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walkitouthttp://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2009/03/amazons-kindle-targeted-by-patent-infringement-suit.ars
The analysis in the last paragraph is appalling, in that it assumes the trigger was v 2.0. In fact, the trigger was almost certainly that bright young thing who noticed in Sprint's filing the 500K new users signed up with some unspecified device that was surely the kindle and concluded how many kindles must have sold. Which of course triggered a bunch of re-analysis of how much money AMZN must be making.
It only makes sense that a patent holder would sniff money and come over to chow down.
There's an embedded link to the patent via Google Patent Search:
ETA: much better link:
http://www.google.com/patents?id=AIOXAAAAEBAJ
Having looked it over fairly carefully, especially the flow-charts for how it would work, I cannot imagine this sucker being settled in Discovery Communications favor any time soon. If ever. If it _does_ get settled in Discovery Communications favor, this should also suck in Sony Reader, the iPhone in conjunction with Google Books (just cause you do it for free doesn't mean you don't have to pay a royalty!), any netbook in conjunction with any eBook, etc. ad infinitum.
A particularly creative person might be able to make it so the entire web is covered by this patent.
The analysis in the last paragraph is appalling, in that it assumes the trigger was v 2.0. In fact, the trigger was almost certainly that bright young thing who noticed in Sprint's filing the 500K new users signed up with some unspecified device that was surely the kindle and concluded how many kindles must have sold. Which of course triggered a bunch of re-analysis of how much money AMZN must be making.
It only makes sense that a patent holder would sniff money and come over to chow down.
There's an embedded link to the patent via Google Patent Search:
ETA: much better link:
http://www.google.com/patents?id=AIOXAAAAEBAJ
Having looked it over fairly carefully, especially the flow-charts for how it would work, I cannot imagine this sucker being settled in Discovery Communications favor any time soon. If ever. If it _does_ get settled in Discovery Communications favor, this should also suck in Sony Reader, the iPhone in conjunction with Google Books (just cause you do it for free doesn't mean you don't have to pay a royalty!), any netbook in conjunction with any eBook, etc. ad infinitum.
A particularly creative person might be able to make it so the entire web is covered by this patent.