Meet the Digital Vinyl Systems That Predated N2IT’s Patent

It’s something we take for granted now, but not so long ago, the only way to scratch and cue records was with analog vinyl. Now, of course, simulating those behaviors using digital records on turntables connected to computers is commonplace. But that hasn’t stopped the question of who owns the technology from spawning legal disputes. Most recently, a suit brought by patent claimants N2IT against M-Audio was dismissed. You can read the history from the time N2IT, a two-person company, launched their first commercial digital DJing (for BeOS, no less) back in the late 90s.
In patents, “first” is everything. And while N2IT had the first commercial product, it seems that broadly speaking the concept of how to make digital DJing work was not exclusively theirs. Chris Bauer writes CDM to share documentation of his own working prototype in 1998, before N2IT shipped their product. Nor is he alone. N2IT hasn’t yet brought suit against digital DJ maker Serato, and Serato’s Steve West publicly demonstrated research at the University of Aukland which leads back to 1996, well ahead of N2IT’s own demos.
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