Microsoft Zune HD Buy-From-Radio Feature Target Of Patent Suit

The ability to tag songs for a later purchase is one of the easiest, and most convenient ways to shop for songs that you may not have immediate access to. After all, the radio is still an avenue to learn about your favorite band's latest release, or to find new music in general. Microsoft has been tagging songs since late 2008, but it's a pretty big feature in the Zune HD's

catalogue.

The HD Radio on the touch-based Zune allows you to tag a song you hear, and then purchase/download it from the Zune Marketplace at a later date. Convenient, but apparently it goes against a patent that one Edward Yavitz, a man based out of Illinois, patented back in 2002. According to Yavitz, he tried to get in touch with the Redmond-based company that created the Zune HD back in 2006. He basically said that the technology is patented and possible, and that Yavits would work with Microsoft to keep the likes of Google and Apple from doing the same thing.

Of course, Apple is doing the same thing. The technology is found in the 5th generation iPod Nano, and can buy songs that are identified by RDS text and tagged. At the moment, there's no word on whether or not Yavitz will go for Apple, or anyone else using the same technology for that matter. Furthermore, Microsoft knows that the patent suit exists, but they are not commenting on the situation at this time. We'd be willing to bet that a settlement gets met, if Yavitz does indeed prove the patent exists. We will let you know when we hear more about this.

[via Datamation]