Slashdot Mirror

The patent, like all patents, is published online. Go to: http://patft1.uspto.gov/netahtml/PTO/srchnum.htm And search for patent 3,167,440. It's four pages long. The ingredients are listed, though the exact proportions are not (several examples are given). Warning: Firefox made me install QuickTime to view the scanned images of the patent.

You can also take a look at the patent itself at http://patft1.uspto.gov/netahtml/PTO/srchnum.htm. Then search for patent US 3167440. Click the images button. They have a terrible viewing system, but it's there!

Look at the teaser, no "TM".

Do a search at the US Patent Office; no patent on Wii.

The plot thickens?

Even the USPTO doesn't find it.

Oh it's there: http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=q h7s7t.3.1

Sadly, not for Nintendo. Unless of course they're switching to making razor blades.

What would you expect Nintendo to say in the case that this were true? What would you expect Nintendo to say in the case that this were false? Every other system I've seen has had their trademarks registered and searchable long before the announcement of the system name. Even the USPTO doesn't find it.

But maybe they really did make a quick decision, and that it didn't filter through the trademark system yet. However, they also didn't register any websites about the name, which should have shown up in the amount of time that it took to create the Wii animation. And since they didn't, wii related websites are already thoroughly squatted.

Chances: possible, but unlikely.

there are no on any of the graphics from nintendo and i couldn't find anything on TESS Either

Now, if you could figure out how to turn other people into robo-zombies who you could direct over IRC to pay the $75 for you, you might actually be able to work things out. Or you could do an algorithmic complexity attack: figure out how the patent office sends claims to examiners, target an examiner in particular, and pre-calculate your patents to just overwhelm him. Of course, thats not likely to be nearly as effective in real life, because the Patent Office (unlike most hash algorithm) can probably load-balance without appreciably affecting the speed of their systems (it helps that hash algorithms are assumed to be fast, and the Patent Office... ha, ha, ha).

Read TFP (The Patent): "As a result, the integrated sensing device can not only output images (e.g., as a display) but also input images (e.g., as a camera)."

I just hope they don't patent it!

Re 3: http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=P TO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch- adv.html&r=0&f=S&l=50&d=PG01&Query=%22intellectual +ventures%22

Look at the dates. Consider the publication delay. Extrapolate.

Slashdot user Isaac mentions the idea of using this for a touch sensitive display. I couldn't find this mentioned in the patent application, so the race is on to file a follow-on patent!

But you wouldn't actually have to touch the screen. Years ago, MIT built a user interface called "put that there" that did gaze tracking and voice recognition, so that the "mouse pointer" was pointing at whatever object you happened to be looking at on the display. No need to touch a mouse, you just use your gaze. That might be possible with this technology. It could also be used to interpret hand gestures and facial expressions, and use them as input.

I personally think it would be cool to build a software-programmable mirror. Think of a bathroom mirror with zoom functionality, image enhancement functions, etc. The extra functions are activated by hand gestures, and face recognition is used to determine the centre of zoom (because in a bathroom, you normally want to zoom in on your face).

Doug Moen

Incorporating sensing elements within the display will permit sensing multiple simultaneous points of contact of arbitrary size/shape in a tablet form-factor. Neat!

Apple's been patenting lots of touch-interface concepts recently, too. Vide.

This patent is probably more about touch-screens than screen as scanner (that'd be a neat trick too, but probably would require too much resolution) or camera (would require a different but perfectly calibrated refractive element at each sensor - probably impractical).

-Isaac

"Abstract

An audio-on-demand communication system provides real-time playback of audio data transferred via telephone lines or other communication links. One or more audio servers include memory banks which store compressed audio data. At the request of a user at a subscriber PC, an audio server transmits the compressed audio data over the communication link to the subscriber PC. The subscriber PC receives and decompresses the transmitted audio data in less than real-time using only the processing power of the CPU within the subscriber PC. According to one aspect of the present invention, high quality audio data compressed according to lossless compression techniques is transmitted together with normal quality audio data. According to another aspect of the present invention, metadata, or extra data, such as text, captions, still images, etc., is transmitted with audio data and is simultaneously displayed with corresponding audio data. The audio-on-demand system also provides a table of contents indicating significant divisions in the audio clip to be played and allows the user immediate access to audio data at the listed divisions. According to a further aspect of the present invention, servers and subscriber PCs are dynamically allocated based upon geographic location to provide the highest possible quality in the communication link." http://patft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=P TO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch- bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PTXT&s1=6985932&O S=6985932&RS=6985932 The term 'intelligent' is no where to be found in the text of the actual patent, that's just the term RealNetworks used to explain how the program which apparently does little but show the fancy text message "Buffering" works.

