Mobile Music Player Shazam Sued by Digimarc Over Patents

Related Quotes

Symbol	Price	Change
DMRC	15.68	0.00

{"s" : "dmrc","k" : "c10,l10,p20,t10","o" : "","j" : ""}

Shazam, the now hot mobile music identification app on iPhone, is being sued by Digimarc (NasdaqGM: DMRC - News), for patent infringement.

It says Shazam's music ID tech infringes three of Digimarc's patents, including two patents dating back to 1995. Digimarc's patents relate to technology that "enables devices to identify audio and visual content and immediately link the consumer to associated internet services," as it describes it. Digimarc says it did have some talks with Shazam—presumably to get some licensing fee for the patent use—but wasn't successful.

From the wording of Digimarc's release, this seems a rather broad interpretation of its patents: "Digimarc has invented a range of technologies that employ cameras, microphones and other sensors to enable instant identification of all forms of media content. The contextual awareness of the phone combined with instant object identification enables new, more efficient and higher quality methods to search without text input."

More info in release. Shazam meanwhile recently received funding from KPCB, so probably has money in the bank.