AfterDawn: News

Apple hit with Burst countersuit

Apple Computer Inc. has been hit with a countersuit issued by Burst.com. Burst had sworn to respond to an lawsuit brought against it in January by Apple with a counterclaim for patent infringement. Burst approached Apple in 2004 in an attempt to agree licenses for the use of its technology. The company's legal team informed Apple that it is infringing its patents, and that it would launch action. Of course, Apple denied that it is infringing the patents.

The company sued Burst in the US District Court in San Francisco requesting declaratory relief to determine the patents invalid. Now Burst claims that Apple's iTunes store, iPod line-up and software titles infringe at least four of the company's patents. The patents in question are US Patents 4,963,995; 5,995,705; 5,057,932 and 5,164,839.



Burst settled its patent and antitrust suit against Microsoft last year, which saw Microsoft taking a licence to Burst's patents and paying $60 million. The company now claims that its technol0ogy is the reason behind Apple's growing success in the past few years, and now it wants a cut.

Source:
The Inquirer

Written by: James Delahunty @ 19 Apr 2006 19:52

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• 7 comments

• Andycogen

  Word?

  20.4.2006 04:46 #1

• hot_ice

  The Inquirer...not much of a source if you ask me.

  20.4.2006 06:11 #2

• mystic

  yeah yeah now that they are makeing money they want a cut... man who ever thought that they could have known about the infringment and that they can wait to see if you can make a go of it then sue because you want some payback... thats just cold.... how about since you didnt sue till now they make apple pay from now on instead of back pay... I know it takes time to go to court but if it wasnt filled till now then they shouldnt have to pay back profit from making it work... see if it was a lossing deal then they wouldnt want to be tide to it... and where was the RIAA during this time I mean we are talking about pireted material and why dont they go after Sony?

  20.4.2006 07:05 #3

• ZippyDSM

  Becuse the "M'A'F'I'A" dosent go after tis woen its lets them duke it out in court it just goes after 13yr'd that downlaod and share music...

  21.4.2006 16:18 #4

• Chris1000

  I think that mystic is right. Most of these companies are waiting until a company releases a product and it gets popular, when they knew BEFORE it gets popular that it is infringing on their copyright.
  They are DELIBERATELY waiting until a service gets as popular as iTunes has, then they launch these surreptious lawsuits that should really be thrown out, because they were not filed "WHEN THE COMPANY FIRST FOUND OUT ABOUT THE INFRINGEMENT!"
  
  That is a quote straight from copyright law, when you find that someone is infringing your copyright, you have to file a lawsuit within 30 days of that finding, or you lose the right to file a lawsuit!
  
  The judges should begin holding them to that standard of law!

  24.4.2006 17:50 #5

• hot_ice

  Chris1000
  
  Corporations are in business for the money, they are presumably greedy because they always seek higher margins of profit.

  25.4.2006 07:10 #6

• handsom

  While I do agree there; I think that a new statute of limitations should be put in, because this is only serving to hurt big companies. While I hate to defend companies like apple or M$, it comes down to one problem. If Joe Schmoe sues apple for $60million, where will apple draw that money from? Higher prices, because they have a large market completely dominated, they'd probably do some very slight upgrade and make the price skyrocket.
  
  I think that it would be prudent for legislation to consider a statute of time on patent/copyright infringement. So that if M$ or Sony 'infringe on your vibrating controller patent' you can either come right out with it, and sue them immediately to genuinely protect your interests, or you can ignore it while they creat a better product than you. I think a statute of two years would be more than fair. That way; if someone wanted to sue, to genuinely protect their patented device, they would do so immediately, rather than incurring a huge fee on a much bigger product that will mean a huge price increase to the consumer. Then the companies would have an opportunity to make necessary changes before to much damage had been done, without shoving the suit costs on to us, the consumer.
  
  Remember; when you sue M$, Sony, Apple, whoever; the cost goes to the consumer on the next round of products. These companies aren't going under any time soon; they only recoop costs out of our wallets.
  
  As funny as these suits are, they make us suffer.

  25.4.2006 11:25 #7