(But they cheated: the font definitions had extra information for hinting and scaffolding.)

So does TrueType, even if Microsoft's TrueType renderer is defective and most TrueType fonts in the wild have defective hints. But unfortunately, free software distributed in the United States cannot use the hints in TrueType until October 13, 2009 and must substitute its own hints.

by loading it into Audacity. Set Spectrogram size to 4096 on Preferences, maximum freq to ~2500Hz. Load up Deep Note from the USPTO website, stretch the audio tracks, and enjoy. It actually seems the description is pretty accurate - at first frequencies drift randomly, and then they converge to a set of fixed ones.

Wow. They trademarked this?

And the sounds of hell?

And for that matter, desn't that serve as prior art to this?

Wow. They trademarked this?

And the sounds of hell?

And for that matter, desn't that serve as prior art to this?

Wow. They trademarked this?

And the sounds of hell?

And for that matter, desn't that serve as prior art to this?

The packaging used to convey the DVD from Netflix to the customer passes through high-speed automatic sorting equipment at postal facilities. Further, the packaging used to convey the DVD from the customer to Netflix passes through high-speed automatic cancellation equipment at postal facilities, during which a postal cancellation mark is applied to the packaging. Because DVDs are manufactured from relatively brittle plastic material, and because the cancellation marks are applied with considerable force, a percentage of DVDs passing through the postal system in this manner are subject to damage, breakage or mutilation.

Based on the foregoing, there is a clear need for a way to package a fragile or breakable item for transport in the postal system from one party to another party in a manner that protects the item from damage, breakage or mutilation...

[The] pocket... is aligned away from the impact region. As a result, any mechanical impact applied by the postal processing equipment... does not impact directly over the item... Further, by providing a relatively stiff laminated leading edge [it] is less likely to jam in Postal Service mail processing equipment when the envelope is sent from sender to recipient.

For those who want to give it a listen, the trademarked THX sound is available on the USPTO's web site here.

They have a whole bunch of others here. It's kind of a fun page to click around on.

For those who want to give it a listen, the trademarked THX sound is available on the USPTO's web site here.

They have a whole bunch of others here. It's kind of a fun page to click around on.

I think that we are close to seeing why Apple *really* switched to Intel. Put on your tin foil hat because I'm about to take you for a conspiracy theory ride:

1) Intel have been working with Ovonyx since 2000 on a technology called phase change memory (or PRAM, for short). Basically, PRAM uses chalcogenide - the same material used in rewriteable optical media - in a solid state RAM, only it is manipulated electrically, instead of optically. This gives the RAM nonvolatility and random accessibility. It is several orders of magnatude faster than flash (nearly as fast as DRAM) and has a write cycle endurance of 10^12 demonstrated as of about 4 years ago.

2) Intel patent applications have led me to believe that they have made great strides in the technology, while remaining very tight lipped. Here's some insight. Note that they are discussing the displacement of SRAM, DRAM and flash with this technology. Noteworthy, is the following:

[0058] Turning to FIG. 5, a portion of a system 500 in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention is described. System 500 may be used in wireless devices such as, for example, a cellular telephone, personal digital assistant (PDA), a laptop or portable computer with wireless capability, a web tablet, a wireless telephone, a pager, an instant messaging device, a digital music player, a digital camera, or other devices that may be adapted to transmit and/or receive information wirelessly. System 500 may be used in any of the following systems: a wireless local area network (WLAN) system, a wireless personal area network (WPAN) system, or a cellular network, although the scope of the present invention is not limited in this respect.

Now, here's where it all begins:

Envision, if you will, a high-speed, nonvolatile memory with very low power consumption. This enables the following:

1) Intel Robson Technology. This would answer the question of durability. Why would Intel demo such a technology if flash memory would wear out in short order? With PRAM, you've got CMOS compatibility so you can throw the whole deal right into the processor.

2) Ultra-low power wireless devices. Add Intel's Wireless USB and you've got the perfect medium to talk to your iPod. In addition, your gonna end up using it for more than just an iPod. Store your entire "desktop" on the damn thing, add some authentication mechanisms and you can use any wireless USB equipped PC to log into your "wireless personal server".

