Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Spotify Sued For Patent Infringement Just Weeks After Entering US Market

techdirt.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 74 posts

Re: Spotify Sued For Patent Infringement Just Weeks After Entering US Market

#21

Post by base »

thesis wrote: post #17
base wrote: post #10

One of the problems is that this companies don't have anything to loose by bringing these lawsuits. They just have to fill some papers electronically, pay a few hundred dollars and the other party have to loose thousands of dollars to protect itself.

I'm not for these patent trolls at all... but litigation costs money on both sides, not just defending.

The cases that these patent trolls bring to court are very similar to each other. If you check the court summons they are almost all the same, they just change the name of the company and some little details.

Re: Spotify Sued For Patent Infringement Just Weeks After Entering US Market

#22

Post by Ronkdar »

ddw wrote: post #5

This is ridiculous. How were they even approved a patent for something so broad and general? Is it a matter of the judges not understanding the technology? There are a lot of recent law school grads out there that are having a hard time finding jobs. I tell a few of my friends in such a situation all the time that they should get into the IT area because there is so much going on. What's the climate like for challeng…

Judges don't grant patents. The US Patent Office does that. Patents this broad are not at all unusual.

Re: Spotify Sued For Patent Infringement Just Weeks After Entering US Market

#23

Post by chc »

rkalla wrote: post #3

I am really curious if an event like this will eventually promote change in the software patent laws. We've been watching events like Lodsys running around kicking everyone in the knees and international developers pulling their apps out of the app store out of fear of litigation[1] while Apple seems unable[3] to actively step in and protect its developers. Then you have other patent trolls sitting around, biding the…

It's very hard to come up with genuine instances of software patents protecting small developers from larger competitors. The little guy usually can't afford the money and time to patent things, much less enforce them. But even disregarding that, assuming your patent isn't overly broad (in which case it should definitely not be valid), your competitors can just work around it and then steamroll you with their money and strong development teams.

Essentially, a competitor that could steamroll you without a patent would be able to steamroll you with a patent.

The one case I can think of where it would be reasonable for a patent to protect you is if a company offers to buy your product, looks at the code, and then has its developers create a knock-off based on your code. And even then copyright law is probably sufficient (analogous situations arise in other industries where copyright is the only law).

Re: Spotify Sued For Patent Infringement Just Weeks After Entering US Market

#24

Post by rwmj »

monochromatic wrote: post #18

This patent was filed in 1995 [edit: and it actually claims priority back to 1994]. Was there really much relevant prior art in this space back then? One other comment: I really appreciate that techdirt actually included a claim from the patent. Most articles posted here just quote the title or the abstract, which is useless as far as determining what's covered and what's not.

Back in 1992 we used to stream music over the network of Sun machines at St. Andrews university[1].

The way we did it was pretty trivial: just piping into rsh from and to /dev/audio. However it was certainly streaming of music by anyone's definition.

[1] Making the admins of said network mighty pissed off in the process -- I believe the whole campus was on 10 Mbps at the time.

Re: Spotify Sued For Patent Infringement Just Weeks After Entering US Market

#25

Post by thesis »

base wrote: post #21
thesis wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not for these patent trolls at all... but litigation costs money on both sides, not just defending.

The cases that these patent trolls bring to court are very similar to each other. If you check the court summons they are almost all the same, they just change the name of the company and some little details.

Right... but the actual court case will cost money. Filing a lawsuit might be cheap but following through surely can't be.

Re: Spotify Sued For Patent Infringement Just Weeks After Entering US Market

#26

Post by naner »

jameskilton wrote: post #4
rkalla wrote: post #3

I am really curious if an event like this will eventually promote change in the software patent laws. We've been watching events like Lodsys running around kicking everyone in the knees and international developers pulling their apps out of the app store out of fear of litigation[1] while Apple seems unable[3] to actively step in and protect its developers. Then you have other patent trolls sitting around, biding the…

IANAL but I have to imagine that one simple rule would bring back the validity of patents as an innovation protector: If you have a patent, you MUST have a product or be working on a product using the technology in question or you cannot litigate others using your idea. Patents are required to protect the truly innovative individuals and groups from huge corporations who can, as you said, just steamroll them and stea…

If you have a patent, you MUST have a product or be working on a product using the technology in question or you cannot litigate others using your idea.

