Problems with CoverBling

[Soren Harward]

On Sat, Apr 17, 2010 at 2:12 PM, Soren Harward <stharward at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Apr 17, 2010 at 6:41 AM, Myriam Schweingruber <myriam at kde.org> wrote:
>> we apparently face a serious problem with our CoverBling applet:
>
> I work in the US patent sector, so I'll take a look at this and advise
> on some reasonable design changes to CoverBling.

As I suspected (because it's almost always the case with software
patents), this design patent is far narrower than it looks at first
glace.  The only thing this design patent covers is that animation
that flips the cover image around to show the track listing, and the
animation that flips it back.  That's it.  The patent doesn't cover
the Cover Flow design as a whole, the animation of switching from one
cover to another, or even displaying the track information by a
non-flip transition (like a popup, an overlay, a crossfade, or a cut)

I'm away from the computer that has the 2.3-git version of Amarok on
it, so I can't verify that the CoverBling doesn't have the flip
transition.  But I seem to remember that it doesn't even show the
track listing at all.

And as far as stealing from Apple goes: they ripped Genius off of
1.4's "similar artists" feature, and "DJ mode" off our dynamic
playlists.  Turnabout is fair play.

-- 
Soren Harward