There's more, but this should be good for now.

Thank you very much, but it wasn't my intention to troll specifically on the oil industry and the 100 mpg carburetor, but goes to show that sitting on patent is a viable business decision.

The U.S. Patent database has numerous entries for enhancements of fuel mixtures.

Too many to list there but the earliest and the latest of patents shows that fuel-mixture enhancement patent being sat on is still alive and well.

I do recall several Ph.D. economic papers from years back that sitting on patent HAS BEEN and CONTINUES to be an economic cost-effective business practice.

Reading the patents (6,044,471 and 6,785,825) one is struck by a few things:

1. The patents (especially the second one) show a clever idea: force the user to register the software in order for it to operate. I don't know if this was an original idea in 2004, but it is clever. Of course, just because it's clever doesn't mean it's patentable.
2. This idea doesn't seem to be clever enough to be non-obvious as required by section 103 of US Code Title 35.
3. More seriuosly, the patents claim to provide an "apparatus and method", but fail to describe any actual appartus beyond the computer running the software under question. This is really a patent on an idea which contravenes section 102 of Title 35.

Beyond all this, the real question is of economics: did it cost Mr. Colvin $118M to develop this "invention"? Society has no incentive to allow people to monopolize ideas which have a zero development cost: people would invent them anyway since there's a profit motive even if other people can employ the invention. It should therefore be clear that the Patent Clause and US Code Title 35 were not intended to cover this invention. The fact that it was accepted anyway tell us a lot (that we already knew) about the US patent system. For example "non-obvious" has devloved to mean "not already known", a situation which is beyond words.

Reading the patents (6,044,471 and 6,785,825) one is struck by a few things:

1. The patents (especially the second one) show a clever idea: force the user to register the software in order for it to operate. I don't know if this was an original idea in 2004, but it is clever. Of course, just because it's clever doesn't mean it's patentable.
2. This idea doesn't seem to be clever enough to be non-obvious as required by section 103 of US Code Title 35.
3. More seriuosly, the patents claim to provide an "apparatus and method", but fail to describe any actual appartus beyond the computer running the software under question. This is really a patent on an idea which contravenes section 102 of Title 35.

Beyond all this, the real question is of economics: did it cost Mr. Colvin $118M to develop this "invention"? Society has no incentive to allow people to monopolize ideas which have a zero development cost: people would invent them anyway since there's a profit motive even if other people can employ the invention. It should therefore be clear that the Patent Clause and US Code Title 35 were not intended to cover this invention. The fact that it was accepted anyway tell us a lot (that we already knew) about the US patent system. For example "non-obvious" has devloved to mean "not already known", a situation which is beyond words.

I haven't read anything yet, but this isn't a patent, it's a patent application. You can tell the difference by looking for the words 'patent application' or by seeing that the # isn't a patent number but some sort of timestamp (20040107368). Patents are in the millions range with thousands seperators, these timestamps are pretty evident. These are the two patents in question, #s gotten from TFA:

Patent 1
Patent 2

I haven't read anything yet, but this isn't a patent, it's a patent application. You can tell the difference by looking for the words 'patent application' or by seeing that the # isn't a patent number but some sort of timestamp (20040107368). Patents are in the millions range with thousands seperators, these timestamps are pretty evident. These are the two patents in question, #s gotten from TFA:

Patent 1
Patent 2

• Windows 95
• Windows NT 4.0 (Workstation)
• Windows NT 4.0 (Server)
• Windows 98
• Windows ME
• Windows 2000 (all versions)
• Windows XP (all versions)
• Office 95
• Office 97
• Office 2000
• Office XP

There is a 100 mpg carburetor patent that an oil company is sitting on. Dozens of batteries patents are sat on by automotives, oil and petrochemical industries.

This is the first time that I can remember the Slashdot community complaining about a patent application when there was still time for the site's resident cheapskates^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hcurmudgeons to do something about it. Do you think that you have killer prior art that shows that the claims in the case are anticipated or non-obvious? Well, it's time to get moving.

For the next ~6 weeks, you can submit patents and printed publications to the USPTO and have the examiner consider the submission. This opportunity comes at the low, low price of $180.

