Apple Hit with Video Streaming Patent Lawsuit

December 2nd, 2009 at 11:31 AM - News by Jeff Gamet

Apple is the target of yet another lawsuit, this time for allegedly infringing on patents related to the company's HTTP Live Streaming feature in QuickTime. The case was filed by Emblaze, a group of technology companies that owns a patent that describes a system for streaming media.

According to Emblaze, it has been developing its streaming technology for over ten years and plans to roll it out in the First Else smartphone some time next year. The phone will be released through Emblaze's subsidiary company Else.

The company said its technology lets users stream live and pre-recorded content without requiring special servers. It can also stream through firewalls.

Apple has until December 15 to reply to Emblaze's complaint.

5 Observer Comments

geoduck said on December 2nd, 2009 at 12:02 PM:

How many years has Quicktime had a streaming video feature?

Tiger said on December 2nd, 2009 at 12:03 PM:

Little detail here. Let’s guess that there is a lot more to this other than a get rich quick scheme. Or maybe not. If the feature is already being used in Quicktime, is adding this feature to the iPhone really an infringement of the technology? Or is it that they want to put out a phone of their own and figured out somebody beat them to the punch…..

geoduck said on December 2nd, 2009 at 12:05 PM:

Or want to advertise their far-too-late-to-the-party product

gslusher said on December 3rd, 2009 at 3:03 AM:

I’m not an attorney, but, it’s possible that Apple will take one of two tracks: 1) pay Emblaze off—Apple has a lot of money, they probably don’t; 2) hit Emblaze with a patent infringement suit based on Apple’s own patents (assuming that Apple has such patents).

Mike said on December 8th, 2009 at 11:06 PM:

The ELSE will blow the iPhone out of the water…

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