Pandora Escapes ‘Shakedown’ Over Tailored-Playlists Patents (1)

Pandora Media LLC won a ruling that canceled three patents a nonpracticing entity alleged the music streaming service infringes, as a California federal judge found that “tailoring products to fit taste is a long-prevalent practice and one of the building blocks of human ingenuity that cannot itself be patented.”

Bluebonnet Internet Media Services LLC’s patents each describe “essentially the same computer system for generating media playlists based on a user’s ratings,” Judge Vince Chhabria wrote in an opinion issued Sept. 7 in the US District Court for the Northern District of California. “Certain claims further describe functions for sharing the ...