Just think about it, for $180 you can have the satisfaction of thwarting Philips and showing the USPTO your superior research skills. When you consider that an ex parte reexamination costs $2520, an inter partes reexamination costs $8800, and litigation costs several hundred thousand dollars, minimum, you can clearly see that this is an amazing bargain! A once in a lifetime opportunity! Surely something that you can't afford to miss!

Now, get going! Drag out your textbooks, IEEE journals, USENET archives, and web search tool of choice, and show The Man what you're made of!

[Disclosure: I'm quite certain that when I review this application file in PAIR in two months, I will see that absolutely nothing has been filed in the USPTO. I'd be shocked if I'm proven wrong.]

I wish I had a patent on ELECTRONIC Bullshit

Synthetic fecal fluid compound is already patented and I'm sure real fecal matter from a bull is prior art....heh...art.

Not really. The concept of simultaneously reading and writing a computer file that happens to be video data was patented back in 1993 by somebody else. It's a very broad patent, and is not easily worked around like most of the patents that TiVo actually filed.

Now TiVo owns the rights to that patent, but it's because they bought it out a couple of years ago. (And they were probably infringing that patent prior to that point. IOW, TiVo probably built its empire by violating others' intellectual property.) Basically, TiVo got their most valuable and dangerous IP the same way that any other patent troll company does: not with innovation, but with a cash payout.

http://patft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=P TO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch- bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PTXT&s1=5,995,705 .PN.&OS=PN/5,995,705&RS=PN/5,995,705
Ok, so that covers, hmmm, most things in my office and home- which generally, means that the patent is probably excessively broad (IANAL), but that's typically how they're written- so you could sue anyone anywhere. Since it seems so broad, I imagine that there is a good chance of finding some 'prior art' (somebody who did it before and made the information public, public knowledge=not patentable), such as technology to transmit pictures from scientific and military satelites, which both seem like they fit the above points. Furthermore, the technology seems like an obvious combination of existing technologies, in which case apple may be able to really fight them.

Some might say that big companies profit off the technology of little ones like burst, but I honestly despise non-existent technology being patented, as it removes a lot of the motivation for another company to independently develop it, market it, bring to the consumers, just so someone else can say that he or she told the USPTO about it 16 years ago and scoop up 1 hundred million or so, but I guess IP portfolio companies just wait for a company to succeed and then flip through their holdings to see what they can sue them for. Big tech companies are different, as they almost all infringe on each others patents but have a more unspoken standoff relationship of not suing whenever possible, so as to prevent eternal litigation. Small companies are problematic in this, as they might have no marketed technology, yet own patents, so they rarely infringe and are not part of the 'mutual destruction' standoff. Something about a suit driven company turns my stomach.

An idea does not equal a technology, and I wish the USPTO were more stringent in the applications (only recently was a functional example of a 'Warp Drive' required for that applicant). I know that the USPTO accepts ideas alone, and need not be at all functional, but at some point this is a real obstacle for innovation. Fraunhoffer's MP3 technology was viable and not just an idea for compressing audio (and making cymbals sound crappy). Both of my patents are for developed and published techniques. If I have the idea for non-hallucinogenic chewing gum that lets you travel through time, but someone else actually makes it, my hat's off to that dude.

http://patft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=P TO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch- bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PTXT&s1=5,995,705 .PN.&OS=PN/5,995,705&RS=PN/5,995,705
Ok, so that covers, hmmm, most things in my office and home- which generally, means that the patent is probably excessively broad (IANAL), but that's typically how they're written- so you could sue anyone anywhere. Since it seems so broad, I imagine that there is a good chance of finding some 'prior art' (somebody who did it before and made the information public, public knowledge=not patentable), such as technology to transmit pictures from scientific and military satelites, which both seem like they fit the above points. Furthermore, the technology seems like an obvious combination of existing technologies, in which case apple may be able to really fight them.

Some might say that big companies profit off the technology of little ones like burst, but I honestly despise non-existent technology being patented, as it removes a lot of the motivation for another company to independently develop it, market it, bring to the consumers, just so someone else can say that he or she told the USPTO about it 16 years ago and scoop up 1 hundred million or so, but I guess IP portfolio companies just wait for a company to succeed and then flip through their holdings to see what they can sue them for. Big tech companies are different, as they almost all infringe on each others patents but have a more unspoken standoff relationship of not suing whenever possible, so as to prevent eternal litigation. Small companies are problematic in this, as they might have no marketed technology, yet own patents, so they rarely infringe and are not part of the 'mutual destruction' standoff. Something about a suit driven company turns my stomach.

