A name not especially well known in today's DJ scene is N2IT. Headed up by legendary Techno DJ John Acquaviva, N2IT were instrumental in bringing modern DVS systems to the market - something that we should be very thankful for, and equally something that N2IT feel they should be paid for. Not because we should be showing gratitude of course, but because they hold trump cards -
patents. A short time ago, Native Instruments
reached an agreement, but now N2IT have unleashed the legal dogs upon M-Audio and their Torq software.
Here's the official missive from N2IT towers:
N2IT FILES PATENT INFRINGEMENT SUIT AGAINST
M-AUDIO INSTRUMENTS OVER DISC JOCKEY TECHNOLOGY
Suit Seeks To Stop M-Audio from Selling Torq Conectiv Vinyl/CD product; Claims Product, Which Allows DJs To Control Digital Music with a Record Player, Infringes Patent Held for Final Scratch, Named One of New York Times' 'Best Ideas'
Norfolk, Virginia (April 17, 2009) – N2IT Holding B.V. filed a complaint in federal court against M-Audio LLC alleging that the defendant's Torq Conectiv Vinyl/CD product infringes N2IT's patent on the technology.
The Amsterdam, Netherlands-based N2IT seeks an injunction preventing the use, sale, offer for sale and marketing of M-Audio's Torq Conectiv Vinyl/CD product. N2IT also seeks damages fro M-Audio's alleged past infringement. N2IT claims that M-Audio is infringing the patent it holds for its Final Scratch product, which allows disc jockeys to use a special time-coded record on a record player or its equivalent to manually control and play digital music from a computer. N2IT has also licensed the use of its patents for this technology to other companies.
"Final Scratch is noted as an industry leader, including being ranked one of the 'Best Ideas of 2001' by The New York Times," said John Acquaviva, CEO of N2IT. "The unauthorized use of this technology is irreparably harming our existing business."
According to the lawsuit, N2IT developed, sold, and marketed the highly innovative Final Scratch product. N2IT alleges that M-Audio sells a similar product, Torq Conectiv Vinyl/CD, which functions the same as Final Scratch and as described in N2IT's patent.
"We filed this lawsuit for one simple reason. N2IT's property is being knowingly and unfairly exploited. Our system of rewarding inventors for their innovative ideas is
jeopardized when intellectual property rights are ignored," said Jeff Boggs, a Washington, D.C., intellectual property litigation and patent prosecution partner with
Bingham McCutchen LLP, who is representing N2IT.
N2IT's technology created a previously nonexistent industry. Since its inception, the technology has won numerous awards from industry publications, and many of the world's top-ranked DJs use N2IT's technology.
The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia in Norfolk, is N2IT Holding B.V. v. M-Audio LLC.
Just looking at one particular part of the above text:
"The unauthorized use of this technology is irreparably harming our existing business."
I've searched high and low and can't find any existing business at all. The original founders of N2IT were Mark-Jan Bastian and Timothy Self, who formed N2IT, made the first version of Final Scratch and had Jon Acquaviva demo it for them. But Bastian (named on the patents) is now a senior software engineer at TomTom, and Self is VP of Reason's Sales and Marketing. The N2IT websites (
www.nn2it.net and
www.n2it.nl) have long since gone, but you can certainly dig up plenty of historical info on
www.archive.org.
Having got the actual patents awarded in 2006 and 2007, it seems that N2IT's business is now about enforcing the patents by throwing lawsuits at existing businesses to get a licence fee from them. And scanning over the patent, and attempting to decipher the content from the chaff, it would appear that every single DVS purveyor (i.e. anyone who sells a timecode/control signal vinyl with their software) may well be getting a visit from N2IT's legal team at some point.
But why single out M-Audio when they could equally go for Ms Pinky, MixVibes, Virtual DJ, Quad etc etc - or indeed Serato? Perhaps it's that the deep pocketed mighty Avid corporation owns M-Audio, and going for the win against them will put the fear of God into the rest of the DVS industry to simply cave and divvy up the licence fees without a fight.
I'm personally very keen to find out more about this whole thing. Peter Kirn put together a
comprehensive timeline of the startings of Final Scratch, but I'm rather more keen to find out exactly who or what N2IT is these days, and if they really do have the current DJ market's nuts firmly in the grip of their lawyer's hands.
The moral of this story - if you've got a great idea, patent it and get paid. And to those using this patented technology - get yourself a lawyer because you're ripping off patented technology.
p.s. happy to hear from anyone connected to this story to fill in the background a little more.
