KaneKramer
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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]
Earth-saving mystery material unveiled to be...wait, not unveiled
Alright, so we're not exactly sure what went down at the Fortune Forum -- that swanky dinner in London last night where a radical, climate-changing "new science" was supposed to be unveiled -- but we do know that the event came and went with nary a mention of the supposed "super material." Apparently the only major news is that Al Gore was there, and he gave a speech praising UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown for his work on global warming, which sounds about par for the course. No word on whether or not anyone tracked down British Inventors' Society founder Kane Kramer to ask him about his claims, but we'll keep a sharp eye and let you know if we hear anything.[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
Kane Kramer: "world's biggest failure" for losing DAP patents
We thought the matter had been resolved earlier today when our President credited the government with developing the technology that led to the iPod-filled world we live in today, but now another claimant has come forward in an attempt to recoup his "rightful share" of a billion dollar DAP market he may have helped create. British inventor and furniture shop manager Kane Kramer is currently consulting lawyers to see what, if any, recourse he has to enforce patents he filed in 1981 for an iPod-like device but which he subsequently lost control of due to reported boardroom coup. The patents, which describe a three-and-a-half-minute-capacity digital audio player with a screen and central navigation controls, eventually became part of the public domain after Kramer's company dissolved and he was unable to raise the money required for renewing them across 120 countries. Kramer, who is most definitely aware of the riches he lost out on, says that the runaway success of iPods specifically and DAPs in general surely makes him "the world's biggest failure."
