Slashdot Mirror
TiVo Infringes On Pause Patent
Blackwulf writes: "It seems that there's a company named Pause Technologies which patented in 1992 the ability to pause live TV, play a portion of it, and then skip ahead to live TV. They are now suing TiVo for infringing on their patent. Motorola has already paid licensing fees for their upcoming PVR, and Pause Technologies is speaking with other PVR makers offering licenses to them as well. Yahoo has the story here." Pausing. Obviously, a new idea, and one worthy of patenting. I think I'm going to patent the play button.
They have to make money somehow...like Rambus
Does this mean that ATI is also infringing on the patent since their All In Wonder cards come with software that allows you to pause live TV?
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Worthy of a patent, methinks.
Does CMGi own a portion of this company also?
Yes, my girlfriend is a BitchX
I can't imagine how this could stand up in court. When I first read about the Tivo a few years ago and learned that it had a "pause live TV" feature, I immediately knew that this was how it worked.
Hey, I remember using this patent back when I was a kid, looooong before this "Pause Technologies" patented the idea.
It was called blinking.
Pretty simple technology, really: (A) Look at scene. (B) Close eyes. Brain continues to recall scene, effectively pausing the action. (C) Open eyes. Live action playback is resumed.
Ah, if only I'd known that this was such an innovative idea, I'd have patented it back in '72. Coulda been a billionaire by now -- those VCRs wouldn't be nearly as useful without frame-by-frame playback!
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
Please post all "I think I'm going to patent [insert obvious commonly used everyday thing here]! hehehe! Aren't I clever!" type posts under this thread so they they can be summarily ignored.
that I could pause the time so I can have planty of time to finish the first post.
Pause... Now!
"Pausing. Obviously, a new idea, and one worthy of patenting. I think I'm going to patent the play button. "
The patent was on puasing a LIVE TV stream. That would involve buffering on some end to keep the stuff that normally would get lost in a live one way feed like most tv signals.
At the next eco-hypocrisy-meeting, count the private jets used to get to the meeting. Should be interesting to see that
How in the world did companies ever make money before we were able to patent things like pausing videos? I mean, what incentive would there be to bring anything to market at all? I'm amazed we ever made it thru the industrial revolution. Patents rock!
Unless there is some real-time aspect or specific digital technology at issue here, I don't see them winning this one. Who knows? Screw it, I don't use Tivo anyway. Why watch TV when you can program an old Apple //c?
Doesn't that describe a very common and straightforward buffer, such as the kind that have been employed in portable CD players for years now?
How many of us saw the Tivo pause function and said "Hey! That's a great idea!" because we had never thought of it? In 92 pausing live TV was probably novel and non-obvious.
Best Slashdot Co
...Sweeping Generalizations"! If so, I'd have some papers on their way to /. right now. ;)
That comment was so silly, Hemos, I first assumed that Cmdr "Rob" Taco had posted it!
typical slashdot nonsense. they didnt patent "pausing," they patented "pausing live television." but it plays out better to the anti patent weenies when you mistate the facts.
I have a patent pending on a conditional execution control in a digital computing device. You'd better think twice before you type if(){;}else{;} or my lawyers will be coming after you.
And that includes switch constructs too.
This kind of thing makes me mad. How can anyone patent everyday ideas. I think I am going to go patent the idea of having a electronics switch in a simple circuit between the power source and a light source. I will call it a light switch.
Talk about dumb. I hope TiVo takes them to court and kicks their asses.
hrrm.
I think there should be a new patent rule... if you can't demonstrate what you wish to patent, then you should not be granted the patent...
Otherwise I can sit here and patent the next 400 gigahertz chip, and when Intel/AMD make it there, can claim that I hold a patent on a silicon chip running at that speed, so pay up... How does this work???
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
Why did they wait so long to file the lawsuit?
I can think of two reasons:
1.) Waiting until TiVo has plenty of money to get the most outta them.
2.) The bad economy has required them to find outside revenue.
I think its a combination of the two.
That alone should show it doesn't hold much water.
Quality straight pr0n goes here
I thought patents where meant to protect "non-obvious" solutions to problems.
Here's a link to patent in question (RES36801) from the US Patent and Trademark Office. The link was pulled off the pause technology website.