"money money moneeeyyy, some gotta have it, some barely need it!" ... always money, damn...
So when are they sueing Serato, NI, Ms. Pinky, Deckadance etc.?
I thought that dude from wu-tang invented it.
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Actually go for M-audio is the same to going for Ms. Pinky but N2IT needs to prove that its patent is older than Serato.
Did You remember the Serato Scratch Plugin?
Check the Peter Kirn Timeline and comments for get "some" about the history...
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PS: I'm start hating the security code bad response at this site...
36 judges chambers of death kid
@ Dunks
The system that Wu-Tang wanted to release is based on another technology. The other DVS's are more likely a copy of FS, which was the 1st IMO. But the courts will tell, what's against the law and what not (good luck M-Audio).
Fuck you n2it.
From a patent law standpoint this is a pretty interesting case. Essentially N2it is suing a company who is licensing infringing technology. That is usually not a winning proposition, and Avid originally said no to purchasing a license for this reason. To me, this shows a fundamental lack of understanding of the underlying technology by the patent lawyers, or the hope on the lawyers part that the judge does not understand the underlying technology.
As for hurting the company, the company does not exist. I was at Messe 2001 talking to John. He was there to demo the company, and had no actual part in the company. When the folks at N2it flew to the USA to talk numbers, guess who was not in the meeting? DINGDINGDING! JOHN. He only owns the company because he invested and picked up the scraps of a dissolved company.
The whole thing is laughable at best.
They can't sue NI because they already went to court and worked out a licensing deal.
If you check the about credits of the Traktor Scratch platforms, the N2IT name and patent info is in there.
I think that it's high time for some reform of this abuse-prone patent system that we have. If a company does not currently have a product that competes in the marketplace, I don't belive that they should be able to sue for patent infringement. The patent system was originally devised to *PROMOTE* innovation, and now it's being used to snuff it. These changes are not likely to happen anytime soon.
It would be very interesting if Avid ponies up the dough to fight this, though. They can afford some good attorneys, and maybe they can invalidate the patent as being overly broad... you can patent an *ipmlementation* but not an idea (well, besides software and business process patents, which are horrid ideas...). One can only hope.
I know a lot of people are saying f n2it and there greed.
When companies or people sue; people start hating them and call them greedy.
People create for necessity, for profit and for enjoyment. If a product is in high demand the inventor or company that holds that patent should have the right to sell it in a free enterprise society.
If you created something and had it patent wouldn't you want to enjoy monetary rewards.
Who made the first car, light, phone etc... Did these people get the Acknowledgment they deserved. Yes.
Companies like NI, M-Audio, etc... took something that was not theirs and made a product and $old it. Who's the bad guy.
One thing I forgot to mention-the patent and method IS valid-EVERY DVS uses the same method (2 ascending/descending waves inverted 90'). Time stamps, etc....sorry, all bullshit. If you double the frequency you get double the resolution, and depending on how the frequency is decoded, that is where the whole "time stamp" thing comes into play. What is bullshit to me though is that N2it is not a company anymore, so saying that their business is being damaged is a farce. As well, they are suing someone with a license of an infringing product, not the infringing product itself.
If N2it went to Ms. Pinky and said pay up it would make sense-then the royalty would be built into the license fee and N2it would effectively get their cash from all those infringing. They however are suing someone who had nothing to do with the creation of the part of the product that is infringing.
Side note-the patent is quite narrow in scope-I could sell you a thousand CD's with similar timecode and N2it couldn't do a thing because the patent only applies to Vinyl. Not very forward thinking on their part.
Since Torq uses Ms. Pinky Vinyls, it's quite obvious that Avid will try to give Scott Wardle, creator of Ms Pinky, the entire responsibility for the patent infrigement.
I don't think that this poor bloke could handle such a big lawsuit all alone.. He's gonna be in some very critical situation if it comes so far.
I always liked John Acquaviva, but here he clearly goes too far. Indeed have N2IT no products whatsoever today, and I consider John Acquaviva as a greedy old man now. If he can't make money out of his DJ career he should just get another job, and not get his $$$ with these kind of dirty tricks!
it's about to get real whiteboy in this piece lol
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXsYXMqw4Zc
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The Patent infringement is not about Timecode vinyl and not all are the same. Look at Serato (and Create link please).
The patent infrigment is about Setup itself aka "how to set the needle" then "the audio comes from vinyl to ADC" and blahblah...
The worst of all:
Maybe N2IT is patent infrigment and piracy "older" ideas.
