Apple Faces Patent Suit Over iTunes Store

Apple is known in the tech industry for being a bit of a patent bully, but it turns out what goes around really does come around. This week a number of infringement cases were filed in a Texas federal court which allege that iTunes, Safari, and even OSX infringe on a number of patents held by a company named Sharing Sound. The most interesting of the suits filed was against the iTunes store, which as far as we can tell, insinuates that Apple should not be allowed to sell music through the iTunes interface. The patent being contested would prevent Apple from using any type of online store environment which allows them to provide song previews, a shopping cart, or even an application to play any purchased content. The absence of these features would make iTunes decidedly less useful than it already is, so I imagine Apple is taking this one rather seriously.

Most people wouldn't recognize Sharing Sound on its own, but codefendants include Rhapsody, Napster, Brilliant Digital Entertainment, and Microsoft. Apple is the big player named in the suit, but similar actions were filed against Amazon, Netflix, Wal-Mart, Barnes & Noble, and even GameStop. It is somewhat unclear why Sharing Sound would wait so long to test out the validity of its patent holding, but were pretty sure a lawyer was carefully consulted at each step. A verdict in their favor could radically alter the online music distribution landscape, but is also the key reason why it is likely to die off. The better question here is not if Sharing Sound will be able to lock out the big players in the online music industry, but rather why the patent office would grant such a broad and ridiculous patent at all.

Google is in the Anti-Trust Spotlight

Google's primary creed of "Do No Evil" may give comfort to some, but according the New York Times the US Federal Government may need a bit more convincing. "They are not just on the radar screen. They are at the center of it," said Tim Wu, a professor at Columbia University and the author of a forthcoming book on technology monopolies, "The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires." "If you are in the federal government and are interested in antitrust, you are looking at Google."

Scrutiny of the California based search giant was bound to continue mounting as a result of its success, however recent privacy snafus, including the Wi-Fi sniffing issue have only served to further fuel the flames of mistrust between Google and federal regulators. Google executives acknowledge that being under the spotlight is expected given their rapid growth, but maintain that competition on the Internet is still strong and is a mere click away. This argument has kept regulators at bay until now, but it remains to be seen what action, if any the government is considering.

It may be a long forgotten issue for most, but Federal Judge Denny Chin is expected to rule very soon on the amended book publishing settlement inked with authors which could very well set the tone for any further interventions. Google has a tradition of breaking business models in just about every industry it enters, so it will be interesting to see how long this goes unchallenged.

Do you buy the "competition is one click away" argument, or is Google just becoming too powerful to responsibly organize the worlds data?

RapidShare Cleared of Wrongdoing in Copyright Case

Uber popular file-hosting service RapidShare has won a court victory against Perfect 10, a California-based adult media company specializing in, um, NSFW content. In the lawsuit, Perfect 10 accused RapidShare of infringing the copyrights of a bunch of its images and requested an injunction, but the request was rejected by the U.S. District Court of California, which ruled that RapidShare can't be accused of copyright infringements.

"The view that RapidShare does not promote any infringements of copyright, unlike other file-hosts, appears to be gradually catching on," Christian Schmid, founder of RapidShare said. "It is a milestone for us that this is also happening in the US. We are happy that the court in California has not bought into the odd line of argument put forward by Perfect 10 and we look forward to increasingly emphasize the major difference between RapidShare and illegal share-hosts."

RapidShare has been on a legal roll as of late. Earlier this month, a German Court of Appeal overturned a verdict in a case against movie rental company Capelight Pictures, with the verdict stating that RapidShare isn't liable for copyright infringement acts committed by its users, TorrentFreak reports.