People on slashdot have a tendency to speak badly of technology patents, and for the most part I agree, but this one seems valid. Look at when it was filed. 1992. Very very few people were even thinking about the idea of pausing live TV back then. Just because it is a simple idea (especially now) does not mean the patent isn't valid when it was filed for. That's the nature of technology. You could make a case of "patent squatting" since the company doesn't appear to have done anything with the patent, but that's a whole other can of worms.
The company could be an "idea" company like Rambus, which I can't really say I like the idea of, but they've been around for a long time. I guess they add value somewhere.
Khyron
Looks like I'll have to see who capitualtes and who doesn't when I shop for a PVR. Seems I won't be buying a Motorola model.
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
I am going to patent the process of patenting a process and then...
Well, I guess I win
Wouldn't the TiVo method of accomplishing this task be substantually different that the Pause patent, therefore not infringing?
"Remember, any tool can be the right tool." -- Red Green
It's nitpicky I know, but this is a press release from the company that holds the patent, not what I consider a reliable "journalistic" source.
"Slashdot is about legos and staplers." -Cmdr. Taco
This looks suspicious to say the least. Go to their site, apparently as a company Pause Technologies does... Well, nothing, except has this one patent. They have maybe six total pages on their whole site, and none of them reference anything concrete beyond this one patent. My guess is this company is just a facade (Note the 'llc' instead of 'inc', this is usually a pretty clear sign) for an individual or law firm that decided they wanted to make a quick buck.
Not to say they didn't patent it, but they're trying to pass themselves off as a technology company. Much more likely some asshole with dollar signs in his eyes was looking at a vcr remote one day and thought, "Eureka!" The rest is history.
-- If we were in any other industry they would've shot us a long time ago.
I realize this is way offtopic, but can someone tell me WTF is going on with Gimp.org? Can't get to any gimp.org site and I've been trying to get Gimp32 for two days.
can be found here
Wow... reminds me of the Aussie guy who patented the wheel...
(This comment did not pass the lameness filter)
If God gave us curiosity
This is like those idiot cybersquatters. These morons patent a concept, do jack shit to develop it, then get mad when someone else does. There should be a clause in US Patent law that requires you to actually implement your ideas. Otherwise people just sit on it until someone else makes it work, then reap huge financial rewards for being the first to buy the piece of paper.
One wonders why they didn't do something a couple of years ago when Tivo first started selling these boxes...
-Ryan, with the unoriginal sig
>Pause Technology is an intellectual property company focused on the Personal Video Recorder market and related industries. In addition to licensing our existing patents we are interested in acquiring new ones as well. Please direct any representations of new technologies to Charlie Call .
Pause Technology, founded in 2000, is an LLC that has been well funded by major corporate and individual shareholders.
There use of technology is the only technology in the whole company. Does it make sense that a company founded in 2000 can buy old "unexploited" patients and sue innovative companies? Bad lawyers...bad...bad.
What is pirate software? Software for inventory of stolen treasure?
it would be a much better use of hemos' and slashdot user's time and resources if the top article on the home page were always the same -- titled "WE HATE PATENTS" -- and then everyone could just make the same old comments once.
a stitch in time saves nine.
go get it
I therefore suggest that the US 5th Cavalry and the Tie Fighters attack from the south, and turn Pause into the kind of rubble Afghanistan already is.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
It's all in how the patent's worded, of course. If the patent is too broad, then it'll get killed by prior art. If it's too narrow, TiVO will get off scott free. However, the fact that Motorola licensed the technology indicates there may actually be some merit to this patent debate. There's also the fact that Pause tried to talk to TiVO about it before taking it to court.
/insert basic idea here/ and make a money" may be inappropriate. It really all depends on the wording in the patent. If they really did get a good patent on the idea, then they should be allowed to defend it. The idea of pausing live TV is still pretty innovative, and thus if the technology is described with no vague BS, then the patent dispute is valid.
It's highly likely this is a legitimate complaint, so remarks like "oh I think I'll go patent
Electronic Frontier Foundation for online civil rights information
...back in 1992, the computer technology was nowhere NEAR advanced enough to allow for pausing of live TV using a PVR. The memory and disk space requirements would have been functionally impossible. So this patent, while describing a neat idea, was functionally useless until about 2-3 years ago.
