Apple Inc. was sued Wednesday over allegations its iTunes online music store and iPod music players are illegally using a patented method for distributing digital media over the Internet.

Atlanta-based ZapMedia Services Inc. sued Apple in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, accusing the Cupertino-based company of violating two ZapMedia patents.

ZapMedia wants royalties on Apple’s sales of iPods and iTunes music, which reached nearly $11 billion last year. The success of iTunes has helped make Apple the No. 2 music retailer in the U.S. behind Wal-Mart Stores Inc., according to market researcher NPD Group.

The patents in question cover a way of sending music and other digital content from servers to multiple media players, a broad description that could also apply to a wide swath of other companies selling digital media and the devices to play it.

ZapMedia applied for the patents in 1999. One was granted in March 2006, the other on Tuesday.

ZapMedia said it met with Apple to discuss licensing, but Apple rebuffed the offer.

“When someone takes our vision and our intellectual property without a license after several attempts, we have no option but to protect it through every means available to us,” Robert Frohwein, ZapMedia’s general counsel, said in a statement.

An Apple spokeswoman said the company doesn’t comment on pending lawsuits.

(2 votes, average: 4.5 out of 5)

 Loading ...

Video game publisher Activision Inc. has asked a federal court to declare that its popular “Guitar Hero” game does not violate a patent held by real-guitar maker Gibson Guitar Corp.

Gibson’s 1999 patent covers a virtual-reality device that included a headset with speakers and that simulated participating in a concert, according to a complaint filed on Tuesday by Santa Monica, Calif.-based Activision in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles.

Gibson is trying to get Activision to stop selling “Guitar Hero” until it gets a license under the patent, according to the complaint. But Activision says it doesn’t want or need a license under the patent.

“We disagree with the applicability of their patent and would like a legal determination on this,” George Rose, Activision’s general counsel, said in a statement Wednesday.

No one answered an after-hours call to Nashville, Tenn.-based Gibson.

The dispute arose in January, when Gibson attorneys sent Activision a letter accusing it of violating a patent titled “System and Method for Generating and Controlling a Simulated Musical Concert Experience,” according to the complaint.

A copy of the patent included in the lawsuit and dated Nov. 23, 1999, describes a device that lets a user “simulate participation in a concert by playing musical instrument and wearing a head-mounted 3-D display that includes stereo speakers.”

The device described in the patent also includes playback of audio and video of a prerecorded concert and a separate track of audio from the user’s instrument, according to the patent form.

“Guitar Hero” users play songs using a stringless, plastic guitar by following graphics displayed on a TV connected to a game console. The TV also displays animated musicians playing along.

All the versions of “Guitar Hero” have been a boon to Activision. The company reported last month a 90 percent increase in profit for the third quarter ended Dec. 31, in part due to strong sales of “Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock.”

Shares of Activision fell 31 cents, or about 1 percent, to $26.82.

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...

Microsoft on Tuesday announced the release of Office 2008 for Mac 12.0.1, an update to its office software suite for Mac OS X. The update is available for download from Microsoft’s Web site or using the Microsoft AutoUpdate application.

Overall, Microsoft documents improved security in this release that fixes vulnerabilities that an attacker can use to over the contents of your computer’s memory with malicious code. Microsoft also noted that the Office Installer no longer grants restricted users unauthorized access to Office 2008 for Mac program files.

Microsoft has documented a significant number of fixes in the specific applications included with Microsoft Office 2008, as well. Stability has been improved in Word and Excel, fixing issues that could cause either application to quit unexpectedly. Performance has been improved when opening PowerPoint, and has addressed problems with Entourage data synchronization.

Entourage reliability has also been improved when connection to IBM Lotus Domino and Microsoft Exchange servers, and Entourage’s stability has been improved when you use the Database Utility to rebuild a large identity database.

Other improvements to Powerpoint include saving to an SMB volume and character spacing and layout. Excel gains improved support for secondary displays, better reliability for ledger shields, improved reliability for copying and pasting linked data and charts and more. And Word improves citation deletion and font substitution, no longer prints blank packages when printing to a high resolution printer, and a bug fix for opening documents that contain Word 2007 for Windows equations.

A complete list of changes is available from Microsoft’s Web site.

(1 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

 Loading ...

Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) cut the prices of its Xbox 360 video game console in Europe by up to 28 percent on Monday to try to spur sales in a key battleground in the fast-growing industry. The 80-euro decrease results in cuts of 18 percent to 28 percent across the three Xbox 360 models, bringing the cheapest Arcade version to 200 euros ($307) and the high-end Elite to 370 euros ($568). Prices reductions in Britain range from 20 pounds to 50 pounds.

