'The Internet is a Player Piano' - Patent Claim
By Gregory Aharonian, forwarded by Robbie Rhodes
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 23 Sep 1996 18:53:39 -0400
From: Gregory Aharonian <srctran@world.std.com>
Reply-To: patent-news@europe.std.com
To: patent-news@world.std.com
Subject: PATNEWS: Weird software patent lawsuit - Internet is a player piano
!19960924 Weird software patent lawsuit - the Internet is a player piano
Increasingly, with the 30,000+ software patents out there, the Internet is being looked at the as the mother of all litigation pots. One of the fun parts about being a patent buster is seeing to what lengths some companies are going to "interpret" their patents to read on the Internet.
However, some of these cases are really stretching reality. If anyone has details on the following bit of gossip, please send it my way. It appeared in a recent issue of Computer System Design (9/96, page 76-77) on how intellectual property rights in the computing/communications fields are starting to impede progress:
For starters, there is no clear monopoly on
basic technologies here. These type of claims
have been made in the past and some are still
being attempted. A case in point is the
company that is claiming its patent involving
a way to sell player piano music somehow gives
them the right to "a cut" whenever you download
a file from a network.
These guys should team up with E-data. Anyways, if you know the details please send them my way.
Greg Aharonian
Internet Patent News Service
P.O. Box 404, Belmont, MA, 02178
617-489-3727, patents@world.std.com
(for info on free subscription, send 'help' to patents@world.std.com )
(for prior art search services info, send 'prior' to patents@world.std.com )
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[ Editor's Note:
[
[ I gave some momentary thought to whether this message could
[ be propogated. The source is a lawyer, right? A brief
[ browsing of the USENET Newsgroups indicates this message has
[ been widely distributed. I've included it here becuase
[ its unlikely that any of the readers here see the other
[ newsgroups where this was posted.
[
[ Does anyone know anything about this ?
[
[ Jody |
(Message sent Wed 25 Sep 1996, 03:00:18 GMT, from time zone GMT-0700.) |
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