9 ms·

Spotify Sued For Patent Infringement Just Weeks After Entering US Market

184 points by jsherry 15y ago

nextparadigms 15y 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.
rkalla 15y 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-developers-leave-the-us-app-store-over-patent-fears.html http://www.iphoneanswers.net/2499/will-international-app-dev... [2] http://mashable.com/2011/07/25/angry-birds-lawsuit/ http://mashable.com/2011/07/25/angry-birds-lawsuit/ [3] http://www.edibleapple.com/lodsys-argues-against-apples-motion-to-intervene-on-behalf-of-ios-developers/ http://www.edibleapple.com/lodsys-argues-against-apples-moti...
- jameskilton 15y 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.
  - cfgvjkljhgfb 15y ago
    Doesn't work for non-software patents that need infrastructure. Say I have an idea that will improve digital cameras. I need to sell the idea to Canon/Nikon etc, there is no chance of me building the invention myself. Patents are the only way I can discuss it with them without them just being able to copy the idea.
  - MrVitaliy 15y 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.
    - amikula 15y ago
      I completely agree that software patents should expire in 2-3 years. Even a 2 year advantage is an eternity in the software market.
    - rkalla 15y ago
      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.
ddw 15y 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 15y ago
  Judges don't grant patents. The US Patent Office does that. Patents this broad are not at all unusual.
  - ddw 15y 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?
    - mattdeboard 15y ago
      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.
siphr 15y ago
Somebody wants a piece of that pie.
monochromatic 15y 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.
- rwmj 15y 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 15y 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.
    - monochromatic 15y ago
      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.
    - lukeschlather 15y ago
      That still doesn't make something clever enough to merit a patent.
    - deleted 15y ago
      [deleted]
    - 15y ago
base 15y 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.
- thesis 15y ago
  I'm not for these patent trolls at all... but litigation costs money on both sides, not just defending.
  - base 15y 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.
    - thesis 15y ago
      Right... but the actual court case will cost money. Filing a lawsuit might be cheap but following through surely can't be.
- losvedir 15y 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 15y 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 15y 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 15y 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 15y 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 15y ago
  This Forbes article: http://blogs.forbes.com/timothylee/2011/07/28/the-supreme-court-should-invalidate-software-patents/ http://blogs.forbes.com/timothylee/2011/07/28/the-supreme-co... Makes a neat argument that software patent arguments are finally entering the mainstream.
codeodor 15y 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 15y 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?
  - codeodor 15y 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 15y 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.
dools 15y 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 15y ago
I wonder what would happen if patents had to be renewed each year, and the renewal fee doubled each year?
- losvedir 15y 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 15y ago
Maybe this is the buzz Spotify was banking on to get to 50M users.
noonespecial 15y 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 15y ago
As a result, patent lawyers, who know zilch about software or technology are making a killing.
rhplus 15y 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?
- fpgeek 15y 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 15y 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.

184 points by jsherry 15y 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.

rkalla 15y 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-developers-leave-the-us-app-store-over-patent-fears.html http://www.iphoneanswers.net/2499/will-international-app-dev... [2] http://mashable.com/2011/07/25/angry-birds-lawsuit/ http://mashable.com/2011/07/25/angry-birds-lawsuit/ [3] http://www.edibleapple.com/lodsys-argues-against-apples-motion-to-intervene-on-behalf-of-ios-developers/ http://www.edibleapple.com/lodsys-argues-against-apples-moti...

jameskilton 15y 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.
- cfgvjkljhgfb 15y ago
  Doesn't work for non-software patents that need infrastructure. Say I have an idea that will improve digital cameras. I need to sell the idea to Canon/Nikon etc, there is no chance of me building the invention myself. Patents are the only way I can discuss it with them without them just being able to copy the idea.
- MrVitaliy 15y 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.
  - amikula 15y ago
    I completely agree that software patents should expire in 2-3 years. Even a 2 year advantage is an eternity in the software market.
  - rkalla 15y ago
    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.

ddw 15y 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 15y ago
Judges don't grant patents. The US Patent Office does that. Patents this broad are not at all unusual.
- ddw 15y 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?
  - mattdeboard 15y ago
    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.

siphr 15y ago

Somebody wants a piece of that pie.

monochromatic 15y 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.

rwmj 15y 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 15y 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.
  - monochromatic 15y ago
    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.
  - lukeschlather 15y ago
    That still doesn't make something clever enough to merit a patent.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - 15y ago

base 15y 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.

thesis 15y ago
I'm not for these patent trolls at all... but litigation costs money on both sides, not just defending.
- base 15y 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.
  - thesis 15y ago
    Right... but the actual court case will cost money. Filing a lawsuit might be cheap but following through surely can't be.
losvedir 15y 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 15y 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 15y 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 15y 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 15y 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 15y ago
This Forbes article: http://blogs.forbes.com/timothylee/2011/07/28/the-supreme-court-should-invalidate-software-patents/ http://blogs.forbes.com/timothylee/2011/07/28/the-supreme-co... Makes a neat argument that software patent arguments are finally entering the mainstream.

codeodor 15y 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 15y 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?
- codeodor 15y 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 15y 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.

dools 15y 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 15y ago

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

losvedir 15y 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 15y ago

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

noonespecial 15y 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 15y ago

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

rhplus 15y 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?

fpgeek 15y 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 15y 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.