That doesn't help in the case where non-innovative patents are used in an anti-competitive manner. Such as the patents Apple is asserting against HTC.

Re: Spotify Sued For Patent Infringement Just Weeks After Entering US Market

#27

Post by ddw »

Ronkdar wrote: post #22
ddw wrote: post #5

This is ridiculous. How were they even approved a patent for something so broad and general? Is it a matter of the judges not understanding the technology? There are a lot of recent law school grads out there that are having a hard time finding jobs. I tell a few of my friends in such a situation all the time that they should get into the IT area because there is so much going on. What's the climate like for challeng…

Judges don't grant patents. The US Patent Office does that. Patents this broad are not at all unusual.

Thanks for clarifying, I should look into it more but it's sometimes difficult to follow these legal things.

I know it's not unusual, that's my basic question. I can't imagine anyone reading the patent excerpt in that article and going "oh yeah, Spotify definitely ripped that off." Why are these vague and general patents getting approved?

Re: Spotify Sued For Patent Infringement Just Weeks After Entering US Market

#28

Post by thaumaturgy »

rkalla wrote: post #3

I am really curious if an event like this will eventually promote change in the software patent laws. We've been watching events like Lodsys running around kicking everyone in the knees and international developers pulling their apps out of the app store out of fear of litigation[1] while Apple seems unable[3] to actively step in and protect its developers. Then you have other patent trolls sitting around, biding the…

> If software patents are done away with, I think we just throw the pendulum in the opposite direction and now everyone with money and strong development teams steamroll the competition.

Historically, the alternative to patents is trade secrets. For example, you have Coca-Cola's closely-protected formula. In the example you gave, it's just as likely that Skype would instead protect its technology as a trade secret, and reverse-engineering it would fall under current laws.

It might be possible to consider the rapid development cycle in the software industry and simply shorten the period of protection granted by a patent on software to something like 2 years, which seems long looking forward but is pretty short in retrospect. Companies like Lodsys would be forced to spend a lot more money acquiring new patents on a regular basis -- enough extra to continue their litigious cancer on the industry -- but wouldn't manage to substantially halt development or production in the software industry.

Even then, I think I'd still prefer to see patents abolished altogether for non-mechanical and non-chemical inventions.

Re: Spotify Sued For Patent Infringement Just Weeks After Entering US Market

#29

Post by kenjackson »

rwmj wrote: post #24
monochromatic wrote: post #18

This patent was filed in 1995 [edit: and it actually claims priority back to 1994]. Was there really much relevant prior art in this space back then? One other comment: I really appreciate that techdirt actually included a claim from the patent. Most articles posted here just quote the title or the abstract, which is useless as far as determining what's covered and what's not.

Back in 1992 we used to stream music over the network of Sun machines at St. Andrews university[1]. The way we did it was pretty trivial: just piping into rsh from and to /dev/audio. However it was certainly streaming of music by anyone's definition. [1] Making the admins of said network mighty pissed off in the process -- I believe the whole campus was on 10 Mbps at the time.

From what I can tell reading the patent, what you describe would not be prior art.

Two things would need to be present -- DRM of some sort. And music metadata.

These are two things that I suspect Spotify makes use of. I suspect you probably didn't at St Andrews for your streaming, but let me know if you did.

Re: Spotify Sued For Patent Infringement Just Weeks After Entering US Market

#30

Post by codeodor »

"You could have asked any semi-competent engineer how would you build a digital music streaming service, and you would have received a similar general explanation."

The question I had after reading that was "who thought to ask about building a digital music streaming service in 1995?"

I was a little disappointed the post didn't cover that.

Statements like that remind me of the often cited "I could have done that" when people talk about art.

Post reply on HN