Two years and presumably zero replies later, a young Joe Belfiore introduced Buy From FM along with the Zune 3.0 software, which Ed says directly infringes on his patents -- and his lawsuit, filed ten days ago, asks the court to permanently stop sales of the Zune and award him triple damages in cash.

ENGADGET: blogger-avatar

Sadly, the "buy from FM" feature quickly reminded us why we can't stand music radio, and while we could easily get the meta data for the station we tuned to, specific (or sufficient) song data was more rare -- on our fourth or fifth try we finally nabbed Rod Stewart's Maggie May, and the actual download process was painless.

ENGADGET: Zune 3.0 hands-on Hands-on

Looks like someone at Microsoft should be paying slightly more attention to the mail: an ophthalmologist (yes, that's right) in Illinois named Edward Yavitz is suing Redmond over the Zune's Buy From FM feature, saying he wrote the software giant a letter in 2006 that disclosed his two relevant patents on the tech, suggested how it could be integrated into the Zune, and asked for a deal.

ENGADGET: blogger-avatar