Click <here> for the story. I was wondering when this would happen. Interesting points that the CD's won't even play in certain instances, and that the sound is inferior to regular CD's.
IMHO ... the world has way too many plantiff attorneys looking for something to do ... but maybe a few of them actually serve a useful purpose.
Well, it's about time! I wonder how long it will be before Phillips files a suit. At the same time, i'm wondering if we really want to go down this road...
Philips will never file a suit. The CD Patent runs out next year so why should they? Why else do you think Philips and Sony brought SACD to the market place. New patent new money and a lovely new anti copy protection. Philips was smart to dump it's record company a couple of years back, just after they had sold it they brought CD-R at consumer prices, Philips always as a reason to do stuff. They are the worlds biggest player on the Consumer CD-R market, and it's a popular statement to complane about copy protection. Why file a suit when all you have to do is complane and get all of that free publicity?
Phillips was considering filing a lawsuit against the BIG five just a couple of months ago. I believe Sony invented the CD, Philips invented the player. Patents can be renewed and extended. They also hold the patents with Sony. Ironically, since the CD was invented, Sony bought a record company!
Don't know who invented what Grant, All patents regarding CD are legally defended by Philips, as are the patents held by Sony (electronics). So there is just no way Philips is going through with a lawsuit against Sony (records). In the dutch press (where Philips is based) there was a lot of talk about this and Philips stated they were protesting the use of copy protection and that the wanted the users (record company's) to remove the Compact Disc logo, but according to statements made to the dutch press the would not consider a lawsuit.
Hardly. The CD format and the CD player are originally a Philips invention. After reaching the prototype stage they partnered with Sony to move forward to production. One thing that influenced Sony in this alignment was the invention by Philips of the Compact Cassette, and the 1c royalty that was paid to Philips on every cassette made over the years. Sony did not want to be caught out again, and they knew a good thing when they saw it. Sony added their tremendous engineering and development weight to the prototype and changed it from 14 bits to 16 bits, and enforced the size we see today - the original Philips was larger. Regards, Metralla
I saw one of the Philips prototypes. It was what later became a Lazerdisc. The space on the disc was 4-8X the capacity of a Compact Disc as we know now, and -was- supposed to be able to go 2 sides. If you saw it, it totally looks like a lazerdisc© unit and disc.