
Spotify Sued For Patent Infringement Just Weeks After Entering US Market - jsherry
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110728/00525815296/that-didnt-take-long-spotify-sued-patent-infringement-just-weeks-after-entering-us-market.shtml
======
rkalla
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...](http://www.iphoneanswers.net/2499/will-international-app-developers-
leave-the-us-app-store-over-patent-fears.html)

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

[3] [http://www.edibleapple.com/lodsys-argues-against-apples-
moti...](http://www.edibleapple.com/lodsys-argues-against-apples-motion-to-
intervene-on-behalf-of-ios-developers/)

~~~
jameskilton
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
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.

~~~
rkalla
Hrrmmm... good point.

So all that would do is require patent trolls to keep around a small
development team to mockup wrappers to whatever IP they buy up to show they
wrote it?

I suppose the due-diligence requires to disprove shenanigans wouldn't scale
and could easily be gamed by reams and reams of "source code" that actually
did nothing described in the patent but was sufficiently complex so as to
confuse.

This makes me think your approach to expiring them after a short period of
time is the right approach to start with.

------
ajj
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
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.

------
noonespecial
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...

------
codeodor
"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.

~~~
jessriedel
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.

~~~
noonespecial
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.

------
monochromatic
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.

~~~
rwmj
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
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.

~~~
monochromatic
Just a semantic thing, but it is still prior art... it's just probably not
prior art that, on its own, is enough to invalidate these claims. It could
still be relevant for obviousness purposes.

------
joejohnson
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
This Forbes article: [http://blogs.forbes.com/timothylee/2011/07/28/the-
supreme-co...](http://blogs.forbes.com/timothylee/2011/07/28/the-supreme-
court-should-invalidate-software-patents/)

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

------
nextparadigms
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.

------
meow
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...

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

~~~
ddw
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?

~~~
mattdeboard
You should really listen to last week's This American Life, available on
podcast.

You'd be horrified to learn that not only are overbroad patents being awarded
to people, but also regularly being awarded to multiple people/business
entities. Multiple groups holding patents for the same things.

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

~~~
losvedir
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.

------
dools
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!!

------
doki_pen
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.

------
rhplus
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?

~~~
fpgeek
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.

------
base
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.

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

~~~
base
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.

~~~
thesis
Right... but the actual court case will cost money. Filing a lawsuit might be
cheap but following through surely can't be.

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

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

------
siphr
Somebody wants a piece of that pie.