While that doesn't invalidate the patent in and of itself, it does make me wonder what the "inventor" intended to do with this idea. How can you invent something that can't be built?
on how long a company can sit on a patent before the begin to make it into a marketable product.....9 years and no product to market......sounds like they did not have the capitol and sat on it waiting for some one to make a device that did this....now look, Tivo, UltimateTV, Replay, Etc......all made a product that infringes on this patent, whos in the money now and they did not even have to make anything to show how to implement it....sounds just as sneaky as the guy who copyrighted the terms year 2000 and Y2K.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
What's a TiVo?!? and I'd get pissed if it kept pausing my Live TV 'cause then it's not "live" anymore, so in essence TiVo would be killing my TV, and that's bad, I should at least be able to pawn it!
Bad TiVo, Bad!!
Just because I AM paranoid doesn't mean they're NOT out to get me.
They did the right thing and paid the original creator for use of the technology.
The patent covers more than more than the act of pausing, it covers the way the way it's achieved. Instead of using this technology, they might have developed something different to achieve a similar result.
Then there'd be no trouble here.
I like fire ants. They are very spicy!
I can't see how anyone can patent an idea like "buffer incoming stream while last image shown on screen" since it sounds like a no-brainer of an idea. How else would someone pause live TV? After all, isn't that how using multiple VCR's connected to a mixer works? The TV networks have been doing that for decades.
Now, if they wanted to patent the technology (this much RAM with a widget controller and a framistat regulator wired up like this...) then that might survive the Supreme court
Isn`t that just a trivial application of a circular
buffer. Or has someone a patent on that too. Any framegrabber uses this in much the same way.
I don`t understand how the American patent office
can grant a patent like that. What kind of people
work for them. Not the likes of Einstein, that`s for
sure.
This frivolous patent policy will certainly not further innovation. Next thing you know they patent the random switching button that clicks through your channels at random so that you can rest your thumb.
***Quis custodiet ipsos custodes***
I think it is high time that there was a large, organized effort to blow these ridiculous patents out of the water. Its obvious that patent officials and the legal system are not doing enough to stop this kind of abuse. Are there any current, large scale efforts to gather prior art and have these patents revoked? Partucularly as companies like M$ buy up patents to quash competition, it seems like it would be in the best interests of the OS community (and everyone else) to organize a resistance.
This would be yet another way to show the world that OS is on the side of the people.
Pause Technology is an intellectual property company focused on the Personal Video Recorder market and related industries. In addition to licensing our existing patents we are interested in acquiring new ones as well. Please direct any representations of new technologies to Charlie Call .
Pause Technology, founded in 2000, is an LLC that has been well funded by major corporate and individual shareholders.
It looks to me that this company was founded after TiVo and Replay were already products. They must have bought a patent from someone so they could try to exploit other companies that actually did something with the technology. IMNSHO, patents should be a bit more like trademarks, in that you have to use the technology or you lose it.
Pausing. Obviously, a new idea, and one worthy of patenting. I think I'm going to patent the play button.
I take offense to that comment. I realize that this is the normal attitude here on Slashdot and it's really warranted most of the time, especially dealing with companies like Microsoft, etc. However this technology is rather complicated and innovative and will actually improve the TV watching experience, especially for those sports lovers out there. There's a lot more than just a "pause" button that goes into this.
~ now you know
As a programmer, I call it a "buffer". In this case you're buffering the data until the receiver (human viewer) is able to deal with it. A widely applicable concept which has probably been around as long as digital communication has been in use.
I patented the online discussion board in order to bash Microsoft on a daily basis. Look it up. Hemos and Taco....write me a check or I'll see your asses in court.
Pause Technology is an intellectual property company focused on the Personal Video Recorder market and related industries
...
Pause Technology, founded in 2000, is an LLC that has been well funded by major corporate and individual shareholders
Let's see. This new company finds old, overreaching, undefended and ignored patents, buys them and then sues people who came up with the same idea independently and DOES SOMETHING WITH IT.
Can you say leeches?
--- If it's worth doing, it's worth doing in Perl!
My Sony TV has this feature. If a press a button on the remote the picture freezes and when I press it again live images continue (images in between are lost).
Of cource it is no use because the delay is too big and you'll miss part of the stuff you're watching.
