Andre Yoskowitz
24 May 2010 23:04
Apple has been sued this week over patents relating to its popular iTunes store, in a case that could take down the world's most popular online music store.
The suing company, Sharing Sound, is accusing Apple of infringing patents relating to "djustable length displays of textual and other data," as well as patents related to online music stores.
Sharing Sound says they hold the patent for "distribution of musical products by a web site vendor over the Internet," which seems incredibly broad, and practically describes any music downloading site that has song previews, a shopping cart, and a legal music player.
The exact patent targeting Apple "has a provision that downloaded songs have a unique identifier included in the file to link the files to a particular purchaser," says ArsTechnica.
iTunes infringes on this patent, says the suit, as all songs downloaded through the service have Apple ID, used to identify the original purchaser.
Because of the broad nature of the patent, Apple is not the only defendant, and Rhapsody, Napster, Brilliant Digital Entertainment, Microsoft, Netflix, Wal-Mart, Barnes & Noble, Amazon and GameStop are also named.