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3 October 2018Patents

Amazon and Audible taken to court over audio patents

Amazon and several of its subsidiaries have been accused of infringing two patents relating to audio services.

Delaware-based TrackTime filed its complaint on Monday, October 1, at the US District Court for the District of Delaware.

Amzn Mobile, Amazon Web Services, Amazon Digital Services and Audible, all of which are subsidiaries of Amazon, were also named as defendants.

The cited TrackTime patents are “Methods and system for remote control for multimedia seeking” (US number 8,856,638) and “Methods and systems for facilitating an online social network” (8,862,978).

The claims in both of the patents relate to “mobile computing devices to navigate music using synchronised lyrics and to navigate audiobooks using an associated electronic book”.

Amazon sells lines of mobile computing devices, such as tablets and mobile phones, under the ‘Amazon’, ‘Kindle’, ‘Fire’ and ‘Echo’ trademarks, known collectively as Kindle devices.

Amazon Fire is a Kindle model, while Amazon Echo is a speaker.

In addition, Amazon sells third-party mobile and computing devices. The company intends for consumers to install and use Amazon applications on these products, according to TrackTime.

The claim also highlighted that Amazon offers a “suite of subscriptions and services” through Amazon Prime. These services include access to e-books, audiobooks and music, and users are also able to download the Amazon Music app onto their device.

“The Amazon Music app, and Kindle devices, have been used to deliver billions of songs to Amazon customers,” said the claim.

TrackTime alleged that these services infringe the ‘638 patent, which discloses methods for “seeking” multimedia.

For example, the claim said, the feature called ‘Amazon Kindle Fire with X-Ray Lyrics’ displays lyrics to a song and allows users to jump to a particular portion of a song by touching the part of the screen that corresponds to a particular word or range of words from the lyrics.

According to TrackTime, X-Ray Lyrics is offered by Amazon to “entice” customers to become a part of the “Amazon ecosystem”.

Amazon’s Audible and Kindle apps are intended to function in concert with one another. This feature is known as ‘Whispersync for Voice’.

“Whispersync for Voice allows customers to move seamlessly between Audible audio books and Kindle e-books, so they can take the story with them wherever they are,” said the claim.

“It allows customers to read a little, then listen a little, effectively expanding the time a user spends reading or listening.”

In its claim, TrackTime said that the ‘638 patent discloses and claims this same feature.

In addition, TrackTime alleged, the ‘Whispersync for Voice’ feature infringes the ‘978 patent.

TrackTime is seeking damages and an injunction against Amazon.

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