I find it interesting that the only purpose of this company seems to be to license it's patents. Now perhaps this idea needs a bit of refinement, but maybe there should be some sort of clause in patent law that prohibits "patent squatting". I mean the whole purpose of patent law to help companies get their products to market without someone blantanly ripping them off before they could do it right? So if you file a patent and never develop anything, perhaps the term should be shortened or something... but I suppose that might be hard to enforce too... oh well back to reality.
--
Some weasel took the cork out of my lunch.
Interesting... We're talking about one of the best minds of the 20th century (/sarcasm)
more patents by the same guy
my favorites:
Apparatus for testing lumber stiffness
(how to check the stiffness of wood. wierd trend he set here)
System for using a touchpad input device for cursor control and keyboard emulation
(it's called repatenting the touchpad)
Audio message exchange system
(you know how old answering machines use a looping cassette? well yeah, that in computer form)
Billing system and method
(*any* ebilling system would infringe on this patent)
Techniques for changing the behavior of a link in a hypertext document
(any dynamic page violates this patent)
If God gave us curiosity
Don't you think it is time we seriously mobilize our community to change copyright and patent law... and change it in the _right_ direction. The framers of our constitution were aware of the delicate balance between the rights of people to profit from their ideas and the rights of humanity as a whole to profit. Sadly, only one side of this debate (the "idea" holders) are influencing the system these days. We need to balance this out. We need to fight for greater freedoms to do what we wish with information. Only then does the appropriate balance have a chance at restoration.
I agree with the argument that an obvious idea at time x may not have been obvious at time x-10, so was worthy of a patent then. But AFAIK, Tivo didn't use Pause Technologie's implementation of the "compressed-video-FIFO" of whatever they called it. Tivo reinvented the same idea again, probably without knowing about Pause's patent (this alone makes it sound like a submarine patent). IMO, independent invention, if not being totally illegal.
;-), I should be allowed to patent it and sell that implementation. If someone else comes up with the same idea, and it turns out they stole it from me (trade secret for instance), I should be able to sue them. But if they work for 10 years and come up with the same formula, without ever knowing that I had, I shouldn't be able to ay anything.
The idea of patents is to reward people (for a limited period of time) for the work of creating useful inventions/ideas by being able to charge people money to use them. If I come up with a nify way to make a magnet out of cerium and boron somehow (not magnetic AFAIK, but if it is, I get first dibs
Of course, pantents are public record (at least some parts of them are), so it could be very difficult to prove that Tivo "had no knowledge of Pause's patent" prior to coming up with the Tivo machine. This would always be a problem with patents, more so when the idea is a 'simple one' ("gee, I was browsing the patent database one day and saw this one about pausing live tv. I didn't look at it, but that could make a lot of money" Does that constitute "knowledge of the patent? I don't know)
She's hot!
I bet the framers of the US Constitution are rolling in their graves. The patent system was developed so that someone who invented something could sell the product without fear of having their idea stolen.
Now we have these companies who don't invent anything buying the patents and leeching money from people who actually build things.
That's so lame.
Perhaps there should be a law prohibiting the trasfer of patents. You can license technology, but you can't sell a patent outright.
Simultaneous recording and playback apparatus
AbstractRead Carl Sagen's "Demon Haunted World" and it will probably help you come to a rational explanation of what you saw.
Open Source Identity Management: FreeIPA.org
I can actually see where this would be worthwhile as it applies to pausing a LIVE BROADCAST.
That is different. Patents are not just on a general idea or object, but also an application of that.
An example of this would be the difference between a patent on the spark plug and the stun gun. The same device throws electricity into your engine or into your assailant, but the application is different.
sorry, hemos has that one locked up and put to bed.
You can use the mediaplayer to record a radio show. Then you start another mediaplayer and play the file as it records - BINGO. You have a time delayed play of a live feed....
It might not be circular, but it should be close enough...
Give me a break. It's just using a buffer to store a datastream until a later point in time. If this is a patent infringement, then half the software out there is a patent infringment. Good god, what's next, patenting the concept of a variable?
You've got to remember that during the era when when the patent was filed (circa 92?) that this wasn't all that obvious (well... to most).
/. earlier today about email... pity that guy didn't think to patent the idea of "Sending messages to a remote machine". :-)
On a slightly offtopic note, I can't help thinking of the story on
Patents cannot be issued for any technique which "would be obvious to any practitioner of the craft." Am I the only programmer who thinks he could whip together a system to do this in a couple of days?
