Apple Thoughts: Shazam Gets Apple Into Court. Wait, What?

"One of the original “wow”-inspiring iPhone apps, music recognition software Shazam, is now responsible for some legal trouble for Apple. Tune Hunter, a company that claims to hold the patent on the technology that Shazam uses, filed suit against the app’s developers, as well as Apple, Gracenote, Napster, Amazon.com and Samsung, among others. It’s actually almost easier to list major players in the electronics industry they didn’t file suit against."

Funny enough, the folks at Tune Hunter must think we all have very short memories. Tune Hunter involved a keyfob that would read the time and radio station you were listening to and mark the song so it could be purchased later when the data was collected by your computer. It was launched after a similar service called Yes.net, which worked similarly to Shazam, where you held your phone up to the radio and it recorded the song then told you what it was. When you got home, you could log in to Yes.net and see what you'd "tagged" and order the CD from CD Now or Amazon.

Anyway, Tune Hunter's implementation involves radio stations and Shazam has nothing to do with radio stations. Shazam analyzes the track being played. I've used it numerous times for music in TV commercials which, as far as I know, are not on radio stations. As TAB notes, the fact that they're suing everyone distributing the app probably means they're making a cash grab and not actually trying to recoop damages.

They deserve to lose.