An obscure company called Muvox LLC has filed a lawsuit against BMG in the United States for alleged patent infringement.
The lawsuit, which you can read here, was filed in a Texas court last month and references a patent titled ‘Music streaming, playlist creation and streaming architecture‘, which describes “a method for selecting a song” based on other songs with similar “moods”.
As first reported here by patent litigation information resource RPX, the lawsuit targets “song recommendation features” within the BMG Synch service.
According to a lawsuit filed in the same Texas court on August 21, the company suing BMG also appears to be suing technology giant IBM for alleged infringement of the same patent.
The patent, which you can read here, describes “a system and method for making categorized music tracks available to end-user applications”.
According to the patent, “The method of claim 1, further comprise[es] checking the one or more moods of the song against at least one other mood identification technique for a level of correlation between the one or more moods of the song and the one or more moods of the plurality of the other songs”.
An attachment titled ‘Exhibit 2′ (Exhibit 1 being the patent itself) was filed with the lawsuit against BMG. In it, the plaintiff appears to point to BMG’s Synch service as the purported source of alleged infringement of elements detailed in the patent.
Within the document, the plaintiff, Muvox, describes BMG Synch as “a digital platform that allows clients to license music for synchronization purposes”, adding that “it offers a catalogue of music from various artists, songwriters, and composers, providing a wide range of genres and users can search within this catalogue, listen to tracks, etc.”
The ‘Exhibit 2’ attachment refers to BMG’s Synch service as “the accused instrumentality”, which, it adds “discloses a method for selecting a song (e.g., selecting a particular song for the user specified mood).”
The patent cited in the lawsuit seems to be assigned to a company called Apperture Investments, Llc. The application for the patent was filed in January 2023 and granted in February this year.
Apperture Investments, Llc currently has around 15 patents either pending or active, ranging from tech for “Streaming music categorization using rhythm, texture and pitch” to “Music selection and organization using rhythm, texture and pitch”.
One of the inventors of the patent referred to in the lawsuit filed against BMG and IBM, Jacquelyn Fuzell-Casey, also appears to be listed as the inventor of a patent owned by Google for tech described in a filing as a “list-based coupon system and methods.”
Muvox LLC also accuses IBM of ripping off elements of its patent that recommends music based on the ‘mood’ of a song via the IBM Watson AI platform, and more specifically via the Watson Beat, a “cognitive cloud-based app developed by machine learning” all the way back in 2016.
Within the Exhibit 2 attachment filed with the lawsuit against IBM, Muvox claims that the platform where the alleged infringement is taking place “is a cognitive cloud-based music program developed using AI and machine learning that uses musical notes to analyze moods and reproduce music based on the identified mood”.
BMG isn’t the first music company to be sued for alleged patent infringement in recent years. Last year, major record labels Warner Music Group and Universal Music Group were hit with infringement lawsuits over four patents related to ‘encoding and distributing digital content’.
As reported by Bloomberg Law at the time, the lawsuits were filed by Texas-based Blue Spike LLC against WMG in a New York court and against UMG in a California court.Music Business Worldwide
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