Spotify Sued For Patent Infringement Just Weeks After Entering US Market

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110728/00525815296/that-didnt-take-long-spotify-sued-patent-infringement-just-weeks-after-entering-us-market.shtml

by jsherry • 15 years ago

184 70 15 years ago

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nextparadigms2• 15 years ago

And they wonder why some companies don't want to do business in US anymore. US has a lot to fix to bring its economy back.

rkalla3• 15 years ago

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 their time and waiting for targets to become profitable enough to make it worth their while to sue[2]

For something that was created with the sole purpose of protecting innovation, it has really become a perversion. Hindsight is always 20/20, but I think the original laws were put in place out of good intentions (path to hell and all that...)

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.

For example, I am sure Skype developed and patented some seriously impressive tech for VoIP and video that Google, Microsoft and Apple would have simply ripped off if given the chance... as opposed to licensing it or buying the parent company.

There has got to be a middle ground where the original intent of the patent system is maintained, but we do away with these selfish/unprincipled folks that buy up portfolios just to molest the system.

[1] http://www.iphoneanswers.net/2499/will-international-app-dev...

[2] http://mashable.com/2011/07/25/angry-birds-lawsuit/

[3] http://www.edibleapple.com/lodsys-argues-against-apples-moti...

jameskilton• 15 years ago

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 steal ideas.

I'm afraid it will get a lot worse before we finally get this fixed, though.

MrVitaliy• 15 years ago

That rule is easily circumvented. Just write a 10 line python script that references the patent. Release it as MyPatentApp version 1.0 and we're back to litigation square 1.

I believe that in such a quickly changing engineering landscape as software, best way to fix patent troll problem is to make software patents expire in 2-3 years.

justinsb2• 15 years ago

In this case the patent is related to PacketVideo's business.

naner• 15 years ago

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.

napierzaza• 15 years ago

Not really. Firstly because not every invention can so easily be produced. What if I patent something to do with space travel? What if it's something that isn't simply a software paradigm? And if it is just something that can be done in software, why not create some semi-working version to prove it's in production? Or are you going to add that it has to sell? Or be appealing? What if you say you have a version for sale but it's a million dollars a unit?

That law is so simple I'm sure there are even more ways to get around it than there are real inventors who will be shafted by it just because they don't own the facilities to produce it enough to satisfy you.

mikle• 15 years ago

I don't think this rule is sufficient. Beside the other points people already raised, you still have the issue of people patenting obvious stuff with prior art (like the recent Apple vs HTC case, for example).

AndyJPartridge• 15 years ago

>I am really curious if an event like this will eventually promote change in the software patent laws.

Me too. I'm thinking that the Apple/Lodsys one has the best chance of making a change, as for Apple so much is at stake.

I don't know how it is over in the US, but here in the UK the whole issue isn't really high profile, even with stakes as high as they are. (IE. HTC not being able to sell mobiles if the patent decision is upheld in December.)

One thing is for sure, I for one would not put any app in a US app store, which is a shame for me and my potential customers.

chc2• 15 years ago

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 and strong development teams.

Essentially, a competitor that could steamroll you without a patent would be able to steamroll you with a patent.

The one case I can think of where it would be reasonable for a patent to protect you is if a company offers to buy your product, looks at the code, and then has its developers create a knock-off based on your code. And even then copyright law is probably sufficient (analogous situations arise in other industries where copyright is the only law).

justinsb2• 15 years ago

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

thaumaturgy• 15 years ago

> 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, and reverse-engineering it would fall under current laws.

It might be possible to consider the rapid development cycle in the software industry and simply shorten the period of protection granted by a patent on software to something like 2 years, which seems long looking forward but is pretty short in retrospect. Companies like Lodsys would be forced to spend a lot more money acquiring new patents on a regular basis -- enough extra to continue their litigious cancer on the industry -- but wouldn't manage to substantially halt development or production in the software industry.

Even then, I think I'd still prefer to see patents abolished altogether for non-mechanical and non-chemical inventions.

ericd• 15 years ago

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.

baddox• 15 years ago

I've never understood why trade secrets need any special treatment as "intellectual property" in our legal system. Aren't trespassing and contract laws (non-compete, NDA, etc.) sufficient?

nsfmc• 15 years ago

as a contrast, trademarks are handled in what most people would consider a 'commonsense' way, where it is required that the trademark owner actively use the mark for some period of time and also police that others aren't using or abusing the mark in any way.[1]

Obviously, Trademarks and Patents are two different beasts, but the mechanism for enforcing and protecting trademarks i think is usually along the lines that most people consider fair, which is that the trademark is used to protect an interest for as long as that interest is active (and semi-vigilantly policing its mark) and is using that trademark to protect its own notoriety.