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
Every news room in the country had this technology at their disposal in 1992. The big three had it in 1962 too, to keep those rock and roll riff raff from swearing on the air.
You know for damn sure NBC had it for Saturday Night Live with Chris Rock, Dennis Miller, and god help the old farts, Gilda Radner.
Obviously, old technology being used in a new application should NOT be patentedable. If it were patentedable, one could patent using a hammer on ytrium-oxide alloy, so as to form them into a new shape.
Using a wheel to drive your car on a new and improved type of concrete, lets call it monopolete, should not be patentable.
Furthermore, anything ever seen on the Jetsons is prior art. Simply because hanna barbara didn't patent a flying mag lev jet car doesn't mean it isn't prior art. I don't want to here people patenting today what could/should have been patented 40 years ago so that patent would have expired already.
The same goes for anything written by Jules Verne, Arthur C Clarke, Asimov, DaVinci or Descartes. If you actually BUILD a geostationary elevator, you can and should be able to patent the _specific_ technology that you _used_ for that physical construction.
Don't think you can patent every concept imaginable for the next twenty years (much less the last twenty) and then wait ten years and sue anyone using it.
Recording to disk hasn't been possible until quite recently. Delayed palyeback is inconvenient or impossible with tape. Given the problem, the solution seems obvious. This appears to be a patent on a problem.
Isn't my Discman's anti-shock technology utilizing a 'circular buffer'?
Is it me or are recent patents becoming more ridiculous?
How long has radio time delay been used? You know the ones that allow them to censor the callers who swear on the air before it gets sent out on the airwaves? This sounds a bit similar... I wonder if it is pre-1992?
This helps show how this is just another patent buying fiend out to make a buck.
(not too much lameness here.)
Ok maybe Tivo should have done a little research to see if anyone has any outstanding patents (it seems Motorola did (research)), but patenting the pause button is a little silly. Ok, I can perfectly understand the fact that this company is suing Tivo for use of a practice (I don't even consider this technology) that they own without appropriate royalties, etc. However what I don't understand is how the govt can possibly justify giving somebody a patent on something mundane as pausing television. If it was the technology of pausing television then yes (all the hardwork went into developing that technology). But for the concept? What if someone had patented the idea of a button on an html page. (Bare with me here). Its not all that different, neither were implemented technology. Would the world wide web consortium have violated that patent when they decided on html? I know the comparison is kind of rediculous, but isn't the idea of patenting a concept alittle rediculous too? In a perfect world/democracy an idea should be open, with technique being patenable. That seems to be the best way of conserving competitiveness while protecting accomplishment.
can't sleep slashdot will eat me
Of course this thread will degenerate into rants along the lines of "I will patent breathing", but despite the snide remark, back in 1992, pausing LIVE TV was definitely an original idea. Remember, digital VCRs didn't exist back then. Video capture cards were hideously expensive and reserved for professional video editors. At that time, the idea that you could pause live TV and then start playing it again while it was still recording was unheard of.
What does "reissued" mean on their patent? Does this patent bite the dust in 2009 or 2017?
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
you could however, consider getting a trademark (or something) for IT, should you acquire this unpatentable URL from us, due to your interest in the brave gnu world of open/honest communications/commerce, & your ability to follow some simple directions. IT may not be as exciting as goats.ex, but likely much more useful.
djia hear the one about billoneous payper LieSense bs ?pr? fud, being dead? it is as far as we're concerned.
don't be the only one in the wwworld who hasn't seen the face scans of the REAL .commIEs, at our aNTease cite.
The patent says that this records audio or video. Hard disks were probably quite capable of recording a more than adequate length of audio back then.
I agree with the argument that an obvious idea at time x may not have been obvious at time x-10, so was worthy of a patent then. But AFAIK, Tivo didn't use Pause Technologie's implementation of the "compressed-video-FIFO" of whatever they called it. Tivo reinvented the same idea again, probably without knowing about Pause's patent (this alone makes it sound like a submarine patent). IMO, independent invention, if not being totally illegal.
;-), I should be allowed to patent it and sell that implementation. If someone else comes up with the same idea, and it turns out they stole it from me (trade secret for instance), I should be able to sue them. But if they work for 10 years and come up with the same formula, without ever knowing that I had, I shouldn't be able to ay anything.
