Kindle Ebook Reader Patent Lawsuit

Ebook Readers - Lawsuit Filed Against Amazon for Patent Infringement

The Amazon Kindle Ebook Reader 2 may be a fine piece of kit with a great future ahead of it - for specs see Kindle Ebook Reader 2 but it is not without its headaches for Amazon. The latest headache comes in the form of a lawsuit from Discovery Communications, the company behind the Discovery Channel.

Discovery Communications has filed legal papers claiming that Amazon has violated its patents with regard to copyright protection.

The patent in question was filed in the autumn of 1999 but was only issued on November 20, 2007. Amazon's original Kindle ebook reader was launchd on the world the day before Discovery's patent was issued.

Discovery’s patents are in the field of the encryption technology used to distribute digital books.

The lawsuit has been filed in the Delaware U.S. District Court.

The company claims that it holds a prior patent from the early 1990s relating to "Electronic Book Security and Copyright Protection System", and has made it known that it will be seeking monetary damages.

"The Kindle and Kindle 2 are important and popular content delivery systems. We believe they infringe our intellectual property rights, and that we are entitled to fair compensation," said Joseph LaSala, Discovery Communications general counsel.

"Our tradition as an inventive company has produced considerable intellectual property assets for our shareholders, and today's infringement litigation is part of our effort to protect and defend those assets." Kindle Ebook Reader Kindle Discovery Patent Lawsuit Ebook readers
See also : Onyx Boox Ebook Reader

Kindle iPhone Ebook Reader App

Kindle Ebook Reader - Amazon Launches iPhone Application for Ebooks

Amazon Kindle for iPhone and iTouch Application

Amazon has launched a free Kindle for iPhone application in the iPhone App Store for use on iPhones and iTouches that will allow users to buy and download ebooks without the need to but a Kindle Ebook Reader. They have made all 240,000 Kindle ebooks available on the smaller devices. This deal, which is probably not the last of its type, has been expected since Amazon announced that the Kindle 2 would include "Whispersync" that enables users to read the same book on a number of different ebook readers and devices.

Amazon VP Ian Freed said "We're really excited to expand the ability for customers to get access to over 240,000 books ... I'm really excited about being able to offer that to customers on other devices. But nothing to talk about today." "I would say it would be coming soon."

Whispersync is a major advance in freeing a Kindle ebook or publication from the confines of the Kindle ebook reader itself but the Kindle 2 nevertheless remains the bset way to read it.

Freed says "Nearly every smartphone available has the development environment and even some phones that are not considered smartphones, have, for example, the ability to develop Java apps, so theoretically any of those platforms is open to anything, whether it's us building a Kindle application or it's ESPN building a sports ticker application. ... There's no limitation on that."

It takes around 5 minutes to go to the iPhone app store and get everything you need to have access to your favourite books

The good thing of course is that you don't have to fork out $359 for a Kindle Ebook Reader. The downside is you don't get the full functionality associated with the Kindle such as e-ink and e-paper but you get most of the features.

For information on alternatives to the Amazon Kindle Ebook Reader see Onyx Boox Ebook Reader and Alternatives to the Kindle Ebook Reader Currently Available

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Onyx Boox Ebook Reader Launch

Onyx Boox Ebook Reader - Alternative to the Amazon Kindle

Alternative Ebook Readers

The Amazon Kindle Ebook Reader pretty much rules the roost in the ebook reader market at the moment, but there are alternatives. The latest to hit the stores soon is the Onyx Boox , which, according to Onyx embodies both simplicity and power. Boox they say is an ebook reader which features an open and flexible platform for both consumers and content providers.

The Boox like the Kindle has a 16-level grayscale e-ink screen that looks and feels like paper. It also has a hand-writing system that lets you take notes while reading.

The Onyx Boox uses new-generation e-ink screens which offer extremely low power consumption. You can read for a number of weeks on each full charge (although that would seem to me to depend on how often you use it).

Onyx International will release the its Ebook Reader at CeBit in early March. The BeBook 2 which is another alternative to the Amazon Kindle Ebook Reader will also be unveiled at CeBit.


The key highlights of the Onyx Boox are -

6"/ 8"/ 9.7" E Ink® Vizplex® EPD display
16-level grayscale
Touch panel with full screen scribble
128MB RAM or above
400MHz processor or higher
USB 2.0 with OTG support
512MB Flash or above
2.5mm Stereo Headphone Jack
SD/MMC with SDIO & SDHC support
1600mAh replaceable Li-ion battery
Wi-Fi/CDMA 1XRTT/GPRS/3G (option)
No keyboard but an iPod scroll wheel type control
Details/Thumbnail/List page view
Search and dictionary support
Text to speech (TTS) support
Change font size & family
Zoom in/out
Bookmark/Table of contents
Formats Supported
PDF/TXT/HTML/MOBIPOCKET/EPUB/CHM/PDB/JPG/PNG/GIF/BMP/TIFF/MP3/WAV

No word on pricing but the intelligent ploy would be to make it cheaper than the Kindle Ebook Reader
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