Thank you for bringing a smile to my face on this rainy day! :>

I think the terminology is patent "infringement", not patent theft... but I guess theft sounds more sensationalist and feeds your bias against Apple better.

This is why companies have to patent ridiculously simple/stupid things like recording high scores and ranking systems because if you don't, some other moron will and then sue you for it if it happens to make money. Patent law in the US totally needs an overhaul. How 'bout you get one year to release/make/sell a product or the patent itself before it becomes null and void.

b2dnz you are right!
Zap media have two patents, the first of which was granted in 2006 and the second was granted on Tuesday (11/3/08). Both patents were applied for in 1999!
Damb the USPTO is slow...

Okay, your Mac bashing was vaguely amusing at first, but then it got old really really quick. And now it's gotten to the point where you're so obsessed with it that it's preventing you from even doing your job. 

If you'd done what you had been paid to do and actually looked the fooking patent in question up (30 seconds in Google turned up http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PTXT&s1=zapmedia&s2=20080311.PD.&OS=zapmedia+AND+ISD/3-11-2008&RS=zapmedia+AND+ISD/3-11-2008) then you'd have seen that it was so laughably vague that it should never have been granted, and that' not even taking the examples of prior art, of which there are plenty, into account. 

Seeing as how you're too lazy to do your own job I'll do it for you. What the patent basically describes is the downloading of music over the internet. Something that's been happening since the days of Napster and AudioGalaxy, and which was theoretically possible from the day that FTP was invented. 

You could have done some research and tried to find something to publish that was actual journalism. But instead you just went on one of your smug retarded little apple-bashing rants again. Your journalism standards don't belong anywhere except maybe The Sun or other hack rags of it's ilk. 

AT adds: Tell us what you really think.

I hate it when people make vague technologies with no plans to use them.... then wait for a company to use it 

Stupid get rich quick schemes hurt the economy and drive prices up for consumers...

Luckily for me I don't plan on buying an already overpriced mac soon....although a notebook maybe 

anyhow I just wish apple would change their license agreement to legalize OSX on non mac stuff...don't care about support heck Linux users don't get support... and have to work out hardware compatibility themselves....

They probably filed it and had to wait 6-7 yrs to actually get the patent approved considering the huge million+ backlog at the patent office....

That'll be the amount of time it's taken to get through all the layers of lawyers!

Could it be that $18 billion Steve Jobs announced Apple have in the bank?

Anyway, if you don't protect the patent you face losing it so the fact that they sat around doing nothing about it for seven years means they'll probably lose.

@Chris...

to have 7 years worth of profits from Apple :D

If Itunes was released in 2001 why have they waited 7 years??