“Xbox 360 is now mass market in Europe,” Chris Lewis, vice president of Microsoft’s interactive entertainment business in Europe, said in a statement.

The reductions come as Sony Corp’s (6758.T) PlayStation 3 appears set to capitalize on the company’s recent victory in the high-definition DVD battle and on a slew of highly anticipated new games hitting the market this year.

“The PS3 has gained some momentum recently,” Kaufman Bros analyst Todd Mitchell said, “and I think as you go into this summer before the fall, Microsoft has got to do what they can to shore up sales.”

This was the second price cut for the Xbox in Europe in less than a year. Last August, Microsoft shaved 7 percent off the euro price of its low-end model and 13 percent off the main Premium model.

“The tide is kind of turning against the Xbox 360, so Microsoft has to be as aggressive as possible,” Mitchell said.

The PlayStation brand has long dominated the European console market, although the PS3 has struggled to win fans due to its high price and lack of must-have games.

Last October, in an effort to kick-start sales, Sony introduced a cheaper PS3 model in Europe for 400 euros and cut prices on a high-end version to 500 euros.

Meanwhile, Nintendo Co Ltd (7974.OS) is winning customers with its Wii machine that sports unique motion-sensing controls and games that are easier to learn.

(Reporting by Scott Hillis; editing by John Wallace and Lisa Von Ahn)

(1 votes, average: 3 out of 5)

 Loading ...

Paramount Pictures will become the first major studio to make clips from thousands of its movies available for use on the Internet.

The unit of Viacom Inc. is teaming with Los Angeles-based developer FanRocket to launch the VooZoo application Monday on Facebook.

The service gives Facebook users access to footage from thousands of movies, ranging from “The Ten Commandments” to “Forrest Gump,” to send to others on the popular social networking site.

“The short clips for a movie that you’ve already seen before helps you relive the moment,” Paramount senior vice president of entertainment Derek Broes said.

The clips last from a few seconds to several minutes and cover the gamut from Eddie Murphy’s guffaw in “Beverly Hills Cop” to Audrey Hepburn’s pleas over her “no-name slob” cat in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.”

The studio will market DVDs of the movies through a button that appears after each clip is played. It eventually wants to use the application to virally market upcoming releases.

For example, VooZoo is withholding clips from the “Indiana Jones” series until it works out a way to market the May 22 release of the latest installment, “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.”

FanRocket founder Danny Kastner said he is aiming to get a few hundred thousand users within two months and added that the company is in talks with other Hollywood studios to package their titles on VooZoo.

That could take time, however, since Paramount staffers needed more than a year to select clips from the archive and tag them with search terms.

Paramount said it has not set revenue goals for the new venture.

“My benchmark for success is that people are joining and sending,” Broes said.

(1 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

 Loading ...

PC World - An overhaul of the patent system and other measures to promote tech development efforts are top priorities of the Business Software Alliance.

(1 votes, average: 4 out of 5)

 Loading ...

PC World - A leading Hollywood CGI company wants to move into new sectors with its “artificial life for animation” software.

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...

Thursday’s introduction of an iPhone Software Development Kit (SDK) has game developers everywhere excited about the possibilities of iPhone game development, especially after seeing game demonstrations during the event. Developers agreed that Apple is pushing the iPhone as a major portable gaming platform.

“This is the coolest thing I’ve seen in game development in 15 years, except maybe for the Nintendo Wii,” said Glenda Adams, director of development for long-time Mac game publisher Aspyr Media.

Adams said that iPhone development plays uniquely into Aspyr’s strengths: their in-house developers have experience with the core technology that the iPhone uses, such as OpenGL, Cocoa and Apple’s user interface. They also have experience developing applications for the mobile space.

Electronic Arts (EA) and Sega both showed off iPhone games in development. EA showed off an iPhone-specific version of Spore, the forthcoming game from Will Wright, maker of The Sims and SimCity, while Sega introduced an iPhone version of Super Monkey Ball, a game that first appeared on Nintendo’s GameCube console.

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...

PC World - Two brothers were sentenced Friday to multiyear prison terms for selling what the U.S. Department of Justice called “massive” amounts of pirated software online, the DOJ announced.

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...

TechWeb - At MIX conference, Ray Ozzie introduces hosted versions of Exchange and SQL Server.

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...