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Amiga News and Community Announcements => Amiga News and Community Announcements => Miscellaneous => Topic started by: amigamad on October 14, 2003, 06:11:58 PM

Title: Firm sues Microsoft over music download service
Post by: amigamad on October 14, 2003, 06:11:58 PM

A US firm is suing Microsoft for allegedly infringing its patents on music download technology, according to reports
Read the rest at the theinquirer (http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=12094) ...

Title: Re: Firm sues Microsoft over music download service
Post by: Floid on October 14, 2003, 09:04:23 PM

Hmm.

http://lists.ffii.org/archive/mails/news/2001/Mar/0000.html (http://lists.ffii.org/archive/mails/news/2001/Mar/0000.html)

Yay "intellectual property."

Title: Re: Firm sues Microsoft over music download service
Post by: Waccoon on October 15, 2003, 09:28:50 AM

@Floid's link:  Haha.  "The new patent application marks the first of several products and applications that..." um, lemme guess, will revolutionize the way we live and furthur the deluge of haphazard innovation!

Yeah, but what does their patented technology *DO*?  Turn digital content into trading cards for use on Kiosks?  WTF?  You need a patent for that?

Title: Re: Firm sues Microsoft over music download service
Post by: csirac_ on October 15, 2003, 10:46:13 AM

Patents only help the big guys. The *REALLY* big guys. It sounds like patents are used a bit like nuclear weapons stock. If you're a company releasing product with a massive portfolio of patents, and some other company wants to take you down with a patent of *theirs*, you can probably counter-patent claim some obscure feature of some other product the other company has. So it's mutual trust - don't bother me, I won't bother you.

Without a patent portfolio, it's probably hard to eg. start selling laptops out of the blue, you'd be an easy target for the big guys (since they know there is nothing you can do).

- Paul