Spotify Is Being Sued (Again) For Patent Infringement

Netherlands-based Nonend Inventions is suing Spotify claiming that the streaming giant is infringing on five of Nonend’s patents covering streaming media, peer-to-peer search, and retrieval and play back techniques. Nonend accuses Spotify of “making, using, offering to sell, and selling streaming music services to users which incorporate methodologies that infringe one or more claims.” The complaint was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware against Spotify and affiliated companies.

Nonend claims to hold more than 40 patents and patent applications in the peer-to-peer networking and streaming technology sectors, and according to a report by TechCrunch, this will be the first lawsuit Nonend has filed in defense of those patents. Nonend is suing Spotify and not other streaming services such as Pandora because Spotify is “built on a peer-to-peer architecture.” This allows users to stream roughly 9% of the music from Spotify's servers, while the rest is being pulled from other listeners signed onto the network.

“This feature makes the Spotify service faster, more efficient, and less costly to operate, and uses the technology at the heart of the Nonend Patents,” the complaint said. Nonend is also demanding a jury trial in the case.

The specific patents that Nonend accuses Spotify of infringing on are:

• U.S. Patent No. 7,587,508 ("Multiple Source Receiver-Driven Streaming of Content Between Peers")
• U.S. Patent No. 7,590,752 ("Playing Media Content on a Media Player while Streaming the Retrieved Parts of the Media Content to Other Devices")
• U.S. Patent No. 7,779,138 ("Streaming Content Between Media Players Configured to Locate Each Other")
• U.S. Patent No. 8,090,862 ("Initiating an Alternative Communication Channel for Receiving Streaming Content")
• U.S. Patent No. 8,099,513 ("Streaming Content from One or More Production Nodes or Media Player Systems")

This isn't the first time Spotify has been sued over patent infringement. Only two weeks after arriving in the United States, PacketVideo claimed that Spotify’s music distribution architecture infringed on its patents. Spotify responded by saying that it would strongly contest the allegation, and will likely do the same with Nonend. 

According to their counsel, Nonend does not intend to sue additional parties beyond Spotify Limited and its affiliated companies, but is open to licensing their technology. This lawsuit comes as Spotify recently announced that they have garnered more than three million U.S. users (with roughly 20% of them paying subscribers) since launching just over a year ago in the United States.

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Hisham Dahud is a Senior Analyst for Hypebot.com. Additionally, he is the head of Business Development for Fame House and an independent musician. Follow him on Twitter: @HishamDahud