Ringtones are Patented

[The Grim Squeaker]

In case you were wondering, it turns out that ringtones are patented. Yes, for some reason, patent organizations in Europe, the US and Israel all found the idea of playing music on a phone instead of rings to be a patentable idea.

If there were some complex technology involved in making a phone play music instead of a ring, perhaps this would make some sense, but it's really just a device playing a song.
How is that patentable?
Of course, for those of you who think ringtones are annoying, you could hope that this guy would stop them from being used.
Instead, as you would probably expect, he's using the patents to force companies like Siemens (wait, didn't Siemens pay Benq to take their handset business away?) to pay him truckloads of cash.

dirt, damn, that's stupid but understandable, however was there a patent on the cd player or walkman?

[BloodAngel]

I'm reminded of that "hyperlink patent" stunt...

This'll go down quick, hopefully.