An idea does not equal a technology, and I wish the USPTO were more stringent in the applications (only recently was a functional example of a 'Warp Drive' required for that applicant). I know that the USPTO accepts ideas alone, and need not be at all functional, but at some point this is a real obstacle for innovation. Fraunhoffer's MP3 technology was viable and not just an idea for compressing audio (and making cymbals sound crappy). Both of my patents are for developed and published techniques. If I have the idea for non-hallucinogenic chewing gum that lets you travel through time, but someone else actually makes it, my hat's off to that dude.

I'm trying to get the government patent browsing page (http://www1.uspto.gov/web/patents/patog/week08/OG /patent.htm)to work, but so far Safari and Firefox seem to be barfing. Anyone have any luck looking up these patents with IE?

4,963,995; 5,995,705; 5,057,932 and 5,164,839 (you probably don't want the commas)

IEEE's Spectrum Magazine has an excellent article on Do-It-Yourself Patents this month. To answer your question, from the article:

The first step in conducting a [patent] search is to classify what it is you have invented. Look in the government classification manual to find the class and subclass that apply to your invention. The manual is available online at http://www.uspto.gov/go/classification/uspcindex/i ndexs.htm.

[skip example]

The next step is to search the patent database at http://patft.uspto.gov/netahtml/search-adv.htm.

It goes on from there. An excellent read.

IEEE's Spectrum Magazine has an excellent article on Do-It-Yourself Patents this month. To answer your question, from the article:

The first step in conducting a [patent] search is to classify what it is you have invented. Look in the government classification manual to find the class and subclass that apply to your invention. The manual is available online at http://www.uspto.gov/go/classification/uspcindex/i ndexs.htm.

[skip example]

The next step is to search the patent database at http://patft.uspto.gov/netahtml/search-adv.htm.

It goes on from there. An excellent read.

I'm not a patent attorney but I've filed about 40 patents on technology I've developed, written mostly by myself with a patent attorney just doing a final pass over the claims. There is a real art to writing good patent claims and if you're new to it you should get some professional help with at least that part (in addition to reading up on writing patents). In some ways a patent is like a computer program and the claims are the actual code -- the rest is just comments that help make the claims understandable. A court battle revolves completely around the claims. The battle is over whether the defendant's technology "reads" against the plaintiff's claims, and whether the relevant claims are valid, in light of ealier technology ("prior art").

A good prior art search makes your patent much more valuable and you are the best person to do that search, since you understand the subject area. There seems to be a common misconception that other patents are the main place you need to look. In my experience, the earliest prior art is almost never in other patents. For example, the best prior art for hash-based object naming I've seen is in a program called FWKCS that was used with a few BBS systems in the late 1980's. The patents in this area were all filed starting in the mid-1990's. Online mailing lists are a good source of pointers to programs and also descriptions of ideas that themselves constitute prior art, since they are public. Do some searching in Google Groups (formerly usenet groups) and in the archives of specialized mailing lists that are relevant to your topic (e.g., www-talk for early Internet-related ideas).

Academic papers are often an excellent source of prior art. Many papers are available online for free though citseer (http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/). You may also want to join the IEEE and ACM to gain access to their rather complete databases of all their published journal articles. Finally, you should also search in some patent databases. The USPTO has full text search online at their site (https://sportal.uspto.gov/secure/portal/efs-unreg istered). Subscription to a search database such as Delphion (http://www.delphion.com/) is relatively cheap if you only subscribe for a month or two. Note that the important date for a patent is its priority date, which is when it was filed or when an earlier application it is based on was filed. In the US, applicants are allowed to present proof in a court case that they actually had the idea up to a year before their priority date, so you may need to find art a year older than a filing date to be able to argue that a claim is invalid.

Finally, remember that you're searching for art relevant to claims (usually the broadest claims in a patent). Patents are not invalidated, specific sets of claims are. The more you understand what the most essential differences are between what you've done and what others have done before you, the stronger a set of claims you and an experienced patent writer will be able to put together. Good luck!

It may take a very long time to sift through all the related patents, but it's something you should do. For someone new to the IP game, it will take a long time to do your first one.

btw, trying to read all the patent gibberish written is laywer-speak will be difficult and irritating, if you're serious about your patent, you could just hire a patent laywer to do it for you, but that'll cost big money.