The idea of patents is to reward people (for a limited period of time) for the work of creating useful inventions/ideas by being able to charge people money to use them. If I come up with a nify way to make a magnet out of cerium and boron somehow (not magnetic AFAIK, but if it is, I get first dibs
Of course, pantents are public record (at least some parts of them are), so it could be very difficult to prove that Tivo "had no knowledge of Pause's patent" prior to coming up with the Tivo machine. This would always be a problem with patents, more so when the idea is a 'simple one' ("gee, I was browsing the patent database one day and saw this one about pausing live tv. I didn't look at it, but that could make a lot of money" Does that constitute "knowledge of the patent? I don't know)
come on you pussies, fire up your fork'd wget scripts, find a nearby oc-3, plug in, and slashdot the hell out of these people!
"Pause"ing is what buffers were invented for in the first place. A buffer is also known as a queue, or a line. They all serve the same function, to regulate activity.
The first known usage is over 70,000,000 years ago when the scavenging dinosaurs lined up and waited for the bigger ones to eat their fill of brontosaurus brugers.
"It's a patent on the concept of freezing a live feed and buffering the incoming picture"
Isn't that "pausing" live T.V.?
This is a type of pausing, so, you're wrong...
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
It looks like Pause Technologies is a one person company. I think this guy pretty much came up with the obvious idea knowing that it would be possible some day, but never build a prototype, then made the patent. Really, I wonder if this guy even has a schematic or any technical documents describing in more detail how it works.
Hmmm. I think I will start a company, call it Warp Technologies and patent a device that makes travel in excess of 300e6 m/s possible. That way, when the warp engine is finally invented, I can rake in the dough without even having think about how the technology works, because I already patented it!
So then the sole function of this company is to buy patents and send their legions of lawyers after everyone in sight. There should be some law against this. I'm all for getting what you're owed, but it's not like this is a company or individual that invented the technology. All they did was buy the patent off of someone else for the purpose of sending out the attack lawyers. IMHO, we need laws to make patents non-transferable. If some entity wants to license the technology, fine, but they shouldn't be able to outright buy the patent. Then again, I'm an idiot, so take it for what it's worth...
do not read this line twice.
This sounds like double buffering graphics to me. With a few more buffers. Tripple buffering, 100 buffering, 5000 buffering. Who cares. It has been done for 20 years.
Tivo needs to patent the 'Slinky Buffer'. When you pause 'live tv' your slinky is squeezed (i.e. time is compressed), you can then move quickly through time to reach 'now', which is a completely stretched out slinky.
I don't understand the circular buffer. In any case, wouldn't the 16550 UART be prior art? Incoming data is buffered, and you don't actually see the data at the precise moment it arrives at your pc.
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
Patents are designed to screw over independent re-inventions. Patents are gov't granted monopolies - the very antithesis of captialism and free markets.
Volvo patented crumple sections in cars. How many people died in the 17 years after that? because the licensing fees would have raised the price beyond the free market level?
So the original author of this patent sold out to Pause. So what? It doesn't mean his claim has no merit.
It's unlikely that any single individual would have the legal resources to fight off even a smallish corporation. Litigation is expensive, and a little guy wouldn't stand a chance against Tivo in court. Selling out to a bunch of lawyers is the only way this inventor will see a dime.
If this patent has been on the books since '92, don't Tivo, et. al. have some liability for ignoring it?
If this inventor was the first with an idea, he is entitled to a limited-duration monopoly to try and develop it. Not because it benefits him, but because providing protection and encouragement for inventors is for the good of the entire public. If you don't believe that, your argument isn't against this patent, it's against the entire patent system.
and this was an obvious application.
There was a time when filing a patent alone was not enough to protect an invention. The original intention of patent law was to encourage to spread of knowledge and advancement of technology in a fledgling nation. Paten protection arose to protect innovators who would otherwise be tempted to keep IP secret rather than to expose it and risk its theft. Why not then bring back the requirement, as it used to be, that the idea has to be implemented in a commerically viable way or declare the patent protection period over? The reason this requirement was lost was that large corproations like ot patent squat to stifle innovation by small firms: if you file enough defensive patents around your products, and have a big company's legal resoruces, you can bully and bar small companies from competition with you. So much for entrepreneurship. A lot of innovation is being squelched by these patent squatters who file a broad patent and then wait for someone else to make something similar and commercially viable in order to pounce. This is not in keeping with the spirit and intention of patent law. Sure the concept was patentable by Pause but TiVo made it work and so should have been able to wrest the patent from Pause after a period of say 5 years if Pause did not capitalize on it. Otherwise innovation gets locked away to noone's (except ligitgators) benefit. That's not what the founders of this country appear to have intended.