We will see.
In the other hand Patents, closed solutions and stocks market are really suck ideas in finantial crisis times.
It could be better altogether working but, of course, I'm a dreamer person... no?
DVS are oldfashioned, it's time to hardware...
(m-audio is not interested on save DVS, Serato maybe will focus on NS7 Itch technology...)
Bad times for business, good times for pure data and arduino experimenting.
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Hahaha! There are the dutchies again...
I think that they are diffenantly in their right, because they were the first ones. The ones that sold it to Stanton and went on to become FS.
If you hold the patent (for that country) than you have the right to ask for you cut if they haven't offered it to you from the beginning.
If they would've just paid N2IT for their ideas from the get-go there wouldn't even be a problem...
grrrr... security code!!!
You ever seen that buggs bunny cartoon where him and yosemite sam are in that house and all that gun powder goes off and sends the house high into the sky? Buggs stands on the front porch and, just as the house is about to come crashing back onto the ground(DVS lawsuit), he calmly steps off the porch and isn't hurt(controllers).
Makes me wonder.
Why would they start suing now?
Of course it because they waited to see how popular the product would become.
The Technology maybe patented but is it the exact same technology?
Code for code?
basically its a computer signal going through the needles to control digital files on a computer..
Maybe computer companies should sue N2IT for creating this on there computers?
Did N2IT create the operating systems on the computer?
I don't think so!
N2IT just wants to get paid they will most definitely lose this one.
In France its impossible to get a patent with just an idea.
What is sure in the case of N2IT...
They don't have patents on turntables, vinyl lp technology, time code, computer operating system & sound cards.
All the components of a generic DVS existed before the patent of N2IT. In the early 80's "computer coded vinyl" has been used for different industries purposes.
As an example of how harmful is for international business a patent on just an idea...
Imagine that in 1956 Hergé writer of the comic book "Tintin on the moon" made also a patent for a generic rocket to the moon, a generic moon armored car & more moon goodies... Then Nasa will have to pay a patent to Hergé to conquer the space with a rocket. & maybe also some royalties to Jules Vernes the french writer who wrote "de la Terre à la lune" "From Earth to Moon" at the end of the 19th century.
Mixvibes have no more information about N2IT than the one given by Gizmo on Skratchworks. All the development of Mixvibes DVS is made on our experience of digital dj'ing. We develop our own time code & our own routines.
Shall city council pay royalties to Orwell for it's Big Brother idea of cams in every public places? (1984, writen in 1947))
.jpg)
A lot of potential patents on this cover of the adventures of Tintin. 1954.
UncleVibes - you may be right about France, but as the previously successful suit against NI has shown, the specific idea of timecode is the key, not the execution. You may well have coded MixVibes from the ground up, and devised your own timecode, but the whole timecode idea is what is in question here. And even if it isn't enforceable in France, you do sell MixVibes all over the world.
I admire your resolve in this, but N2IT have successfully sued a bigger company than yours, and are going for an even bigger one now. I suspect that if they win, every other DVS company will be in for a similar treatment at the hands of N2IT's lawyers and the courts too.
Well, Mixvibes is making DVS since 2004 & knows the patent of Final Scratch. I never heard of any complains of any parties like Final Scratch or Serato the two competitors when Mixvibes launch a product without secret black box, just a normal sound card with enough inputs, a competitive software & time coded records. And also a fair price when the competitors were runnin' high.
N.I (Traktor has always been part of Final Scratch, I am not surprised they deal with the people who gave them the idea to go with Final Scratch & Stanton. (a closed solution)
I remember a very good dinner with the Stanton president in the best discotheque of Frankfurt in 2007. Dj Troubl was mixing with Mixvibes & the final scratch sound card.
They wanted to launch open final scratch to their distributors.
The competition between teams make sence to creativity, experience & knowledge. Then the product fit the reality of their users. Who can trust in Europe that an idea is a patent in the industry world of any kind... Nobody.
quote:
"quote]I admire your resolve in this, but N2IT have successfully sued a bigger company than yours, and are going for an even bigger one now. I suspect that if they win, every other DVS company will be in for a similar treatment at the hands of N2IT's lawyers and the courts too.["
There are some international rules to respect. U.S law aren't the only one. Yes I worry to loose time & spirit with this sue. Like should worry all intelligences.
The problem is.... none of us are intellectual property lawyers. Greed or not, If someone owns the patents and other infringe..... it's infringing period.
Start the flaming....
On May 8, 2009, ile commented...
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