
Excellent!
That is beer money, now, that is!
Can the patent holders appeal a ruling for their side?
A federal jury has ordered Apple to pay a patent-holding firm $8m for violating two patents, after a protracted battle in the Eastern District of Texas, a jurisdiction notorious for handing down decisions friendly to patent holders. Eight million dollars, however, is substantially less than first claimed by Personal Audio LLC …
You mean someone has actually patented 'maintaining a list of songs you like'?
Could someone tell these guys that ANON owns the patent for "intake and exhalation of gasses to facilitate oxygen transfer into bloodstream" and that we don't want any money, we just want them to cease-and-desist?
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Yeah, I agree..
While on the one hand, I'm happy that Apple is getting ruled against here, this is no more than a farce. Firstly, 8 million as few have said here is nothing but chump change to a company like Apple, and frankly looks laughable.
More worrisome however is the fact that such a patent suit could come about in the first place...
PLAYLIST? WTF come on...
The plaintiff here clearly is as bad or worse scum than Apple.
Hmm... Worse I would say, and that's saying a lot.
In addition, if that's how the Americans want to play lets just let them play that way in America and not the rest of the world.
Apple have no choice but to defend what their legal department perceives to be a breach of a patent it owns.
It's not Apple's fault that the US invented the idiotic notion of software patents; nor is it Apple's fault that the USPTO is so willing to accept patent submissions on face value, with no apparent investigation into its actual validity.
This is particularly true of software patents: a concept so moronic, it had to have been invented by the kind of programmer who still believes programming is a branch of maths or engineering, as opposed to what it *actually* is: mere translation. Hence we see all sorts of ridiculous "patents" being awarded, including the one covered by the article.
Apple are fighting fire with fire, as are many other corporations. They all have lawyers to feed, so they're not in a position to stop the madness. That's up to the people of the USA—the same people who let this stupid system happen in the first place.
Don't mind playing this game. They have war chests to cover the temporary losses, and they'll only recoup that by suing another big company for lots of money for an infringement of 'their' patent.
While this leaks money to the lawyers, it keeps the merry-go-round of IP law going, with a reasonably predictable 'small' quantity of leakage (legal costs).
It does mean that the small companies can be smacked hard with these same costs, which is enough to put them out of business just trying to defend themselves, and it's these same small businesses that could have the "next big idea" that could overturn the biggies in a year. Far better for them to have reasonably predictable outgoing than lose the company when someone comes up with the better idea. If they can cause the new company to fail, they can buy the better idea for peanuts.