Correction 5/18: Gracenote was incorrectly listed as a partner of Shazam.
Earlier this week, a company called Tune Hunter accused music-finding service Shazam as well as a host of consumer electronics makers, wireless service operators, and digital music retailers of infringing on its patent on a music identification system.
Shazam is named along with Samsung, Apple, Amazon.com, Napster, Motorola, Gracenote, Verizon Wireless, LG Electronics, AT&T Mobility, and Pantech Wireless in a suit filed Tuesday over U.S. Patent No. 6,941,275, which was issued to Remi Swierczek/Tune Hunter in September 2005. The suit accuses Shazam's music discovery and identification service of violating the patent and the other companies of benefiting directly from Shazam's alleged infringement. Tune Hunter is asking for unspecified damages and an injunction from the U.S. District Court for the Eastern Division of Texas that would prevent "further infringement" on Tune Hunter's patent.
Tune Hunter's patent covers "a music identification/purchasing system, specifically to a method for marking the time and the name of the radio station in portable device such as a key holder, watch, cellular phone, beeper or the like which will allow the user to learn via internet or regular telephone the name of the song, artist and/or music company by matching the stored data with broadcast archive."
Shazam is available on several different mobile devices. It is a popular iPhone application sold through Apple's App Store, which "listens" to songs and identifies them. Samsung is a partner with London-based Shazam on a mobile music store. Amazon.com is a retail partner of Shazam. Gracenote is a competitor.
Shazam was founded in 2002 in London and says by the end of the year its service will be available on 250 million devices.
Shazam, AT&T, Apple, and Gracenote each said they had no comment on the suit, and Samsung and Verizon had not yet heard about it.
Shazam is also available on many platforms not named in the lawsuit, including Research In Motion's BlackBerry, Facebook, and Android-based phones like T-Mobile's G1.
CNET News reporters Maggie Reardon and Greg Sandoval contributed to this story.
A few tech blogs on Monday morning are highlighting some choice quotes from a Melinda Gates interview that appears in the most recent issue of Vogue.
According to the Vogue piece, Bill and Melinda Gates, in addition to making their home a no-iPhone/iPod zone, have forbidden their three children from using the devices (no word on rules for other Apple products).
The article's mainly about the Gates Foundation and how it's trying to solve "hunger in the world." We certainly appreciate that, but we'll stick with the inane superficial stuff here, thank you very much.
LG's LG-GM730 may be Melinda Gates' best option as an iPhone substitute.
(Credit: LG)"There are very few things that are on the banned list in our household," Gates tells Vogue. "But iPods and iPhones are two things we don't get for our kids." The article goes on to add that "Gates acknowledges the inevitable lure of forbidden fruit." The Microsoft founder's wife also is quoted as saying, "Every now and then, I look at my friends and say, 'Ooh, I wouldn't mind having that iPhone.'"
Of course, if we were doing the interview, the obvious next question would be, "Just what cell phones do you and Bill use?"
With a big alliance in place with LG for Windows Mobile phones, I'm betting that they go with something like LG's upcoming LG-GM730. It certainly looks like an iPhone. On the outside, anyway.
Anybody else want to guess?
LG has cut a deal with Apple to supply displays for products like the MacBook Air.
(Credit: Apple)Apple has signed a five-year deal with LG Electronics to secure a supply of LCD displays.
Reuters reports that LG has received $500 million as a down payment on the deal, which LG disclosed in a filing to the Korea Exchange. The two companies are not exactly strangers; one analyst in South Korea estimated that LG already provides around 70 percent of Apple's flat-panel displays.
The deal appears to be somewhat similar to long-term supply deals that Apple has cut with flash-memory companies like Samsung, Micron, and Toshiba. Apple agreed to pay $1.25 billion in 2005 to five flash-memory companies in order to make sure it had enough chips at the right prices as its iPod division grew.
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