their service.

I just have concern over a nation that supports an entirely parasitic class that does no enterprise itself but redistributes weath and pulling money from the rich, poor and middle classes.

Parasitic how? Lawyers provide a service. So does the phone company. You don't _need_ a phone. Here's a scenario: say YOU want form a corporation. How do you start? Don't know? Well, there are relatively easy ways to do it. But you have to do the research yourself rather than do something you enjoy or something that increases your business. Doesn't it make sense for someone that knows what to do to spend an hour doing it rather than you spending a week? CEOs hire programmers for the same reason. Sure the CEO could write the code, but it would take him a lot longer to do it than to hire someone that knows what they are doing. If your contention is that programmers "produce" code, a tangible byproduct of their service, well I argue that a lawyer produces a document. A contract, a will, a patent, etc.

I'm not saying all lawyers are good people. Far from it. But you need to realize that there are bad lawyers like there are bad doctors, bad postmen, and bad candy stripers. Please, do yourself a favor and don't base your hatred of lawyers on tv ads. What if I blamed all programmers for a crappy product I bought from Microsoft, or Apple, or any company?

-p-

 

[oilhistorian]

As I said above I am not opposed to criminal deffense or prosecution lawyers these are obviously a necesary part of any modern culture. So if you plan on becoming one of these I retract my previous statement. I just have concern over a nation that supports an entirely parasitic class that does no enterprise itself but redistributes weath, pulling money from the rich, poor and middle classes.

Just remember: without lawyers like Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, there'd be no United States. Without lawyers like Andrew Hamilton (John Peter Zenger's lawyer in colonial NY), there'd be no US tradition of a free press. And without lawyers like Thurgood Marshall, legal segregation would still be the law of the land ....

There's a LOT of good that comes from lawsuits. Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater.

 

[reyesmac]

Apple needs to do something about this

The illustrations in the patent seem to give him a pretty good argument for wanting money from Apple. I don't really blame the guy for trying. Apple should use this opportunity to revamp the infringing menu system and make a better one. I never really fully liked that way of finding songs anyway.

Apple should have some patents from NEXT that would allow them to do something similar. Sort of what they are using now in column view. It's almost the same thing except it isn't separated into 3 independent windows. If they win this case that might be what they will defend themselves with.

 

[joeboy_45101]

Maybe this has already been said, but the diagram of the application that this man is claiming Apple stole looks nothing like any available version of iTunes.

It just looks like a bunch of windows with seperate information in each. How come Apple is the only target of this lawsuit, if it fits the case for iTunes then it should be the same for Napster, MusicMatch, and Windows Media Player.

And another thing! How the hell can the US patent office grant a patent for a method or algorithm. Because this man claims a method for doing this or doing that, that's an algorithm. You can't patent crap like that. That's like patenting a way of walking or running.

Maybe I should file a patent for a method of putting four wheels on a carriage or chasis and allowing the user to guide that device by steering a wheel located in the carriage or chasis. I could become insanely rich overnight by suing every car company in the world.

 

[Hugh]

SoundApp

Until I moved to Mac OS X I used to use SoundApp to listen to my MP3 files. When I finally moved to Mac OS X full time then I started using iTunes becuase SoundApp has some problems playing though Classic.

-Hugh

Silly question... I keep hearing that itunes has been out for "4-5 years"... What did you fellow mac users use before that to play music? Quicktime?... This is a legitimate question...

 

[Agent Smith]

I can sympathize with David Contois. I have a patent that keeps getting infringed upon and as an inventor, it is really frustrating to see others get credit for something that you have come up with. My patent is for a variably-sized rectangular box that does stuff.

I'm sure you can understand that not getting royalties for my hard work and effort has been a bit disappointing.... I think that I too will sue Apple, because this "PowerMac G5" is very similar to the item I patented...

 

[DGFan]

No. Like most corporations, Apple surely has a stash of on-payroll lawyers for this sort of thing.

