AfterDawn: Tech news

CDNow settles download patent dispute

Written by Jari Ketola @ 25 Feb 2004 1:23 User comments (1)

CDNow, a division of the record label Bertelsmann, and Net company SightSound Technologies have settled their patent dispute out of court. CDNow agreed to pay $3.3 million to SightSound for dropping the lawsuit.
SightSound, who claims to own patents to the process of selling digital downloadable music over the Internet, sees the agreement as a victory. The company is likely to approach other companies with similar demands asking them to license SightSound's technology in order to avoid a lawsuit.

CDNow has been powered by Amazon.com since December 2002. Amazon takes care of order fulfillment, inventory, content and customer service for CDNow's site.

Source: News.com

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1 user comment

127.2.2004 12:45

How and why do these idiotic patents get granted? Admittedly these guys had a good forward thinking idea and proposed ONE method for transferring/selling digital media files. How does that translate to the basic concept of selling media on-line being patentable? Unbelievable. It would be like granting a patent for the bucket. Great idea, but patentable? Companies like these combined with retarded patent laws are nothing but a burden on society.

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