Apple credits Kane Kramer with invention of the digital audio player -- sort of
Apple phoned up Kane "world's biggest failure" Kramer recently and had him testify in court against on Burst.com on Apple's behalf. It was a bit of a coup for Kramer, who invented the digital audio player in 1979 (with a whopping 3.5 minutes of song capacity), lost the patent when his company IXI went bankrupt in 1988, and hasn't made a dime off the idea since. While Apple was happy to use his expert witness to get out of a legal bind with Burst, and to pay a consultancy fee, there are no plans to give Kramer a slice of that iPod revenue pie. "To be honest, I was just so pleased that finally something that I had done which has been a huge success and changed the music industry was being acknowledged. I was really quite emotional about it all." Still, he's looking for a bit of cash from Apple for his copyrighted drawing of the player (above), which bears an uncanny resemblance to Apple's iconic player.
[Via MAKE]