Any *smart* corporation brings in expert help. Although nowadays there isn't much difference between "in house" and having a law firm on retainer.

 

[DGFan]

My knowledge of this law is vague at best, but if you have a patent or a trademark, and fail to defend it, do you not eventually lose the right to defend it?

I.e. Can the court throw this guy out based on the fact that there were lots of other programs that "infringed" over the past few years, yet he has not (to my knowledge, anyway) bothered to try and file suit against those, and therefore can't just start doing it now?

patent law is different from copyright and trademark in this respect

it may still be possible to lose a patent suit this way, but the standard is most definitely different

 

[jettredmont]

I don't think this patent is at all vague. There is a remarkable resemblance between iTunes and this guy's idea - especially with the album art window.

While I can see "picture of the composer" being somewhat similar to "cover art of the CD", this is really more an instance of the suer futzing with the iTunes interface to get it to match his own. I mean, I look at my cover art window, and I rarely see someone's ugly mug staring back; I more often see some kind of abstract art incorporating the band/singer's name and some surrealist bent like flying pigs. But YMMV, of course.

The screen shot is the most "damning" piece of evidence, but it is flawed in two major ways:

First, the patent is a utility patent, not a design patent. The patent does not claim a particular arrangement of windows holds any particular significance.

Second, the iTunes side of the image is using a rather tweaked interface model to get a superficial resemblance to the patent UI example. This isn't how iTunes normally looks, broken up into six squares and all, as you likely know. The "model" iTunes view consists of the Playlist on the left, the cover art just below that, and the list of songs in the playlist on the right. It takes a bit of tweaking to first turn on the "Browse" interface, then expand the cover art and Browse windows to hideous proportions so that they look like this.

Finally, the "utility" of the similar pieces in the contrasted image do not match up.

1) Largely heirarchal information in iTunes Genre/Artist/Album panes vs orthoganal keywords in patent example (Category/Composer/Artist).

2) Genre/Artist/Album are single-select + "All"; patent example allows for multi-select of each keyword (presumably doing an 'or'). This is a significant and glaring difference, which makes iTunes significantly more similar in function to pre-existing "jukebox" applications (several of which predate the original filing of this patent) than the patent itself.

3) Completely different button arrangements and function set. The iTunes play/pause button is in the patent example two separate buttons, with no "fast forward" / "next song" button visible.

4) Cover art != artists' ugly mug

5) While the screenshot wisely has iTunes idle so that its information window looks like nothing more than a stylized container for the corporate logo, the functionality provided there is markedly absent from the patent visualization (giving details on the current song, other activity, peak meter, etc).

6) The patent repeatedly makes the point that it is not claiming originality in each of its parts but rather in the total combination of those parts. As such, the lack of controlling a player piano seems to throw the patent and iTunes out of synch irrevocably.

It's indeed possible that someone at Apple got the iPod / iTunes idea from this guy at a convention and simply appropriated it. I really hope that's not the case.

Yeah, but it's equally or even more likely that someone at Apple got the iTunes "interface" concept from the good folks of C&J, who in turn got the ideas from equal parts prior art and just thinking over use cases.

The "evidence" for Apple stealing his ideas appears to be that a few Apple engineers were at a conference where he had a booth demonstrating his player piano tool. I'd say that's pretty slim evidence that the engineers in question even saw his demonstration, much less internalized his killer idea of being able to categorize music in a database (shock!) such that it would haunt them day in and day out until they finally spat forth the re-embodiment of that idea with an Apple logo across the top. Occam's razor dictates it far more likely that Apple's engineers got their ideas from the fairly obvious evolution of previous media players instead, in an industry where they were obviously taking notes, instead of chancing upon a player piano demo.

Also, note that NOWHERE in the claim or the original patent is anything like the iPod mentioned. This is SOLELY about iTunes. Trying to fit "Player Piano" and "iPod" as similar devices is about ten times the stretch that the rest of the claim is.

