February 26, 2007
Teeny-weeny company sues Apple over great big patent
Posted Feb. 26, ’07, 8:09 AM PT by Dan Moren
Category | Legal
I don’t pretend to understand patent law. Okay, I guess I do pretend to understand parts of it, but it’s not as if I dress up in suits and pass myself off as a lawyer in court. Well, only on alternate Thursdays.
Seems like an awful lot of patent law is made up of suing people; I suppose the same could be said for the American legal system period, but patent law has developed into an particularly fruitful avenue. We get companies like Texas MP3 Technologies, who is now suing Apple, Samsung, and Sandisk over those companies infringement of patent 7,065,417: “MPEG portable sound reproducing system and a reproducing method thereof.”
While Texas MP3 Technologies is the current assignee of all rights on said patent, the document was originally awarded to chipmaker SigmaTel last June, having been filed in January 2002. SigmaTel subsequently sold the patent to a company, presumably Texas MP3 Technologies, who “would be better able to take advantage of its potential value.” Which is to say, patent trolling.
It’s kind of great that I can’t even find a website for Texas MP3 Technologies (I had to concoct the logo at right on my own, but I think it’s a good guess); a Google search only reveals that they are suing people. Thanks, patent law. Thanks a bajillion.
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Nice logo Dan. Maybe you're sitting at the wrong desk? I can just see that logo on wooden signage, rocking back and forth in the wind making the rusty hinge noise. Tumbleweeds blowing by...
Interesting... I thought Alcatel-Lucent invented the MP3... or was it the German company Fraunhofer?
A lot of claiming going on. Microsoft was just sued (successfully) by Alcatel-Lucent over MP3 patent infringment. They lost a jury decision worth $1.5 billion!
We wrote about it here
There are several companies out there thats sole purpose is to sue over patent infringments.
They file thousands of patents a year, hold copyrights to insane things, and everytime one of those copyrights or patents is infringed on. They pounce.
If you think the electronicds industry is bad, you should see the drug industry.
Companies have already copyrighted imaginary cures for...well, everything.
Companies copyright small segments of hunman genome. and if you want to work on those segments you have to pay up. Imagine if someone cures cancer on someone elses genome real estate.
this wasn't off topic at all.