It seems like every two bit company is suing Apple for something. Most of these companies produce products that people either don't know about or, don't do well in the market. So, they sue Apple to recuperate their lost profits because they're not good at producing products and services that people actually want to buy. I think Apple should tell them all to just piss off.

That's right! Why should anyone whose got ideas but no way of implementing them actually be allowed to profit from them?

They won't say too much about this, but I know one thing...

...this guy is going to have a very Merry Christmas this year!

Give me a break. If Apple is guilty they should pay up. Big companies can afford to infringe because they have the money to back it up. If they didn't do what they where accused of that is one thing. But it is obvious they did it on purpose.

It's cheaper to do wrong and pay up later. Apple and tons of other companies have proved it time and again.

As a shareholder I object to paying ANYTHING to these idiots making baseless claims against Apple. Not happy about this at all..

you don't know that there's "baseless," porieux.

Neither do I, for that matter.

We're all just pointlessly speculating. We don't know all the facts. Given Apple's track record of being quite aggressive about infringement, I have to assume that the settlement (which could be $1 or a million dollars for all we know) was decided upon as being one of two things: 1. Rightful compensation for mistakes made by Apple, or 2. A payoff to people who had just enough of a case to make it to court, and therefore this was less expensive than litigating.

Given Apple's track record on these matters, I'm confident they did the best/most expedient thing under the circumstances.

As often, people are looking at this as good guy - bad guy situation. Think about it for a moment. This person thought of something, wrote a piece of software and then, probably, after advice of an enthusiastic lawyer friend who totally loved his idea, went ahead and patented. He probably tried to market it himself and had little success. He then sees Apple come out with iTMS with a huge splash, only to get bigger and bigger. He sees exactly his idea. Now, it doesn't matter if Apple's engineers actually saw his software at trade shows, or they came up with the same idea on their own (possible); he was annoyed that someone else got so much business with the same basic idea.

If you look at the timeline, it took him quite a while to decide to pursue this, and even then some more to finally sue. I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss this guy as one of those patent trawlers that go around, buy other people's patents and wait for someone to come up with the same idea, and then sue them.

What was copied here? was it the layout of the app? That hardly is an invention. Did he invent the ability to play music on a computer? I don't think so. Help me understand, I don't see what was invented here.

"it is obvious they did it on purpose"

you are just as bad as the other people... you have same amount of information as anyone else...

don't jump to conclusions... just because they paid up doesn't implicate them...

many people have similar ideas at the same time. It could be that the guy really does have the patent, apple had simlar ideas, implemented them and then when this guys show up they saw how they were indeed simlar and decided, hey instead of a costly lawsuit where we will plainly lose (because they DID infringe, even if it wasn't intentional) they pay the dude a few million, and both parties win.

there is willful infringement and then there is accidental infringement or coincidental infringement.... whether it was accidental or on purpose, at least apple did the right thing when they saw they were wrong and paid the dude.

people are influenced by other all the time. NO art is completely created in a vacuum. and NO art is entireley original. period.

Just look at the original article.

http://www.macnn.com/articles/06/06/14/itunes.patent.suit/

They look guilty to me because they are trying to define what exactly is meant by "stealing".