“With just two employees, Burst holds 10 U.S. patents, and its focus is on asking big companies to license its technology — and suing them if they don’t,” Peter Burrows reports for BusinessWeek. “In March, 2005, Burst won a $60 million settlement from Microsoft Corp. The next target, [Burst co-founder Richard Lang] says, is Apple Computer Inc., which he says infringes on Burst’s patents covering superfast transmission of content, such as songs and video, over networks. He’s seeking a chunk of the tech giant’s burgeoning music revenues, and says he plans to sue in mid-April if no settlement is reached. That makes Burst, in many people’s eyes, a ‘patent troll.'”
“But it was never Lang’s plan to be in the litigation business. A legitimate visionary, he patented a method for transmitting data over digital networks that turned out to be years ahead of its time. His company once seemed poised to become a major tech player in its own right. But the hardball tactics of Microsoft blew apart Burst’s original business model, Lang claims, and gave him no choice but to turn to the courts,” Burrows reports. “The validity of Lang’s tale of woe will ultimately have to be determined by the courts, but right now he is not winning many friends in Silicon Valley. Burst is asserting very broad patents, and Lang has been making the rounds with veiled threats of infringement actions. He’s aiming for big payments. While Lang won’t discuss his hopes for the Apple claim, his lawyer cites as a point of reference other cases in which plaintiffs were rewarded more than 2% of infringing revenues. That would be about $200 million so far for Apple. ‘Burst.com approached Apple claiming that some of our products violate their patents, but we don’t agree,’ says an Apple spokesperson. On Jan. 4, Apple filed a suit seeking to invalidate Burst’s patents.”
“Lang recognized that shows could be sent faster than they could be viewed — in ‘bursts’ that took full advantage of momentary increases in network capacity, rather than in constant ‘streams.’ Indeed, at the 1991 Consumer Electronics Show, Lang drew a crowd with a demo in which 15-minute segments of a PBS documentary were zipped to a TV across the booth in seconds. ‘They were demonstrating things that other people couldn’t do,’ says tech pundit Robert X. Cringeley,” Burrows reports. “Apple reps had approached him at a trade show back in 1991, and Burst met with Apple in 1999, 2000, and 2002. ‘The attitude is exactly like it is at Microsoft and everywhere else. If you won’t take next to nothing [for Burst’s technology], we’ll fight you for the next 10 years,’ he says. That may well be what happens. Lang’s patents have never been upheld in court, and Apple will be a formidable foe. But he insists his easygoing style doesn’t tell the whole story: ‘I’m a bit of a terrier.'”
Full article with more here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “SkoobiDrew” for the heads up.]
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Related articles:
Burst.com sues Apple for iTunes, iPod, QuickTime patent infringement – April 17, 2006
Burst.com plans countersuit against Apple alleging iPod, iTunes patent infringement – January 06, 2006
Apple Computer sues Burst after negotiations over iTunes, iPod patent licenses breakdown – January 06, 2006
Good one!
I don’t know who is right on this one, but if you read the full article, it’s kind of hard to weigh in on behalf of MSFT and AAPL.
Maybe (for a change) Lang can make Jobs cry – I would really appreciate that!
I haven’t been to happy about Apple lately, and this just kind of confirms my fears that AAPL is just another clone….
So this guy invented a buffer? WTF?
Sounds like another Rambus all over again.
Software patents should NOT exist. Period. I don’t care who has them, be it Apple, IBM, Microsoft, or Burst. Software patents WILL destroy the software industry in the United States.
Apple is a homo.
Patents should be like realestate and domain names: If you get it you’ve got a limited amount of time to do something with it, and if you don’t develop it any further than the idea stage, (after a period of time), its open season on your idea.
I hate to you-know-what their bubble.
“I’m a bit of a terrier.”
He licks his butt, sniffs others, and barks with a yip-yip-yip noise? Wouldn’t that make him an S.O.B.?
Being a “terrier” may lead Lang to dig himself a financial grave if his case is deemed frivolous.
lemon ; so what ? I am too…
(feel free to com out the closet, lemon)
Software Patents are a plague on innovation. Everybody’s Software Patents.
Patents are only as good as the enforcement behind them.
Much like the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, the British dumped the conflict onto the UN which has no enforcement ability and so the West and Arab world are stuck in this tit for tat conflict for the last 50 years.
http://www.israelipalestinianprocon.org/
Burst is a patent troll…2 employees?? Come on. Do something with “your” technology rather than just hamper others from doing stuff.
http://musobs.blogspot.com/
Lemon,
Apple is not a person – it is a company. How can a company be homosexual?
“Burst an underdog”
By putting a running garden hose in his mouth?
Careful. There will be splatter.
HEY lemon. Squeese it till the juice runs down your leg.
Oh, I get it. You meant it as an acronym.
Heuristic Operations for Multitasking Occupations
Very clever.
andrew,
The palestinian/israeli conflict has been going on for millenia. Patents have nothing whatsoever to this conflict. Neither does lack of enforcement ability. The conflict is a result of both groups thinking they have been given the same land by God. This history has been going on for a loooong time.
Andrew,
You need some historical perspective, and without a real narrative, the link you present is useless.
Read this:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/Commentary/com-12_24_05_KW.html
And then think twice about what you proffer in this forum (or any forum) as analogous points of conversation.
-Alan Shore
I believe Burst is suffering from Mad Cow. I have mad cow. And didn’t Real Networks invent the Buffering…….buffering………
Burst’s patents cannot work without stomping all over both Microsoft’s and Apple’s patents,
just to mention two other patent holders in this area.
The guy is scared shitless that his patents will be declared invalid.
Look what happened to RIM’s Blackberry. The patents were invalid but RIM had to pay anyway because they lost in a jury trial and a jury is never wrong.
Apple is doing the whole industry a favour by invalidating Burst’s bullshit patents before losing a lawsuit because a jury is sympathetic to the underdog in the case.
With a few more BS patents invalidated maybe some politico on the rise will make the fixing of the US Patent Office a big priority.
One can only hope.
I think we’re seeing a new kind of troll here, the “political troll”. “Andrew”‘s Middle East thing has nothing to do with the topic at hand and seems designed to touch off yet another right/left flamewar.
Great way to bring down a forum. Just drop a “political bomb”, sit back, and watch the flames fly.
I would suggest that everyone ignore the troll, but that never seems to do any good.
Time to cut the cake?
I’m all in with the concept of software patents being an unintended and damaging extension of the original idea of the patent process.
If you have a software idea, write a program, copyright it, and sell it. Make money. If someone steals your code, or portions of it, sue them for that.
The very idea of a patent troll is sickening, anti-productive, and would have made the originators of the patent system puke and scrap the whole idea if they had known.
By the way, I’m with LordRobin on the political trolling, which seems to have picked up here lately. It really is completely unrelated to the topics at hand, and it does bring the place down..
Then again, MDN discussions are usually 70% trollbait and flames anyway. Asking trollbait-takers not to respond to trolls is pretty unrealistic.
Oh, well.
Guys,
Interesting article about NTP/RIM Blackberry patent dispute:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/16/technology/16wireless.html
MDN “Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “SkoobiDrew” for the heads up.”
Hey, MDN, you don´t read your own stories – this was first reported here yesterday at this MDN story by Get Dafacts:
Burst.com sues Apple for iTunes, iPod, QuickTime patent infringement
http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/9271/
From: Get Dafacts
Apr 18, 06 – 11:28 am
Business Week
Underdog Or Patent Troll?
How Burst.com went from making software to suing tech giants
http://tinyurl.com/quzbd