It's a really, really, really, really simple, obvious, non-novel concept. Actually, before I even knew what a fucking Tivo did, I started working on a Linux box to do this.
I guess I'm just a freaking genius then, since this is supposedly such a novel concept. I should have patented this 10 years ago when I was 13... right...
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
I considered some home built projects involving video in the mid to late 80's but a review of the available technology placed the price beyond my reach. From my point of view as an engineer, in conceptual terms, this was probably thought of manys times between 10 and 20 years ago and not done because of the cost. I am sure that the general concept was even being executed in some manner in the 80's. It seems that the simplest most obvious concepts of those "skilled in the art" are being patented through an agency that I am suprised has not issued a new patent on the lever (the oldest and simplest tool known to man)executed with software control. Or maybe they have and I don't know about it.
This completely fails the obviousness test.
Patents are to protect mechanism not functionality. Once you decide you want the functionality of pausing a live broadcast, any halfway bright techie could give you a dozen different buffering methods (buffer on tape loop, buffer on disk, buffer on drum, buffer in RAM, etc.). All of these mechanisms are obvious, because they would be generated in a short brainstorming session with a small random selection of video engineers (i.e. people with ordinary skill in the relevant art), and would likely be generated by any one randomly selected video engineer.
It's very important that the functionality is not patentable, because the function is exposed in marketing, while the mechanism might be kept secret, and the main purpose of patents is to encourage publishing of what would be trade secrets.
This is the worst kind of idiotic patent: very vague on mechanism, later used to attack anyone implementing the same functionality. Just like those jerks who tried to sue everyone using FMV in games because they had a patent on a playback-on-demand system (never mind that they specified a completely unrelated mechanism).
---
You'd be surprised at the broadband connection available to things crawling around in your hair.
Since the disk space is not infinite it must be a circular buffer. Actually any kind of buffer that can be written to and read at the same time, without the read and write areas overlapping would fill the
requirements. So it is trivial in any case.
***Quis custodiet ipsos custodes***
The patent mentions "The circular buffer is implemented by a digital memory". To me there is a difference between permanent storage (hard disk) and memory (RAM). The delay when TIVO starts is because it uses the hard disk not RAM.
If this is the case, then they are using a different mechanism and this patent does not apply. TIVO is much more than a "pause" system.
Tivo never actually plays live TV. It only plays recordings. Tivo is constanly recording the incoming video stream. The interface that you have is just a playback of recorded programs, including the current "live buffer". However, you can never actually watch live tv, the closest you can get is a ~2 second delay. Everything you see is coming directly off the harddrive... Maybe this is enough of a difference to not be infringing?
-- these are only opinions and they might not be mine.
When I saw Tivo, I thought "it's about time!" This sort of thing has been around for a long time. Expensive, yes, but around. And definitely not "non-obvious".
Dlugar
Computer Go: Writing Software to Play the Ancient Game of Go
No, its already been done by Paramount and Star Trek in the 60's. You get nothing, but the inifinite energy yeild from dilithium when you find it.
The AIWs do this too, just no mention.
--------
It's OK to be social, just don't tell anyone about it.
...including this one from 1999. It looks remarkably similar to the one that Pause Technology is trying to concoct, except more thorough and clearly with a physical implementation in mind.
This particular patent is apparently not terribly vague on mechanism. So it's only the second worst kind: patenting a totally obvious approach while it's too expensive to implement, so you can go and pester everyone when it becomes feasible.
---
You'd be surprised at the broadband connection available to things crawling around in your hair.
Since this thread has been dedicated to it, and you bring it up, could we patent n-click (where n>1) purchasing? Thus we kill all the competition in one stone. Hell, Amazon should do it. They patented 1-click, they patented n-click, thus they own all clicks :)
I know, I know, the jokes are getting old (hence this thread)...
