Netizens who thrive on listening to their music and other streaming media in their own chosen sequence and playlists could see some drastic changes in that pleasure, if a San Francisco-based company wins patent infringement suits over that option against two of the Internet's biggest streaming media providers.
Friskit sued RealNetworks and Listen.com June 27 in federal court, charging RealOne Player Plus and Rhapsody both infringe on Friskit's sequencing and playlisting technology. This came two months after Real announced it acquired Listen.com for about $36 million, according to a published report.
"We've spent years and millions of dollars developing and patenting the most convenient ways for consumers to find, personalize, and play streaming media over networks," Friskit chairman and chief executive officer George Aposporos said announcing the legal action. "Most other patents cover pieces of solutions – not what's fundamental to the beginning of a new industry."
If Friskit wins its case, it would mean RealOne and Rhapsody could no longer let their users incorporate streaming media in personalized playlists in media players or to listen to sets of songs continually and sequentially, not without paying damages and possible future fees, Friskit said.
The lawsuit was filed days before Listen.com announced its subscribers had streamed over 11 million on-demand song files. In May, Listen announced a $.79 a download program for music subscribers, most likely aiming at Apple's iTunes Music Store's $.99 a download song file program that proved such a hit right out of the box a month earlier.
Neither Listen.com nor Real had commented officially on the Friskit action as of July 1, though Real spokeswoman Lisa Amore told reporters the company hadn't yet been served officially with papers from the lawsuit and Listen said they'd been served June 30.
Friskit says its streaming media engine that includes sequential and continuous playback was released in 2000, but changed its model from consumer service to licensing when it saw the music industry backlash coming against the peer-to-peer swap services like Napster, Kazaa, and Gnutella, even though, Friskit claims, over 100,000 people "quickly became beta users of (our) first product."
"We’ve got patents that provide the critical convenience features that consumers will pay for," Aposporos said to reporters. "Absent our patent enforcement, people are just going to go ahead and use these ideas anyway." He added that Friskit had hoped Real might license first, but "sometimes you have to show people you're serious before they realize the value of your patents."