There's a saying in the corporate world that a patent isn't really a patent until it's been tested in court. Many companies feel that it's open season on ideas. They create a product, make a ton of money and if they get taken to court and lose, they pay off the owner of the patent and still come out ahead. Unsavory but true.

Hmm. If recent past is any indication, the opposite (predatory patent filing, lying in wait, and ambushing the company that actually put the effort into making a paper idea into a reality) is much more common. I don't have statistics, just going by the cases which get press. Maybe your type of cases are more common and no one reports on them. Can you cite some?

 

[jettredmont]

The patent may be vague and simplistic now, but back then when it was invented, it was innovative, new and novel implementation of ideas.

Most certainly should people be allowed to patent the way information is organised and searched for, if that way has not been invented before.

No one except for a visionary few could see the way it would permeate our society in the future.

The problem here is that, in fact, NONE of the individual bits of the patent were deemed as original. The patent explicitly states that! I, personally, saw keyword-based music organization in the 1993-1994 time frame, and many others worked on corporate jukebox applications even prior to that which had much of the same functional interface.

The original and innovative piece of the patent is the assemblage of common prior art pieces into a device which can control player pianos.

While it did, indeed, take a visionary few to start the music-categorization ball rolling, it appears to have gathered quite universal steam long before this guy filed for his patent (and so far as I know, the entities and individuals responsible there did not file patents on it). No one had taken it to the player piano world yet, though.

 

[DGFan]

There has always been a saying: Those who are in the situation cannot objectively judge the situation, those that are not in the situation can often spot what is wrong or right about it.

You're forgetting the one important part:

Those who are unfamiliar with a field are often not knowledgeable enough to spot what is right or wrong.

Seriously, do you think that people who don't even know how to read a patent are capable of saying what is wrong (if anything) with the patent field? Come on....

 

[eXan]

I hope apple fight this, it sounds like a very vague patent. Any why sue now? ITunes has been out since 99 or so right? Sounds like a submarine patent.

Step 1: Patent some thing vague
Step 2: Wait until someone make something even remotely close
Step 3: Wait until they made alot of money
Step 4: SUE

I totally agree with you. Why they kept silent for such a long time and sued only now?

 

[SallyWattle]

So Sue Me!

Apple deffinately stole the idea. The similarities are obvious, how many musicians and singers wear a bow tie these days.

 

[DGFan]

Yes, I realize the patent in question does not cover these issues, but that is not my point. My point is that what software patents claim as "inventions" are nothing of the sort... they are just ideas. They do not provide anyone with the means to build them. To do so, you'd have to publish all of your algorithms and internal structure of the code. And, once you do that, I believe you have a work of art (just like a book), not something that is patentable.

I firmly believe that it was the lack of the legal profession's understanding of what software is and how it is built that has led to this mess. And, now that there are attorneys that have come from a software background, it seems like most are more interested in making a living by supporting the system rather than pointing out how insane it is.

Nothing personal... this subject always hits a nerve with me.

You're not thinking about it at the appropriate level of abstraction.

Let's say someone invented a device that played music. That device is mechanical. The device has several dials with names on them. Turning the first dial to an entry swings a mechanical arm that displays a second dial. That second dial contains the song names for the artist you chose with the first dial. Turning the second dial and pressing a lever starts music playing.

I think we can all agree that this device is patentable. What you may not understand is this:

If that person was the first person *ever* to come up with the idea to use two dials to select music, he constructed the invention, and then got a patent on it - he could probably get an enforceable patent on a machine that used two dials to select music.

So even if someone later came along and designed another mechanical device that operated totally differently, but used the same two dials, their device would infringe.

It works the same with software patents. My implementation doesn't have to be the only possible implementation. But if I am the first person to have an idea, I can patent not only my specific implementation, but also the higher level design elements. Otherwise, people could make minor changes to my mechanical device and it not infringe the patent.

