Patent lawsuit of the week: BetaNet goes after Apple and more

Word from Jim Dalrymple at The Loop tonight that weekday brought a newborn papers causa against Apple... and 17 added tech companies, including Microsoft, Adobe, Autodesk, Sony, Kodak (!) and more. This time, the complaining company, BetaNet, has a 1993 papers that it says covers a "Secure System for Activating Personal Computer Software at Remote Locations."

While the papers holders understandably see they have a pretty panoptic face to move on, datum the upset over at Justia makes it seem a little... well, I'm not a attorney or a papers expert, but there's whatever fault here. Have a look at the country of the upset handling with Apple:

Upon aggregation and belief, Defendant Apple has been and today is direct infringing, and indirectly infringing by artefact of causation misconduct and/or contributing to the misconduct of the '476 Patent in the State of Texas, in this judicial district, and elsewhere in the United States, by, among added things, using, commerce and substance to delude machine software via a process that provides a information enter – having a loader segment and a entrance bomb assets – to a far machine having a display. The information enter lacks a grave assets that prevents the information enter from operating properly. User identification aggregation is entered in the entrance bomb portion, and transmitted from the entrance bomb to a removed entrance information provided in a entrance computer. The entrance information merges individual identification data with the grave assets to create a unequalled protection enter that is transmitted from the entrance information to the entrance shell. The protection enter contains the grave assets originally absent from the information file, and it is installed in the information file, thereby allowing activeness of the information file. For example, without limitation, Defendant Apple is marketing, distributing, using, selling, and substance to delude its iTunes, Aperture, QuickTime, and MobileMe programs. Defendant Apple is thusly susceptible for misconduct of the '476 Patent pursuant to 35 U.S.C. § 271(a), (b) & (c).

OK, sure, that's digit artefact you could appendage far registrations and software serialization, but how do we undergo that's the artefact Apple does it exactly? It actually sounds more like Sassafras's K2 to me. What 'critical portions' of these apps are questionable to be absent from the downloaded artefact content?

Also, I strength entertainer your tending to the examples of allegedly infringing software at the bottom of the paragraph... the " iTunes, Aperture, QuickTime, and MobileMe programs" that are of much concern? Well, as we every know, two of them are free, which effectuation they aren't sold or serialized at every (if they meant QuickTime Pro, they should have said QuickTime Pro), and digit of them isn't a 'program' but kinda an online service. Nice investigate work, lawyers of BetaNet; you should see proud.

We'll separate this digit by our resident jural eagles and intend their take. Another week, added papers case!