EMI, the third largest record company with acts such as the Beastie Boys and the Beatles, has been considering scrapping its use of DRM on downloaded music tracks. EMI has been in talks with more than one online music store. Despite Steve Jobs recent plea to anyone that would listen to end DRM, EMIA and Apple have not spoken yet, but that could change as a result of their now publicly mutual interest in moving away from DRM.

It would appear according to a Wall Street Journal article today that Steve Jobs was not aware that EMI was shopping around. The article goes on to elaborate that Jobs started his letter as a result of European Union pressure for Apple to make its products work on other devices.

CD sales fell this year by 20%. They account for 85% of US sales of music and such a big drop in sales has music companies working hard to catch up and get their cash flows back on track. The new question for the music companies will be, “Is it too little too late?’

Technorati tags: EMI, Apple, DRM

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This week Steve Jobs came out with a letter to the world expressing the concept that he thinks that Digital Rights Management DRM is essentially a waste of time inspired by a reactionary Music Industry. He published his letter on his website and laid out the case against DRM and as a side point against the record industry that requires DRM.

Just a couple months ago Bill Gates invited a number of bloggers for a one on one personal dialogue. He intimated his distaste for DRM then as well. Recommending that music shoppers should burn music from CD’s as opposed to buying music with DRM, like the music offered at his Zune online music store. He essentially said the same thing that Steve Jobs is saying now, but a little eloquently.

With all this talk from the head of two of the companies that are so much at the heart of DRM through their media player software and now also through their physical media players, it seems as if they are starting to publicly state their opinion and acknowledge their agreement.

In private if they were to sit down and choose a course to act together or against individually the music industry, even when consumers benefit this would be considered collusion. However, free speech is still allowed in many forms throughout the US, and so both leaders are allowed to express their opinion publicly, even though it allows them to confirm with each other that they are publicly on the same sheet of music. The end result is the same as they can choose their direction knowing the move of the other, but the record industry also benefits from seeing the telegraphed signal as well.

This might be the beginning of the end of DRM as we know it and that can definitely be a good thing for consumers wallets, what it will do to and for the record industry and the TV and movie industry remains to be seen.

Technorati tags: apple, steve jobs, bill gates, DRM, digital rights management, collusion

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Motorola may have had some bad news today, but they were noticeably absent from a line up of consumer electronics manufactures that are being sued by the Washington Research Foundation (WRF) for using Bluetooth technology, which WRF claims is an infringement on their patents.

The suit alleges that the companies Nokia, Samsung and Panasonic (part of Matsushita) used technology from CSR Plc out of the United Kingdom that infringed on the 3 of 4 patents that WRF holds on the technology.

Shares of CSR fell after the announcement of the lawsuit.  It would appear that the larger conglomerates might be at least the victim of not performing enough due diligence into the IP rights of one of their outsourced vendor partners.

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We often cover some of the fights on patents within Maven Mapper’s Information as it is often very important to understand who if anyone owns information.

It has just recently become public that Microsoft filed for a patent back in June of 2005 for technology possibly covering and relating to RSS or really simple syndication.

This has made inventors of the technology, non Microsoft employees and many open source contributors, livid over Microsoft’s claim over the technology rights.

RSS is a technology that enables website owners to rapidly and easily syndicate their content to other sites. Think of it like Jerry Seinfeld spending five minutes to setup a free account on the internet and Walla, the TV show Seinfeld is syndicated around the world instantly through many to millions of sights that Jerry might choose.

Microsoft has apparently along with other large companies including Apple, who has not been attacked in the Blogosphere, attempted to put a patent on this process and technology along with additional improvements that they claim to have designed but again may have been invented in the open source community first. It highlights the extremely complex collision of patent law, intellectual property and the rapid design and improvement of online software code through open source communities.

Many companies attempt to patent open source code so that they can use it in their own technology without receiving lawsuits from multiple designers in the open source community or having to share their own design developments and innovations back to the community as is often required by shareware licensing. This fight could prove to be very ugly as RSS is rapidly becoming a key component driving the internet and the sharing of information around the world, you can find it in use in many major news sites and especially on aggregation sites like a users my.yahoo page.

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What happens when super mega corporations and the interests groups that go with them collide?

Ebay is fighting off a landmark patent case tomorrow (Wednesday Mar 29, 2006) against a company named MercExchange.

Ebay’s “Buy it Now” feature is contended to infringe on 2 patents, which Ebay does not own.

The situation demarks the two sides to the argument:

1. Technology companies looking to protect themselves from intellectual property holders
RIM and Ebay in recent cases have fallen in to this camp.

2. Technology companies looking to protect their intellectual property
Microsoft, RIAA, Pharmaceutical companies fall into this camp

The battle ground happens to be the process or legal mechanism that allows this protecting to occur. It’s the Injunction.

All the talk and paperwork, and patents and copyright symbols in the world aren’t worth a hill of beans unless there are three things in place: 1. A law to define the system, 2. A judiciary to decide upon questions in the law, 3. A mechanism to enforce the law - Injunction

Lots of focus is routinely placed on the laws themselves and even in the way a judge acts in creating or not creating new case law.

However, the injunction and how its enforced is now at stake.

If the injunction process is weakened, Pharmaceutical patent holders even copyright holders like Microsoft could be protected less harming their business.

If its maintained, companies argue that they can be harmed by frivolous or unmerited patent claims (reminiscent of the lawyer that created a patent for Phone menu’s and later sued for lost profits 10 years after they had been in use.)

The old saying goes, don’t pick a fight you can’t win. In this case, Ebay a technology company with patents and copyrights of its own, might be better served settling and not disrupting the status quo from a strictly financial perspective. However, if they have to chase an ideology, we’ll sit back and watch the collision.

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