Obviously, trademarks and patents are two different beasts. But (and this is why i'm repeating myself) my point is that you don't have to get rid of these sorts of laws. Trademarks are equally nebulous, but their model seems to me a huge success in the world of intellectual property management whereas (software) patents seem to be a stickier situation altogether.

just my two cents, because again, i don't think we should necessarily get rid of software patents, but i think that thinking of them using this old framework has been problematic in a way that trademarks haven't been (despite similarly ridiculous, yet defensible, use cases, i.e. trademarking 'tiffany blue').

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trademark#Maintaining_rights

madflo• 15 years ago

As an indie E.U. based developer, I must confess that everything that I'm reading here about patent trolls is scaring me off. It will probably keep me from even thinking about building a product for the U.S. market for a while.

breathesalt• 15 years ago

- everyone with money

There's your problem right there.

nextparadigms2• 15 years ago

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.

sliverstorm• 15 years ago

I am really curious if an event like this will eventually promote change in the software patent laws

The answer, I have come to realize, is no. It will always be no. Ridiculous examples do not drive change. The only thing that will drive change is a direct attack on John Doe (aka patenting the mRNA polymerase gene and demanding licensing fees from everyone) or collaborative effort that has a direct effect on John Doe- for example, a "strike" by a large number of significant companies, or a "dark knight" who uses patents to completely shut down a very popular company like Apple and thus incite the people.

I am a pessimist, I know, but honestly if you've paid attention these past few years, you'll have noticed that obscene patent stories just keep coming.

fpgeek3• 15 years ago

If Apple, Microsoft and Oracle managed to drive Android out of the US, that might be enough, but I don't expect that to happen. Even if they won all their lawsuits on the broadest possible terms, some other large patent holder (e.g. Sony, IBM, Nokia, etc.) would have a powerful incentive to pick it up, invoke MAD in the other direction and milk the US Android exclusive for all it was worth.

jquery• 15 years ago

I was talking to a coworker about software patents, and he said they were terrible. Then I asked about non-software patents, and he thought they were absolutely necessary.

To be honest I don't see the difference. For any given complicated piece of hardware, you can build an equally complicated piece of software. For every simple software patent out there, there is an equally ridiculous non-software patent (e.g., foot-pedal washing sinks)

I think whatever your stance on the issue of patents is, you shouldn't treat software as a special case.

ddw2• 15 years ago

This is ridiculous. How were they even approved a patent for something so broad and general? Is it a matter of the judges not understanding the technology?

There are a lot of recent law school grads out there that are having a hard time finding jobs. I tell a few of my friends in such a situation all the time that they should get into the IT area because there is so much going on. What's the climate like for challenging patents like this in court?

Ronkdar• 15 years ago

Judges don't grant patents. The US Patent Office does that. Patents this broad are not at all unusual.

ddw2• 15 years ago

Thanks for clarifying, I should look into it more but it's sometimes difficult to follow these legal things.

I know it's not unusual, that's my basic question. I can't imagine anyone reading the patent excerpt in that article and going "oh yeah, Spotify definitely ripped that off." Why are these vague and general patents getting approved?

siphr• 15 years ago

Somebody wants a piece of that pie.

base2• 15 years ago

One of the problems is that this companies don't have anything to loose by bringing these lawsuits. They just have to fill some papers electronically, pay a few hundred dollars and the other party have to loose thousands of dollars to protect itself.

thesis2• 15 years ago

I'm not for these patent trolls at all... but litigation costs money on both sides, not just defending.

base2• 15 years ago

The cases that these patent trolls bring to court are very similar to each other. If you check the court summons they are almost all the same, they just change the name of the company and some little details.

losvedir2• 15 years ago

In case you're a non-native speaker and that's not just a typo (since you did it twice), "loose" should be "lose".

ajj• 15 years ago

Until recently, I thought that the patents issue was a PITA, but not that big of a deal, and something that would eventually pass after a lot of damage is done.

Now, I really believe that unless things change, the US is going to have a lot of trouble attracting new businesses to start at home, or foreign companies providing services in the US. Spotify will run their own cost benefit analysis of fighting the lawsuit versus attracting future revenue. Many small services that cannot afford an upfront lawsuit in the hope of future American revenue will just not open shop or services for the US.

It hurts me to see how the patent system is screwing with every damn thing. As they say for startups, competition from other countries won't hurt America, but inefficiencies and bad decisions within would. And IMHO the risk is not hypothetical anymore.

