One headphone line has dominated the market in recent years: Beats by Dre. But that doesn't necessarily mean it's the best product available. There's an active debate between music snobs across genres regarding which brand will best suit your listening needs: Beats or Bose? The former has certainly made more television and celebrity appearances but the latter still has a loyal fan base. One thing that might slide victory toward Bose: a lawsuit against its competitor.
The audio equipment developer brought a lawsuit alleging patent violations against Beats Electronics. Bose has always been at the forefront of noise-cancellation technology, so if anyone is to hold a patent on the equipment involved it would be them.
Among the patents the company claim was violated:
- "Method and apparatus for minimizing latency in digital signal processing systems" (patent no. 6,717,537)
- "High frequency compensating" (patent no. 8,054,992)
- "Dynamically configurable ANR signal processing topology" (patent no. 8,073,150)
- "Dynamically configurable ANR filter block topology" (patent no. 8,073,151)
- "Digital high frequency phase compensation" (patent no. 8,345,888)
We're not tech experts and we're not ones to judge whether the aforementioned technologies are overly similar between Bose and Beats brand headphones. We do know, however, that if Bose manages to win its case, Beats could be in trouble. Just as Beats is suing Chinese counterfeiters for billions in lost profits, Bose could claim it's owed a slice of Beats' profits from the products made in violation of its patents. On a more dramatic level, Beats would be forced to redesign its products to avoid further suits. Apple is certainly the company to be owned by for engineering new pieces.
But then again Apple earbuds still really suck. Stay tuned.
