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February 28, 2007

MP3 Player Patent Lawsuit

Texas MP3 Technologies has filed a patent suit against Apple, Samsung, and Sandisk in Marshall, Texas; a plaintiff state.  The eastern Texas city is fast becoming one of the leading locations of patent infringement lawsuits in the U.S. thanks to speedy trials and juries that more often than not find in favor of the plaintiff," the report said.  All three companies are being sued over a patent covering an MPEG portable sound reproducing system, based on the report.

The complaint specifically cites US patent 7,065,417, which was awarded in June 2006 to multimedia chip-maker SigmaTel and sold the US rights to the patent a little over a month ago. Apple's media player products have used both SigmaTel and Samsung multimedia decoding processors.  But, it seems that Apple’s second-generation iPod shuffle is rumored to be using a Samsung decoding processor for its multimedia functions instead of the SigmaTel chip they were expect to use.


"Because these are such basic patents to digital music, we believe it will be difficult to design around these patents and have a commercially viable player," SigmaTel said in a statement when it announced the sale of the patent.

Via MacNN

Posted by eric at February 28, 2007 6:06 AM