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September 14, 2007

legal

Funny lawsuit of the day: company sues over playlists

Posted Sep. 14, ’07, 11:34 AM PT by Dan Moren
Category | Legal

GavelIt’s Friday, and we know you don’t want to strain yourself, so we thought we’d provide you with a little end-of-the-week entertainment from our legal affairs department. A company called Premier International Associates has leveled lawsuits against almost twenty technology companies, claiming that they infringe upon Premier’s patents for, and I quote, an electronic “List building system”:

A system implementable using a programmable processor includes a plurality of pre-stored commands for building an inventory of audio, musical, works or audio/visual works, such as music videos. A plurality of works can be collected together in a list for purposes of establishing a play or a presentation sequence. The list can be visually displayed and edited. A plurality of lists can be stored for subsequent retrieval. A selected list can be retrieved and executed. Upon execution, the works of the list are presented sequentially either audibly or visually.
Oh, man, DJs better watch their backs: these guys have patented the playlist. Well, crap: I guess I’ll have to go back to using paper and pen to write down the order of songs I want to play at my next bash. What’ll they try next: shopping lists? What about shopping lists I keep in my head. Suck it, Premier.

Notably absent from the list of companies being sued is Apple, who was the target of two separate suits by Premier in 2005 over iTunes and the iPod. In a coincidence?-I-think-not moment, Premier dropped its suit against Apple today, saying that “the matter has [been] settled in its entirety and all necessary costs and expenses have been paid.” ORLY? I guess the trolls had to move on to other goats sooner or later.

You know, I can’t decide whether to have a hearty chuckle or cry into my MacBook. Pardon me as I fire up my iTunes “Tearjerker” playlist.

[via Ars Technica]


4 Comments

Gatesbasher Author Profile Page said:

Apparently none of the lists they have at their fingertips are dictionaries. They really should look up the word "plurality."

September 14, 2007 11:40 AM
Walt said:

The way this reads, they could also hold a patent on the slideshow, no?

September 14, 2007 11:44 AM
wesg Author Profile Page said:

@Gatesbasher

the fact or state of being plural

from the OS X dictionary.

How do you patent something just means a group?

September 14, 2007 4:22 PM
Gatesbasher Author Profile Page said:

@wesg:

I stand corrected. When I learned English, it meant: The largest portion, but not a majority.

September 14, 2007 7:41 PM

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