Apple to pay MS $10 per iPod?

[Gatekeeper]

The iPod was launched in November 2001 but Apple waited until July 2002 to file for a patent; Microsoft snuck in to license some of the technology the previous May.

Typical behemoth behavior. My, look how INNOVATIVE they are!

Gatekeeper

[Kuciwalker]

Yep, they are innovative, since MS's time of invention predates the launch of the iPod.

[Kuciwalker]

The reaction on /. is priceless.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Gatekeeper
Typical behemoth behavior. My, look how INNOVATIVE they are!

Gatekeeper

Are you referring to Apple or MS, because they both patented the same thing. MS just beat them to the punch.

[Asher]

Originally posted by aneeshm
How exactly do you "patent" a generic piece of hardware that decodes some musical file formats and plays them ?

The same way Apple patented a circular scrolling device for a portable electronics product.

[Gatekeeper]

The intentions of MS were quite dishonorable, IMO, Asher. It looks like they knew Apple hadn't completed its patent paperwork and "snuck" in, as the article so eloquently stated. I am stumped as to why Apple didn't do the patent paperwork right away.

At any rate, this is a legal fistfight that isn't going to end anytime soon.

Gatekeeper

[Sava]

iPods sucks

people who buy iPods suck

Apple sucks

MS sucks

paying for music sucks

god bless usenet!

[Asher]

Originally posted by Gatekeeper
The intentions of MS were quite dishonorable, IMO, Asher. It looks like they knew Apple hadn't completed its patent paperwork and "snuck" in, as the article so eloquently stated. I am stumped as to why Apple didn't do the patent paperwork right away.

At any rate, this is a legal fistfight that isn't going to end anytime soon.

Gatekeeper

MS didn't patent the iPod, they patented some portable digital music playing methods using files such as MP3s.

People seem to forget that variations were invented and used by by Diamond/Rio (IIRC) well before even the iPod did this.

The iPod was not the first MP3 player...

FWIW, MS' patent involves dynamic playlist generation, which wasn't implemented in iPods til late 2002/early 2003 IIRC, if not later: http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-...DN/20030221541

[Asher]

MS' patent is about a product called AutoDJ: http://research.microsoft.com/~jplatt/autoDJ.pdf

The title of the paper is "Learning a Gaussian Process Prior
for Automatically Generating Music Playlists":

This paper presents AutoDJ: a system for automatically generating music playlists
based on one or more seed songs selected by a user. AutoDJ uses Gaussian
Process Regression to learn a user preference function over songs. This
function takes music metadata as inputs. This paper further introduces Kernel
Meta-Training, which is a method of learning a Gaussian Process kernel from
a distribution of functions that generates the learned function. For playlist generation,
AutoDJ learns a kernel from a large set of albums. This learned kernel
is shown to be more effective at predicting users’ playlists than a reasonable
hand-designed kernel.

As far as I know, Apple still doesn't have that. I'm confused what all the hubbub is about.

[Imran Siddiqui]

If that's the patent, why would Apple have to pay anything? It doesn't have that.

[Asher]

Dunno, all I know is Slashdot and Apple sites are in an anti-MS panic again.

[Dis]

This is just so hilarious. the one thing Apple has done to appeal to the masses, they can't even profit from it.

[Riesstiu IV]

Originally posted by Sava
iPods sucks

people who buy iPods suck

Apple sucks

What about people who got a free iPod shuffle as a gift from their company?

[Zopperoni]

Then the company sucks.