Bose Picks A Patent Fight With Apple’s Beats Over Noise-Cancelling Headphones

http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/25/bose-picks-a-patent-fight-with-apples-beats-over-noise-cancelling-headphones/

by JumpCrisscross • 12 years ago

25 47 12 years ago

paletoy6• 12 years ago

When i look at the bose QuietComfort earphones - earphones that are supposed to have(according to reviews) the unique ability to greatly block non-constant noise(for example talking) - and ability that to my knowledge nobody else has, and on the other hand are really expensive($270) and beyond the reach of many, i wonder:

Would some sort a programmable(app based) headphones enable an affordable noise reduction earphones that do a great job ?

Because all in all , noise is huge problem and a huge potential market.

kevingadd3• 12 years ago

Latency is a real problem, so I don't think doing the noise cancellation in software would ever work particularly well. You almost certainly need dedicated hardware, or at least a programmable chip with a low latency connection to the headphones and all the other necessary components connected at low latency as well (some microphone(s) picking up the ambient noise, for example.)

You're certainly not ever going to do noise cancellation over bluetooth.

I bet the headphones could be much cheaper, though. Bose almost certainly wants to monetize their R&D investment and take advantage of their significant marketshare. (There are non-Bose noise cancelling headphones, but I don't see them around often.)

gonzo• 12 years ago

Ya know, Apple could add hardware to their iOS devices...

IJS...

paletoy6• 12 years ago

Sure, you'll probably need dedicated low latency hardware. But that's probably relatively cheap, and shouldn't prevent apple ,or even a smaller company doing something in that area.

pinaceae• 12 years ago

what?

the Bose noise cancelling in ear plugs already do the processing in a "dongle" which is at the end of the plug that goes into the phone. nothing is stopping Apple/Samsung/whatever to put this piece of hardware into the phone.

and remember the new Beats headphones that are supposed to hook into the Lightning port instead of the audio jack? THIS is the use case right there.

anigbrowl2• 12 years ago

No. The time to do D/A/D conversion and signal processing would just leave you with noise above the wavelength equivalent o the time loss, plus a whole bunch of spurious transients. It would sound quieter on a first impression, but probably prove more fatiguing over time due to the departure from natural noise spectra (which our brains are better at filtering)...which is exactly why I find Bose's headphones impossible to tolerate for more than a minute or two.

If you want quiet, get a pair of large close-backed headphones with good insulation, such as Sony MDR-7506. OK, so they weigh a bit more. OTOH they cost less and sound better, which is why they're a fixture in the gear boxes of location recordists.

paletoy6• 12 years ago

Maybe it's your personal taaste(or that you haven't tried the right earphones) , but at least according to reviews, many are quiet pleased with a good noise cancelling tech when it's working well.

meowface• 12 years ago

Keyword here is definitely "sound better." Bose's headphones do not sound very good at all, though I'm not sure if it's due to the quality of the headphone driver, side effects of the active noise cancellation, or a combination of the two.

The much cheaper cost certainly helps too.

quantisan• 12 years ago

We had the same idea at a hackday and built it. https://github.com/Quantisan/nullwave

We used the laptop's mic as the source of environmental sound and just flipped the signals and play them back on a headphone. Because of the distance between the laptop and our ears, the signals can't really be cancelled that trivially.

The app ended up amplifying non-noises (we had some filtering) and we could hear other people talking quietly even across a room. So we jokingly said we built a spying tool on demo.

briantakita4• 12 years ago

So how do patents "encourage innovation" again? It sounds more like patent attorney & bureaucratic speak meaning lots of money flowing toward them at the expense of everybody else.

Here's yet another example of patents hindering innovation and reducing novelty within the market. Why can't we just focus on real innovation & novelty instead of this legal drama?

kevingadd3• 12 years ago

Did you read the article? They've been developing this tech for decades and releasing actual products based on it. Products people like enough to buy.

What innovation's being hindered here? Beats didn't do anything new.

georgemcbay2• 12 years ago

I'm not the person you responded to, but I did read the article. The article kind of highlights the OP's point IMO. eg. (from the article):

"Bose alleges that Beats has infringed on 50 years’ worth of research, development and engineering of noise cancelling tech"

Well, the whole point of patents is supposed to be to publish the implementation details of inventions so that technology is available for all (the public commons) to use freely after the initial (14/17/20 year -- depending upon what year the patent was issued) patent period is up.

This whole concept of incrementally improving a technology with amendment patents to keep the protection going virtually indefinitely is a very modern concept, and one that the "forefathers" who wrote patents into the Constitution would have been dead set against.

Far be it from me to defend Beats or Apple since they are both IP-abusive companies themselves, but I'm not going to defend Bose either; the patent system and the lawsuit industry that has exploded around it in the past decade is completely out of control.

briantakita4• 12 years ago

What innovation's being hindered here? Beats didn't do anything new.

