Patent Law

iTunes streamed to iPhone

By Lawrence B. Ebert, Esq.

Apple patents don't always bear fruit, but this one seems like it'll happen, and soon, actually. It's for accessing your entire iTunes library from anywhere?streamed to your iPhone or touch either via Wi-Fi or over the air. Basically, this future iTunes will sync the metadata for your whole library, and all the music and videos stored back on your computer ("virtual media items") will be totally integrated with the content actually on your device, so it'd be just like having your entire library on your phone.

It's published application 20080189390, based on 11/701823.

The first claim is:

A method of downloading media items to a first network device from a second network device, comprising:obtaining media item metadata associated with a plurality of media items from the second network device;storing the obtained media item metadata associated with the plurality of media items on the first network device;obtaining media item content data associated with a first subset of the plurality of media items from the second network device; andstoring the obtained media item content data associated with the first subset of the plurality of media items on the first network device;wherein at least some of the media item metadata associated with a second subset of the plurality of media items is stored on the first network device without the associated media item content data.

See also tgdaily: iPhone to remotely access iTunes media library, patent filing shows:

If this feature indeed will make it into the real world, iPhone/iPod touch users could organize and playback media items stored on their home PC - as if they resided on the player. The library would be accessed via Wi-Fi or a cellular network, elegantly bypassing media player's limited storage capacity of the media player.

Full post as published by IPBiz on August 08, 2008 (boomark / email).