SkyMarshal• 15 years ago

Agreed. Usually when these threads pop up there's some speculation on getting rid of software patents, but I'm afraid that's no longer in the relam of possiblitity.

Way too much money has been poured into buying massive patent portfolios by the big boys, from Apple & Co. to Paul Allen. If some upstart Congressman suddenly tried to pass a law to invalidate them, you can bet multi-millions would be spent to prevent that and get him/her unelected.

A compromise that protects startups in some way may be the best we can hope for at this point, I'm afraid.

meow• 15 years ago

It is Spotify today, which is just a music streaming service.. for which a lot of other alternatives already exist. It could be a high-tech foreign robotics company in future which might just decide not to market products in US or worse price them much higher factoring in all the litigation fee...

joejohnson• 15 years ago

Everytime something like this is posted on HN, people say in the comments "I hope this will push patent reform". I feel like this issue has been brought to light a lot recently, but is this just my bias as an HN reader? Have lawsuits and patent fights been going on for many years, or is it escalating right now?

untog• 15 years ago

This Forbes article: http://blogs.forbes.com/timothylee/2011/07/28/the-supreme-co...

Makes a neat argument that software patent arguments are finally entering the mainstream.

monochromatic2• 15 years ago

This patent was filed in 1995 [edit: and it actually claims priority back to 1994]. Was there really much relevant prior art in this space back then?

One other comment: I really appreciate that techdirt actually included a claim from the patent. Most articles posted here just quote the title or the abstract, which is useless as far as determining what's covered and what's not.

rwmj2• 15 years ago

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.

kenjackson• 15 years ago

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.

codeodor2• 15 years ago

"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" when people talk about art.

prodigal_erik• 15 years ago

The purpose of a patent is to compensate you not for inventing something but for disclosing exactly how it works. If what you did is straightforward, why should we grant a generation-long monopoly to whoever bothers to do it first?

codeodor2• 15 years ago

I'm not advocating whether or not the patent should be awarded. Instead, I was trying to indicate that I felt like in 1995, it may not have been straightforward simply because not many people would have thought to even ask the question.

I guess one way to ask it might be, "how does one find a straightforward path to an unknown destination?"

jessriedel• 15 years ago

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.

noonespecial2• 15 years ago

Every hospital I've ever been in has foot pedal operated sinks on the way into the OR's. Most of the gizmos either have a patent number or a pending etched somewhere on them.

cma• 15 years ago

How is 1983 for you?

http://www.zappa.com/whatsnew/news/FZ-Proposal/index.html

dools• 15 years ago

I'd like to file a patent please. It's for a system of computer fastness where somehow we manage to get a processor to switch at a frequency of 1000ghz and use that speed to perform rapid computations to execute various programs really fast.

wait 15 years

Booyah!!

MaysonL• 15 years ago

I wonder what would happen if patents had to be renewed each year, and the renewal fee doubled each year?

losvedir2• 15 years ago

Wow, now there's a genuinely interesting idea I haven't heard before. It would prevent against patent trolls biding their time until someone profitably introduced something.

It's kind of a "put your money where your mouth is" type solution, which actually helps the little guy, too. I like it!

It doesn't help against granting stupid patents in the first place (e.g. Amazon's one click checkout), but limits their impact, I suppose.

earbitscom• 15 years ago

Maybe this is the buzz Spotify was banking on to get to 50M users.

noonespecial2• 15 years ago

With that kind of welcome, I'd just say screw it and leave. The US is a big market sure, but there's lots more Europe to do where there's less crazy.

I'll go back to listening to spotify via a vpn through our sever in London. An IP curtain has descended across the continent...

deepGem• 15 years ago

As a result, patent lawyers, who know zilch about software or technology are making a killing.

rhplus• 15 years ago

But why Spotify and why now? Couldn't they have hit Apple, Real, Microsoft, (new) Napster, Amazon, Pandora, Last.fm and a zillion other drm-music-to-device streaming services before now? Have they summonsed these services already but we just don't know about it? Who exactly is trying to keep Spotify out?

fpgeek3• 15 years ago

Spotify is just getting established in the US market, so they might be particularly attractive, weak prey that can be easily killed in order to establish a precedent.

doki_pen• 15 years ago

I hate patents as much as the next guy, but to imply a patent is less valid because it was purchased is bunk. Part of the value of patents is that the inventor can sell them. If they aren't as compelling after being sold, then the inventor can not demand as high a price. That doesn't seem fair to the inventor. The fact that the patent has changed hands should not influence anyone's opinion on the matter.

Spotify Sued For Patent Infringement Just Weeks After Entering US Market

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