14 DAY TRIAL // Amazon probably knew to expect patent lawsuits when it made the Kindle Fire tablet, but it is unclear if even it expected the device to start being called a music player.
Much to the chagrin of all those who dislike patent trolling, and trolling in general, Personal Audio LLC just filed a suit against Amazon.
This is the same company who sued and somehow got a settlement from Apple for its iPods' use of the technology.
The company is trying the same with the Fire, whom it describes as “an audio program player capable of playing a group of audio files, such as songs, selected by the listener. A selected group of audio files arranged in a sequence is commonly known as a playlist.”
Yes, apparently, the Kindle Fire is an audio player instead of a media tablet.
Granted, the product does feature all the capabilities of a music player, but that doesn't exactly take away from the trollish nature of the judicial move.
For those who don't know, patent trolling is a term used to describe a situation in which a company that doesn't actually make any products, but owns the rights to a certain technology (a patent), sues another over a product's alleged use of said technology without permission.
This isn't even the first time this happened to the kindle Fire actually.
Back in October, even before the item was actually released, Smartphone Technologies LLC filed a lawsuit of its own, over a patent that describes operating a touchscreen device by tapping on icons.
At least Personal Audio actually does have a powerful patent, on musical playlists, or “an audio program and message distribution system in which a host system organizes and transmits program segments to client subscriber locations.”
As absurd as it sounds to have exclusive rights to something like that, such is the patent law. The serious part is that similar suits can be filed against a whole lot of other devices as well.