post Friday August 31, 2012
Spotify is arguably the most popular program for music streaming. It is valued at $4 billion and has over 15 million users worldwide. It allows for the digital streaming of a selected number of songs, giving users the opportunity to create their own play lists and to download multiple applications that enhance the Spotify experience. Spotify is based on a peer-to-peer structure, allowing them to charge their users a small monthly fee for the unlimited access to the songs on their server and songs that have been put up by other subscribers. However, they are now being sued by Nonend, a Dutch peer-to-peer and streaming technology innovator, for the alleged infringement of five patents.
Nonend claims that Spotify infringed on its patents when using Nonend’s method of streaming media, employing peer-to peer search, retrieval and playback techniques that have been described in the patents. Spotify is the only company that Nonend will be suing as they are based on the P2P platform.
Nonend currently holds about 40 patents and patent applications, they do not yet offer the option of licensing their patents but they would be willing to do so in the future.
Source: Nonend Press Release, Tech Crunch
Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net
