News.com has launched another article that has captured and focused the energy of the anti-patent crowd into yet one more discussion focused on how lousy Microsoft is, and how the world should be without software patents.  Unfortunately, News.com led its readers to believe the patent covered user-interface designs, and this is not quite true.

According to an August 12 article on News.com,

While Microsoft has struggled to challenge the iPod in the market, the software giant's lawyers have managed to slow Apple Computer's attempt to patent its digital music technology.

In a ruling issued last month, a patent examiner rejected Apple's attempt to patent some of the user interface concepts behind the popular digital music player, noting that Microsoft developer John Platt filed for similar claims five months before Apple did.

Okay, first of all, when did Microsoft struggle to challenge the iPod?  Who has ever seen a Microsoft designed MP3 player?

That aside, the second paragraph has led every News.com commenter to assume the patent is about buttons or display or some such “interface” technology.  Not so.  The patent is somewhat more complex, and covers actions that the iPod may not actually be able to mimic anyhow.

According to Lisa DiCarlo at Forbes,

The technology in question, patent application number 20030221541, was filed in May of 2002 and "relates generally to systems and methodologies that facilitate generation of playlists," according to a summary of the invention patent. "It reduces effort and time required to generate a playlist that meets or is similar to desired characteristics or features by automatically generating a playlist."

The technology Microsoft has patented is a system for auto generating play lists based on usage patterns.  In other words, Microsoft products may someday start building play lists on your behalf, based on the music you’ve listened to in the past.  Although, I will go a step further and assume that this technology is being employed to generate play lists for many media types… not just music. 

"Some people say patents are overlapping, and I'm not sure that's accurate," says Kaefer. "The characterization of the patent is not spot on." –David Kaefer, director of business development and intellectual property at Microsoft

While it seems that some confusion still exists, it remains to be seen whether News.com came to the proper conclusion, or whether they should have reported facts and admitted confusion as Forbes has done. 

W.S.