Comments on: Okay, Who Gave Palm Pre Keys to the iTunes Sync Kingdom?!

By: Fassy

Fassy — Fri, 29 May 2009 01:51:09 +0000

@ArtSpot

Nope. Trademark infringement requires publication in an open venue to even to rise to the level of consideration . A "secret handshake" as you put it, is by definition not published.

By: srsly

srsly — Fri, 29 May 2009 01:07:37 +0000

Who cares? Itunes is garbage anyways…

By: LW

LW — Thu, 28 May 2009 23:42:05 +0000

Good Luck and Happy Blogging.

By: iBamse

iBamse — Thu, 28 May 2009 22:42:06 +0000

Why on earth does it trouble you the slightest that Apple has licensed the iTunes API to Palm? Even for those of you that actually have Apple stock it should be a no-brainer to realize that Apple has everything to win and very little to loose. It is really no different from Apple licensing Active Sync.

By: Adam

Adam — Thu, 28 May 2009 21:20:18 +0000

If Apple does license the APIs to other companies there would likely be anti-trust issues with denying a similar license to Palm.

By: oneAwake

oneAwake — Thu, 28 May 2009 21:08:18 +0000

Damn you guys sound scared, do you hold stock in Apple or something? Here is more information, not only will the Pre seamlessly sync music through iTunes, it will sync Photos, Movies and Videos as well.

http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/28/itunes-support-confirmed-for-palm-pre/

By: frog

frog — Thu, 28 May 2009 20:40:46 +0000

Well they copied everything else, so why not iTunes too!

By: ArtSpot

ArtSpot — Thu, 28 May 2009 18:37:50 +0000

fassy, if Palm Pre has the word “iTunes” in it without written consent from Apple, that is a trademark infringement. this is a legal issue, not an engineering issue. any engineer can reverse engineer a solution (i.e. virus creators).

By: mystic

mystic — Thu, 28 May 2009 16:50:41 +0000

@truth

You are such a troll.

By: fassy

fassy — Thu, 28 May 2009 16:13:43 +0000

@ArtSpot If Palm reverse-engineered the sync protocol, they would not be violating copyright, but perhaps the DMCA. Palm would likely claim an allowable exemption for the purposes of interoperability, which Apple would no doubt oppose. It would be an entertaining slap-fight, but not one either company stands to "win" much.

Considering that Apple licenses the iTunes device plugin APIs openly to manufacturers, it seems far more likely that Palm purchased a license, just like any other OEM. Such a license requires Palm to sign an NDA, so, if we ever hear anything more about this, it would be from Apple -- either their lawyers or their supported device page.