You can search a list of all registered patent attorneys in the US here.

http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/dcom/olia/oed/ros ter/

This is pretty much the only valid answer to this question, so we might as well shut the story down now.

Fortunately, we have other ways to use the methane.

means for controlling operation of said means for storing and said means for playback such that said converted signal can be continuously stored on said storage medium during either continuous or intermittent reconstitution of the stored signal as a video signal, whereby a user can control a variable delay between the storage and playback of a particular portion of a given video signal

Too late!

United States Patent 6,853,975

Dirksen , et al. February 8, 2005

Method of rating employee performance

Abstract

A method of rating employee performance includes: a) receiving a list of nominated raters from the employee, including at least one manager of the employee, a plurality of the employee's peers, and a plurality of the employee's direct reports; b) electronically soliciting and receiving manager approval of the list of nominated raters; c) electronically notifying the approved raters with instructions for rating the employee; and d) receiving employee ratings data from the approved raters, wherein the steps of electronically soliciting and electronically notifying are automated. The process also includes training all users of the system in a manner in which the ratings are calibrated by comparing case studies to specific behavioral examples to provide immediate feedback to the user in a training process which is fully automated.

Even if they can find away not to trigger the physical craving response by some subtle manipulation of the molecules, how can they remove the powerful psychological urge?

If you take GHB, it removes the physical urge to drink alcohol. It also makes you happier. Overall, the psychological urge to drink is greatly diminished. In fact, US Patent 6,436,998 covers GHB as an alcoholism treatment.

For the sake of comparison, how badly did you want to get drunk the last time you exercised? If you've never felt GHB, it is like a five mile run in a bottle.

Read the Fucking Patent.

TiVo's patent is for a particular method of recording one program, while watching another using low cost components. Clearly someone can come up with some other method of achieving this using low cost components or use just use more expensive components and not infringe on their patent.

Using a HD rather than a videotape was surely obvious

People make it seem like this is easy and obvious.

I hate to say it... but it is both easy and obvious. But that doesn't mean you can't get a patent for it, nor does it mean that the patent should not be upheld. I think this is a great day for patent law and a great day for Tivo. They said "Hold on, that's our idea, we had it, announced it and followed through with it first and here's our proof!" and deserve that credit and some kick back from everyone that wants to put an offering out using that patent.

I mean, come on, if MS can get this patent, #6,727,830: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PT O1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/netahtml/srchnum.htm &r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=6,727,830.WKU.&OS=PN/6,727,830&RS =PN/6,727,830 then that proves that being easy and obvious doesn't mean you can't get a patent.

Found on a TiVo press release.

US Patents

6,850,691 - Automatic playback overshoot correction system

6,847,778 - Multimedia Visual Progress Indication System

6,792,195 - Method and Apparatus Implementing Random Access and Time-Based Functions on a Continuous Stream of Formatted Digital Data (continuation of 6,327,418)

6,757,906 - Television Viewer Interface System

They also have exclusive licensing rights to

5,241,428 - Variable-Delay Video Recorder

Japanese Patents

3615486 - Multimedia Time Warping System

Chinese Patents

ZL 99804757.0 - Method and Apparatus Implementing Random Access and Time-Based Functions on a Continuous Stream of Formatted Digital Data (see US patent 6,327,418)

ZL 00805987.X - Data Storage Management and Scheduling System

This is of March 2005, they may have more since then. Also, if you want to search the text of the US patents, you can start here

So... this isn't something I should use as a cat toy?

I don't know about "all markets". Steven A. Silvers seems to own kids' googling.

I agree. I have always had a problem with Paul Graham because he is somebody who holds to situational morality - that is, his principles are negotiable depending on the situation he is in. The limits of what he considers acceptable go precisely to the limits of what he has already determined to do. In this essay he talks about how you have to patent because everybody else will - that it is acceptable because it is necessary, in his view. Things are only ever unacceptable to him if he has not found those things necessary in the course of his own activities.

Principles are only meaningful when you hold to them even when it is inconvenient to do so.

Let's take a look at Paul Graham's patents:

• Search engine using sales and revenue to weight search results;
• Remote web site authoring system and method (2);
• Remote web site authoring system and method (1); and
• Method for client-server communications through a minimal interface.

I see nothing there that is genuinely so innovative it deserves monopoly protection against others who might independently invent the same thing. At least one is blindingly obvious on its face, and the others seem to be nothing more than using natural combinations of existing uses ("next step in the road" type patents).