That's not to say that I wouldn't like to see changes made to the software patent system. But it does have a sound basis in patent law.

 

[DGFan]

Nobody copied anything from these guys. They don't deserve a dime from Apple.

Patent infringement is not restricted to copying. There's a whole separate section of the law for that.

The way in which patents promote the useful arts is to provide incentive for people to document - publicly - their inventions. In exchange, the government grants a limited monopoly to the patent-holder. This power is good against all manufacturers/users of the invention - regardless of whether they have heard of the patent or not.

 

[DGFan]

2. A patent holder can sue anyone who violates his patent. He can also choose not to sue. So the fact that apple is sued and no one else is, is irrelevant to whether he has a case or not. All a patent holder has to do is establish the validity of the patent in one case. He doesn't have to sue EVERYONE who has violated his patent to establish validity.

Just like the statement that a patent isn't valid until tested in court, this is simply a practical matter. Patents are only deemed "valid" as between parties (the patentee and the infringer). If I win a suit vs company A, company B can still contest the patent's validity (and trust me, they will).

 

[jettredmont]

There were no MP3 players like that when this patent was filed. Winamp came out a few months after the application was filed, and the first standalone MP3 player, from Compaq, also appeared after.

Umm, the patent is for MIDI files, not MP3. There were no successful MP3 players out there in 1995, so that's a pretty easy strawman to knock down. But that's missing the point. It's MIDI, or in a broader sense, music, being categorized and controlled via a computer and played on an external device (player piano, to be specific, but that might stand some generalization).

There were certainly database-based MIDI organizers prior to 1995. How do I know? Because I had one. It was DBF-based ... FoxPro, I think. Yes, I was a MIDI geek, and was quite proud of my collection of symphonies (which sounded rather clunky on the SoundBlaster card, but hey, not everyone could affor a Yamaha MIDI player!). Other folks have pointed out databases with CD-based (regular old CD audio) back ends. The radio station at my college had one in 1992-93, if not before then (I didn't see it until then).

MIDI -> MP3 is a logical extension. However, categorizing MIDI files isn't the invention here. Read the claims again. Without the player piano interface, the invention makes no claims regarding invention.

Again: the claim is NOT that music is being categorized and played. A claim that broad would have not been accepted, as there were countless prior art examples readily available. The claim specifically pertains to categorizing/controlling on a computer and causing an external device to play the selected tunes.

IMHO, given the existence of CD jukebox applications at the time, the extension of "Player Piano" to "any music-producing device" would also collide with prior art. It is for this reason that I can't see any current equivalent (iPod, AirTunes, Speakers) for the player piano portion of the claimed invention.

 

[DGFan]

Interesting piece about software patents by R. Stallman:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/comment/story/0,12449,1510566,00.html

I respect Mr Stallman a great deal, but that article was just terrible.

"If patents applied to something other than technology, like novels, look how crazy that would be."

I really can't believe he wrote that article. Someone must have stolen his identity

 

[DGFan]

There's at least 2 things wrong here:

1) He was apparently openly demonstrating his idea months before the patent was applied for. Unless Contois privately showed the idea under NDA, I think he has a problem. Per our IP lawyers, once you publicly offer the idea for sale, you're screwed. The Cnet report implies it was shown on the floor at COMDEX in 95. The patent states it was submitted several months later in 96.

You have one year from an offer for sale or a public use of the invention to apply for a patent. No problem there.

2) Apple was granted a patent for the iTunes interface which referenced the Contois one. It would appear that is some confirmation by USPTO that they thought Apple's iTunes interface design was not infringing on the earlier patent. The iTunes design was accepted as advancement over the prior art.

Unless the claims are identical (which they are not) it's possible that Apple simply patented a novel derivative of the Contois invention.

One company (Dow, I believe) stopped applying for as many patents on their inventions. What would happen when they patented something is that other companies would patent novel variations/improvements on it. So Dow could use their original invention but if they wanted to use a variation they had to pay someone. Sure, they could've applied for those patents too, but it apparently was easier to just trade-secret their inventions.