Novelty is being removed from the marketplace.

Beats products look good and many people prefer them to Bose. The technology itself has been independently developed by Beats.

The funny thing is Chinese manufacturer & tech firms don't strictly adhere to patent laws and are making progress by leaps & bounds. It's a matter of evolution. Patent law "chivalry" is dead. It's a quaint game from a time long gone.

JumpCrisscross• 12 years ago

So how do patents "encourage innovation" again?

On one hand we have Bose, who "for almost 50 years...has made significant investment in the research, development, engineering, and design of proprietary technologies now implemented in its products, such as noise canceling headphones" [1]. On the other hand we have Beats, which dressed up commodity tech in a nice design and well-executed marketing campaign. Not sure if this is the best case to torpedo patent law with.

[1] http://www.scribd.com/doc/235098824/Bose-v-Beats-Civil-Compl... §5

Gracana• 12 years ago

Every audio enthusiast I know would scoff at that assessment of Bose. They have a reputation for commanding a premium for cheaply made, mediocre products using fancy marketing and gimmickry. They're no different from Beats in that regard.

makomk• 12 years ago

The lifetime of patents in the US is only 20 years (roughly). Most of those 50 years of innovation are no longer eligible for patent protection, including their original noise cancelling technology. Unfortunately companies seem to be very good at finding ways around this limit.

threeseed• 12 years ago

Patents are really designed for the "little guy".

You only need to look at companies like Dyson who was just one guy in a garage coming up with crazy new approaches to an existing problem. Someone like that deserves some protection from bigger companies who could simply steal his idea and put him out of business.

briantakita4• 12 years ago

Patents are really designed for the "little guy".

That's the marketing by the pro-patent camp. However, it's the big guys that benefit, at the expense of the little guys. The big guys can afford the lawyers, the filing fees, and the patent war chests.

How often do we hear about the little guy receiving a patent infringement cease & desist letter by a patent troll or large company?

Patents add another layer of complexity to the market resulting unnecessary expense & process for everyone. We focus on hiring lawyers for protection & litigation instead of innovation. Derivative works result in innovation. In the end, the ultimate beneficiaries of patents are the patent attorneys & bureaucracy. Hardly a recipe for innovation.

The little guys are at an advantage over the big guys because they are more nimble & can explore markets that are "too small" for the big guys.

And then, why are we choosing to favor anybody at all? Why not let the free market determine the winner? Manufacturing, development, & marketing are becoming more decentralized as time moves on. Why have a centralized legal roadblock to new product development?

deepsun• 12 years ago

Generally I'm against patent battles, but not in this case. Noise and echo cancellation are very research-demanding areas, with pretty smart algorithms and hardware to be developed. Those are certainly patentable, unlike "round edges".

jahewson• 12 years ago

Bose alleges that Beats has infringed on 50 years’ worth of research, development and engineering of noise cancelling tech.

Which is strange, because patents last only 20 years.

pyre• 12 years ago

One can research something in secret for 30 years before patenting it...

It could also be referencing other research upon which the patents in question are based...

ChikkaChiChi2• 12 years ago

I returned a pair of QueitComforts and purchased a pair of Beats Bluetooth for airline travel because the Beats had better audio response for the music I like and they were wireless. The QuietComforts had the superior noise cancelling.

It almost seems like patent law needs to apply proportionally to the crossover in market share between two products. Bose and Beats operate within the same industry but I wouldn't consider their product offerings to completely overlap.

The outliers offer the consumer more choice and if the patent holder is not in that space, are they being damaged?

paletoy6• 12 years ago

Another question: are those earphone strongly decrease non-continuous noise(like talking) ?

ChikkaChiChi2• 12 years ago

It works best with continuous sound, but it does have an effect on talking, yes.

WalterBright2• 12 years ago

My low tech solution works for me. I wear an inexpensive set of musician's earplugs, then turn up the volume on the headset. Works great in the car, too.

paletoy6• 12 years ago

Still if you could do that , wear a noise silencing headphones an be in total silence(instead of music), won't it be nicer ?

WalterBright2• 12 years ago

Ambient noise doesn't bother me unless it exceeds a certain volume. Musician's earplugs take care of that nicely, they're nearly invisible, fit in my pocket, the nonexistent batteries never go dead, they're cheap, no worries about breaking them, there's no weight on my head, I keep several sets handy, etc.

LnxPrgr3• 12 years ago

My medium tech solution: earplugs with holes cut in them that music plays out of, more or less. The isolation puts active noise cancellation to shame: http://graphs.headphone.com/graphCompare.php?graphType=6&gra...

Graph is of attenuation in dB: lower values are better, and positive values are worse than no blocking at all.

ulfw• 12 years ago

So can one assume that Bose headphones won't be prominently displayed in Apple Stores anymore and/or sold there then?

Bose Picks A Patent Fight With Apple’s Beats Over Noise-Cancelling Headphones

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