Pioneer of personal stereo wins millions in Sony case

1.00pm

The German inventor who pioneered the technology behind the Sony Walkman has won a multi-million-pound pay-out nearly 30 years after dreaming up his invention.

Andreas Pavel's original 1970s concept of the "stereobelt" revolutionised portable listening and Sony's version - the Walkman - became a global hit.

Now the 57-year-old stereo enthusiast, who works in Milan, is threatening to use his payout to sue Apple Computer, whose iPod portable music player is the digital successor to the Walkman.

He is believed to be considering cases in countries such as Italy and Canada where his patents were filed later and may still be valid.

It is understood that Mr Pavel has been offered several million euros to settle outstanding disputes with Sony over licence fees he claims to be owed on the Walkman, even though his European claim to authorship of the idea was rejected by the Court of Appeal in Britain in 1996.

Sony said the long-running dispute, which has gone on for 25 years, was settled "in friendly agreement" with Mr Pavel, who applied for a patent in 1977 for a "portable small component for the hi-fidelity reproduction of recorded sound".

He called it a "stereophonic production system for personal wear" - shortened to "stereobelt", and filed a patent in Britain in March 1978. The key idea was that it could be clipped to a belt or handbag, and produce sound to be played back through headphones.

Though he produced prototypes, none reached the market. Two years later Sony began marketing the Walkman, and has since sold more than 200 million players.

The move by Sony, which does not reverse the court decisions, follows the death in 1999 of the company's co-founder, Akio Morita, who was often cited as a driving force behind the invention and popularisation of the original cassette-playing Walkman.

The settlement brings to an end a dispute which has run since Mr Pavel used legal aid to bring court cases against Sony in the UK in 1993 and 1996. He lost both cases when judges ruled that his patent was invalid because it was an obvious extension of the technologies existing at the time that it was filed.

The US Patent Office had refused his patent application, so he was never able to sue Sony in one of its largest markets.

However, Sony did pay Mr Pavel a licence fee of DM150,000 in the 1980s for the original Walkmans sold in Germany. Those had two earphone plugs and a "hotline" button for reducing the volume - both details included in Mr Pavel's original patent application drawings. Those features were removed from subsequent versions of the Walkman.

Mr Pavel's first court failure in 1993 in the UK left him with a legal bill of £1.7m, which Sony said it would waive if he agreed not to appeal against the verdict. When he refused, it seized his assets. In 1996 Mr Pavel brought his appeal against Sony in Britain, where he was eligible as a European citizen for legal aid. He lost again, leaving British taxpayers with a legal bill of £500,000.

If Mr Pavel now sues Apple Computer over the iPod player, it is unclear whether his patent is still valid: normally patents are only valid for 20 years from the date of application. Apple did not introduce the iPod, which stores its music on a tiny hard disk, until October 2001. The first version of Mr Pavel's patent was published in Italy in 1978.

If Mr Pavel does follow up on his threat, it would be the second lawsuit surrounding Apple's newly developed interest in music. The company is also being sued by the Beatles' management company Apple, which says that the computer company is infringing an agreement struck in the 1990s not to use the name Apple in ventures into the music market. That lawsuit continues.

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