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While Apple sells approximately 100 iPods per minute, Kane Krammer, inventor of the iPod's precursor in 1983, finds himself in financial trouble, having to sell his house in England.
British citizen Kane Kramer was the inventor of the technology behind the best-selling digital media player in history. Still, he has not seen a single euro of his creation.
Apple has recognized that Kramer is "the father of the iPod" after the presentation of documents in a court that tried a Burst.com lawsuit against the Cupertino company.
Burst.com claimed compensation from Apple for the patent on the iPod technology it considers its own. Apple has relied on Kramer's testimony and evidence (with drawings of a 1979 prototype) openly acknowledging that he is the true inventor.
Kramer invented the device in 1979, patented the idea and created a company to commercialize the product, but in 1998 he failed to achieve the 60.000 pounds needed to renew patents in 120 countries and the technology became public property.
From there, you know what happened to the player: extraordinary profits for Apple that sells a whopping 100 iPods per minute. Kramer, who had to sell out his home last year after his furniture business closed and now lives in rent, negotiates with Apple for compensation over the copyright of the technology behind the iPod and tries to survive on the invention of other devices you have in your project.
Editorial www.theinquirer.es
Let's see, let's see, this news is already in many places and in none of them it seems that they have read everything, Apple has recognized the creation of the portable music player, but to protect itself from the lawsuit for patent infringement by Burst.com, thus claiming prior art (it cannot violate the burst patent since it had already been created previously by Kane) the fact is that what Kane patented was a very general idea of what now, and years ago is any MP3 player, and when He had to renew the patent and could not raise enough money to do so, therefore it became public domain. Kane had absolutely nothing to do with the process of creating the iPod, and when it was created there were already MP3s with characteristics similar to Kane's invention on the market a long time ago.
On the other hand, Kane is in any case a victim of the patent system, which its defenders proclaim so much that it promotes innovation, as long as you can afford the fees imposed for it 😀