Music Dotcoms Face Patent Suit By Intouch

28-Apr-00

Intouch Group, Inc., a provider of in-store and Web-based music, is suing Liquid Audio, Inc., Listen.com, Inc., Entertainment, LLC, Amazon.com and Discovermusic.com, Inc., for alleged patent infringement. Intouch holds two patents based on technology that allows people to sample music content before making a purchase, both from kiosks in brick-and-mortar retailers, and from Internet music distributors. According to a report published by MusicDish, the company claims the parties named in the suit - as well as other yet-unnamed companies - are using Intouch's sampling technologies without licensed permission. Joshua Kaplan, Chief Executive Officer of Intouch, said in the report that additional parties could be named within the next several weeks if agreements cannot be reached out of court. ""We invented the business of digitally encoding music - the patents are legitimate and we are planning to go to trial on this if we have to,"" he said. Intouch created the iStation, an interactive music sampling kiosk that allowed customers in music retail stores to sample up to five tracks from each of over 50,000 albums. The company also distributes music online at www.worldwidemusic.com.Source: Pro Sound News

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