“Apple Inc. may be faced with an uphill battle in its patent litigation with Burst.com after the courts issued a Markman Claim Construction Memorandum that largely sided with its opponent,” Aidan Malley reports for AppleInsider.
Malley reports, “Also known as a Markman Hearing and based on a crucial 1996 Supreme Court decision by the same name, a Memorandum is a pre-trial ruling that follows a courthouse debate over the exact meanings found inside a given patent. Its aim is to allow the Court to focus on the core of a patent during trial rather than dwell on its language, which can often bog down disputes with technicalities.”
“In some situations, however, Markman results have virtually ended trials before they began by almost entirely destroying one side’s arguments,” Malley reports. “In the case of Burst.com versus Apple, a 48-page Markman decision issued on Tuesday could pose a similar danger to Apple’s defense against an April 2006 countersuit by validating many of Burst’s concerns over computer media transmission patents, all four of which may cover Apple’s iPod and iTunes software.”
Full article here.
“…Burst said its definition literally applied to the time needed for sending transmission bursts over a network more quickly than in real time…”
So now we get to patent definitions of words? I’ve already filed my patent application for the words “apply”, “applicable”, and “application”, which means that no one will be able to apply for a patent again without violating my patent rights.
So, in other words, our government has NO idea what its doing with respect to patents, legal matters, and other matters of governing its people? Hmmmm, sounds about normal.
en
mdn word – served, as in we are not served well by this government. 🙁
I’d buy them outright. Their share price is only $2.10 with a market cap of $84 million. Chicken feed.
Apple should of thought of that in the first place. But I guess Apple has to keep their lawyers busy.
If there’s one group of people that are completely out of touch/oblivious to technology, it’s people in government/courts.
See: intertubes
Eran, where are you? What do you have to say now? Is this another evil Microsoft conspiracy? How will you defend Apple should Apple be found guilty of malfeasance, premeditated stupidity, and inescapable arrogance? Please, your sycophants need emotional support!
Gordon Gecko,
“Apple should of thought…”
Apple should have thought… and I’m sure they did long ago.
For your future reference:
http://vtbsd.net/english/
Um, Wouldn’t it be cheaper to buy them out?
Tired of Retards,
I am so f***ing sorry for my misuse of the f***ing English language. I was distracted while f***ing your wife, you f***ing pompous jerk.
Gordon Gecko,
Not only stupid, but also apparently proud of your stupidity. Falling back on profanity to defend an indefensible position only helps to point out just how insufferably idiotic you are.
Go ahead. Make a fool of yourself some more.
Um, Gordon, that was his dog, not his wife. I’m calling PETA.
@Huh,
Huh? What are you talking about?
I just looked at the Burst.com guided tour, and I couldn’t find anything that even remotely looked like it could be patentable. Send info faster than real time? Laughable. Computer CDs have been doing that for at least a decade. Disk and RAM caching? Since the 70s, maybe earlier. Splitting data amongst servers? P2P has been doing that for who knows how long.
Huh?
This isn’t a post about Daniel Eran so don’t make it one please.
You may have missed my last post to you too:
“
@Huh?
Look, we know you seek out any new reference to Eran you can find and then try to post your sick little comments.
You are probably one of the Digg jerks who perpetually bury any reference to him too.
And I’ll lay long odds you have never posted to MDN other than for this purpose.
In effect, that makes you a stalker to my mind. ie cowardly, anonymous, jumoiung out from the shadows like a mugger. A cancer on society.
Recently I posted at RDM that I was surprised Microsoft hadn’t tried to buy Eran out yet to make his factual commentaries disappear like a bad dream. But no, MS is probably happy to continue its tried and tested methods and is too pleased that there are little shits like you to attack his good work at any opportunity they can find.
Which proves the old addage; the truth hurts.
“
@Tired of Retards
Hey, you know you are truly being the arrogant one here; just look at your own “name”. Gordon Gecko was merely trying to make a point, which actually happens to be one of the very few that are actually on topic in this thread.
So either be less arrogant when you remind us of poor grammar, or just hold your voice all together. Thanks.