 

[psxndc]

Just like the statement that a patent isn't valid until tested in court, this is simply a practical matter. Patents are only deemed "valid" as between parties (the patentee and the infringer).

What? A patent is valid until proven otherwise. There is no "between parties." If I was suing parties A and B, Party B may uncover art that party A could not, but it is not valid in one case and not in another. If I sue A and the patent is still valid, sucks to be A. If B then can show it is invalid, then I lose that suit and... to be honest, I don't know what A can do. I just dont know.

But if I sue A and B and A can show the patent is valid, then B doesn't have to reprove that it is invalid. The patent is dead. Correspondingly, if the patent is valid in one case, it makes it harder to prove otherwise in a subsequent case (unless again, you have art that the original defendant did not).

-p-

 

[DGFan]

You may have seen that I didnt not negate a need for some lawyers what I am claiming is that we have far to many. American Bar association has estimated that there are aproximately 1,000,000 lawyers in america roughly 100,000 more than there were only ten years ago in 1995. In 1972 roughly 70% of the people in this country did not have lawyers and did not even know how to find one, yet America survived.

Well, when you grow up and go out in the real working world (not a slam, just a reference to your stated age and lack of business-world experience) you'll realize that there are far fewer people *working* as lawyers compared to the number of people who have graduated law school and passed the bar (which is likely what the ABA numbers refer to). A lot of lawyers either don't cut the mustard, or they move on to other professions (sometimes legal support type jobs, other times unrelated to law).

 

[DGFan]

What? A patent is valid until proven otherwise. There is no "between parties." If I was suing parties A and B, Party B may uncover art that party A could not, but it is not valid in one case and not in another. If I sue A and the patent is still valid, sucks to be A. If B then can show it is invalid, then I lose that suit and... to be honest, I don't know what A can do. I just dont know.

But if I sue A and B and A can show the patent is valid, then B doesn't have to reprove that it is invalid. The patent is dead. Correspondingly, if the patent is valid in one case, it makes it harder to prove otherwise in a subsequent case (unless again, you have art that the original defendant did not).

-p-

A patent is presumed valid, yes. I was simply referring to the old quote that a patent isn't valid until it's been upheld in court. I have heard that saying a number of times and I was simply pointing out that it has no basis in law, but is simply a practical matter. Just ask Apple if they think the Contois patent is valid

You're right that defendant B would have a harder time proving invalidity than defendant A. What I was pointing out was that every single defendant can contest validity, not just the first one (I thought there might be misunderstanding on that point so I wanted to clarify). So in one sense, the first trial only determines validity with respect to defendant A, not anyone else.

Moreover, if I sue defendant A and win a judgment, and then defendant B proves that the patent is invalid, defendant A is not going to have to pay that money back.

 

[chukronos]

When I opened my iPod a sticker on it read : "Don't steal music." Apple needs to practice what it preaches, the punks! Apple seems to be turning dirty over the last few years.

 

[psxndc]

So in one sense, the first trial only determines validity with respect to defendant A, not anyone else.

I understand what you are saying, but it still isn;t exactly spot on. The first trial still determines validity period, regardless of A, B, etc. Another suit may put validity in question, but again, there really is no "with respect to party X." But I know what you are trying to say. I was just trying to clarify.

On a side note: some of my posts have been deleted. I totally understand why this was done. My apologies to the moderators and the members for going so far off track or getting too personal.

-p-

 

[psxndc]

Any *smart* corporation brings in expert help. Although nowadays there isn't much difference between "in house" and having a law firm on retainer.

I completely disagree. In-house consel are good for handling day-to-day matters and managing outside counsel. In-house don't have time to be patent lawyers, labor lawyers, environmetnal layers, etc. Their best bet is to do what all managers do: delegate for the important stuff, and that means outside counsel.

-p-