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Spotify Sued For Patent Infringement Just Weeks After Entering US Market

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

#41

Post by mcao »

naner wrote: post #26
jameskilton wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sure, it may not help in THAT case but it would help with people hoarding patents for the sole purpose of suing others. There isn't going to be a single solution that solves the patent problem. It will be a combination of rules like 1) you must have a product on the market using the patent 2) no business method patents 3) software patents are limited to 2-3 years etc etc

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

#42

Post by moe »

mcao wrote: post #41
naner wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sure, it may not help in THAT case but it would help with people hoarding patents for the sole purpose of suing others. There isn't going to be a single solution that solves the patent problem. It will be a combination of rules like 1) you must have a product on the market using the patent 2) no business method patents 3) software patents are limited to 2-3 years etc etc

The problem with "must have product in the market" is the same as with the idea of fixing the domain name system by adding a requirement of "use it or lose it".

Who gets to decide what "having a product in the market" means?

It's impossible to generalize this to an objective set of rules. Thus we'd soon be back on square 1 (read: in the court room).

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

#43

Post by chc »

justinsb wrote: post #37
chc wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

Stac Electronics is an example of Microsoft doing exactly what you described; it was patent - not copyright - law that allowed Stac to collect damages.

It was under patent law that they happened to file this suit, but similar copyright suits have been filed (this is why movie studios don't accept spec scripts and a prominent game developer deleted his Twitter account). And it's still pretty rare.

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

#44

Post by ericd »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #28
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, a…

I think the 2 year software patent might be the way to go. That's a pretty compelling argument to say that things move much faster in software so the timespans should just be shortened significantly. You might even be able to convince lawmakers with that.

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

#45

Post by lukeschlather »

kenjackson wrote: post #29
rwmj wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That still doesn't make something clever enough to merit a patent.

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

#46

Post by brlewis »

justinsb wrote: post #37
chc wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

Stac Electronics is an example of Microsoft doing exactly what you described; it was patent - not copyright - law that allowed Stac to collect damages.

When chc mentioned "The little guy usually can't afford the money and time to patent things, much less enforce them", I assumed (s)he wasn't talking about little guys like Stac Electronics, a publicly traded company for whom a $9.7 million sales quarter was evidence of declining business.

http://articles.latimes.com/1994-06-22/business/fi-7159_1_pa...

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

#49

Post by jessriedel »

codeodor wrote: post #30

"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" whe…

Patents are for actual technical implementation, not ideas for things which would be nice if they could actually be built. I don't get a patent for imagining how great it would be to have pizza delivered by slingshot even if no one has thought of it before, and even if it delivering pizza by slingshot turns out to revolutionize the world. I have to actually invent the slingshot capable of delivering a pizza accurately. And if that invention is obvious for a semi-competent engineer ("Put pizza on big pannk stuck in the ground. Pull back plank and release.") I won't be awarded a patent.

Now, I can agree that it's conceivable that there could be a benefit for allowing such ideas to be patented. For instance, I've always thought that it would be convenient to have a foot-pedal to turn on your kitchen sink so you didn't have to use your hands to turn on and off the water while you washed dishes. In my imagination, the everyone would immediately realize how great these pedals were if a single company started to produce them. And, in that case, everyone would enjoy a huge boost in utility.

However, there's no way for me to capture any of that surplus because I can't patent a foot pedal for a sink under the current definition of a patent. If I started a company to sell these foot pedal installation, and it became popular, a million other companies could enter the market and sink me. And, all things considered, it's probably better that way.

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

#50

Post by nextparadigms »

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…

I don't think patents protect the little guy as much as you think. Yes, in theory it sounds nice and perfect, but I don't think that's how it works in reality.

Look at Zynga for example, how they've ripped off many other smaller developers, and they haven't really "paid" for it. The other commenters are right. Small developers can't afford a big lawsuit either way.

But I think copying each other leads to higher quality products, even if it's done by the big companies. How small companies can stay ahead is with "disruptive innovation". The way disruptive innovation works in general is that the big companies don't want to copy you, because it means dramatic changes to their company and the way they do business.

It also usually means lower revenue (per unit) which they don't like because they think it can't sustain their much higher cost structures. Adopting the new disruptive innovation that is cheaper also means cutting into their own profits from their more expensive products.

Take Intel for example. It's not that they can't build ARM chips or don't realize the potential of ARM chips. It's that they really don't want to do it. They've tried it before and it presented them with a huge conflict of interest and it gave them revenues they didn't think were appropriate for a company like theirs. So they'd rather continue to try building an x86 chip to compete with the ARM chips, which is Atom, even though they keep failing coming up with a good alternative. I don't think Atom will ever be able to keep pace with ARM chips in all 3 of these factors: performance, energy efficiency and price, or by the time they do it, it will be too late.

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