On Wikipedia, there is a definition for ‘Grammar Nazi’ (it even has an official symbol, much like the WW2 Nazi symbol of a black swastika in a white circle over red background, only here it’s a capital G instead of the swastika), which refers to online discussion visitors who correct other people’s grammar or spelling mistakes. It implies that these corrections happen when the ‘Grammar Nazi’ disagrees with the substance of someone’s comment and, lacking a strong counter-argument, finds a grammatical flaw in the posting and comments on it.
While such entries can sometimes seem childish, on the actual substance I would have to agree. When you write comments in poor English, they quickly lose their strength. In our example here (Should off/ should’ve /should have), it is a rather trivial mistake, although may be indicative.
On many forums, the grammar correction postings end up igniting flaming wars. Oftentimes, the original subject (the person posting poor grammar or spelling) defends themselves by stating that online, when comments are posted quickly, following one’s train of thought, they don’t much care about proper spelling or grammar. This is a week argument. Proper writing does not require effort. If one practices consistently when one writes, it would require effort to actually write poorly.
I spoke no English until I was 15. I lived in a non-English speaking country for 30 years, before moving to U.S. Majority of participants on these forums are native English speakers. They have absolutely no excuses for writing poorer English than me.
As for the two participants duking it out above, calm down both, please. The offending sentence would have to be much more butchered than the one above to provoke the ‘retard’ comment; the re is no amount of offensive comment that would warrant the amount of profanity in the subsequent response either.
Its supposed to be “weak arguement” man
err…”argument”
@ vasic
Didn’t you mean a “weak” argument?
Jeez.
There you go, although I have an excuse – I’m not a native English speaker (as weak an excuse as it gets…). And spell check won’t help here, since both words are legitimate…
Now, does this mean that you disagreed (in principle) with the spirit of my posting? Or you agree by gently pointing out a misspelt word? (curiously, my Firefox spell check doesn’t like ‘misspelt’).
Either way, it seems that the original topic got killed off along the way…
I have now applied for a Patent on the word Patent so no one will be able to get a Patent without violating my Patent rights.
This is how utterly stupid patent lawsuits have come down too.
Where Burst said its definition literally applied to the time needed for sending transmission bursts over a network more quickly than in real time, Apple’s interpretation of the same term would only have applied burst time to a distinct compression method used to make those transmissions.
Is this actually saying that any transmission over a network that is transmitted faster than it would take to transfer the non-compressed data falls under this patent? If so, wouldn’t that cover any download optimization scheme? Or are they saying that Burst has a patent on any transmission over a network that takes a specific amount of time as defined by “burst time”?
vasic has some excellent points, and both Tired of Retards and Gordon Gecko have things to learn from the exchange.
a) while “should of” is common among the poorly educated, it is not specific to the retarded
b) “Retard” is a personal attack and ought not be permitted
c) devolving into basing cursing is a losing tactic in a discussion
d) We Need User Accounts Here!
That said, Gordon nearly made a valid point … Apple should have bought the company and saved itself the trouble. They still can, it’ll just be a bit more expensive today than it was yesterday.
DLMeyer – the Voice of G.L.Horton’s Stage Page Pod-Cast
Mw=known – as in, you both should have known better
Huh?
How will you defend Apple should Apple be found guilty of malfeasance, premeditated stupidity, and inescapable arrogance?
There is no need to defend Apple from patent trolls, dipshit. The “patents” are so broad as to be meaningless, and only the US’ broken patent system allows these kinds of lawsuits in the first place. Where is the prior art? Where is the infrastructure and software systems that Burst had in place before Apple’s iTunes store was realised?
That’s right, there isn’t any. I know you need to keep stirring the pot to generate the attention you so dearly love, but Apple didn’t steal anything from anyone. Multiple vendors hit on these solutions to online distribution, so claiming malfeasance on Apple’s part is another indicator you have no idea what you are talking about.
effwerd
If so, wouldn’t that cover any download optimization scheme?
This is how broken the US patent system really is. “Prior Art” apparently means nothing now. I can patent an idea no one has yet implemented, sit on it for decades and do nothing, wait for someone else to come up with a similar idea and sue them for actually providing a product.
The patent system is seemingly ignorant of how innovation occurs, and the patent system as it is is a drag on the development of new technologies, much like Microsoft smothered Zeus knows how many innovative technologies with it’s marketing FUD and deep pockets. Currently the patent system allows collections of lawyers to punish companies that actually drive the engine of innovation.
LOL. Did I spell that correctly?