It wasn't that new of an idea, even in 1992. I remember an "I Dream of Jeannie" episode where, at the end of the episode, Jeannie wants to go out and do something, and the dude that Larry Hagman played wanted to watch a very important football game. Jeanne blinked, paused the TV, and presumebly, when they got back Jeannie blinked again, and the game continued.
So the idea of pausing live TV has been around since at least September 1970 (When the last original episode of Jeannie aired), and probably around alot longer then that.
Patent number is RE36801
Ummm, Jon, aren't you supposed to be dead...? - Otter(3800)
But you can't be sued for infringement unless you knowingly infringe.
If you didn't know there was a patent, and the patent holder didn't tell you, they can't sue you for damages, no?
I thought they could only go for damages after they inform you of the patent and you ignore them.
Sort of the history eraser button... 'cept different!
I seek not only to follow in the footsteps of the men of old, I seek the things they sought.
It doesn't matter if you independently come up with the idea, or if you use someone elses patent as a source of information. Either way, you are infringing on their patent.
You might be right about lawsuits though... I don't think you can sue for infringement if the other party was not aware you had a patent. EVen worse, if the patent holder knew about it and didnt' say anything. I think you can only sue for damages if you tell them about your patent and they ignore it.
Just for reference, U.S. Pat. No. 5,371,551 is the Pause Technology Patent. So not only was Tivo aware of this patent, they talk about the shortcomings and why their way is better.
As an aside, it looks like if the Tivo is infringing on the patent, it's only the stand alone unit. Their DirecTV receivers with Tivo do no compression.
How about leaving the stupid remarks out of the story?
One thing that strikes me about this is that I don't see any mention of them sueing or licensing to MicroSoft for UltimateTV. I wonder if MS is one of the "investors" here, or if Pause just knows they'd be stomped flat in a patent fight with MS.
Bah! :)
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
Since the story itself had one such comment, it should be filed under this thread. Infinite recursion, noooooooo!
rooooar
I find it hard to believe these weenies aren't aware of instant-replay as is used in televised live sports. That's been around for at least 30 years and has always been capable of doing what is claimed in the patent.
I think a lot of what people object to in patents like this is that they basically just use obvious and commonly known methods to translate old analog inventions to digital "inventions".
Yeah, there's a small spark of "genius" in being the first to realize digital has advanced far enough to emulate a particular analog device - or at least in thinking of patenting it - but even that is VERY heavily trod ground.
There ought to be a principle established that no patent is granted on inventions that are simply translated from one fundamental technology to another. Once we work out common design principles for quantum technology, let's NOT have a "quantum pause" patent...
What the patent is actually on is a market niche and a gamble: someone paid several thousand dollars betting that this market niche would become lucrative enough within the lifetime of the patent to recoup the cost. It's like a big gambling parlor.
And I for one would love to see that used as prior art in a patent infringment trial.
You see, your honor, in this I Dream of Jeanie episode, where this very idea was first used....
I remember seeing a Frank and Ernest comic strip a few years back (not sure if it pre-dates the patent or not) where they said they always turn the TV off when they leave the house, that way they don't miss any of their shows..
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing -- Emo Phillips
I used to work in TV and I think the only technology that could do this in 92 (and prior to that) are instant replay machines - which were in essense computers with huge magnetic disks in them (like disk drives, but more like video tape) which could buffer video in real time - kinda like a huge TBC (which also buffer video, but only for seconds)
This would pause any video signal - and even let you rewind (thus the replay), but when you hit the release button it would of course not leave you off where you were watching - just like a video recorder. I guess the neat thing about these machines was the abilty to capture video at any time, then play it back at any speed.
This is not a new idea - I believe the technology to do this has been around since the 70's (maybe even earlier) - if thats what there patenting...
Gotuit Video, Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary of Gotuit Media, Corp. Both companies were founded by Logan, who is also the founder of MicroTouch Systems, Inc. (MTSI) a $160 million manufacturer of touch screen systems. He was a board member of Andover.Net, parent company of famed tech community Slashdot and a leader in the Open Source movement, which was recently sold to VA Linux.
Gotuit's prominent board of advisors includes Harvard Law School Professor Terry Fisher, a leading authority on Internet and copyright law; Joel Harrison, cofounder of the Quantum Corporation; Mark Pascarella, EVP of The Topol Group LLC; Brian Zisk, cofounder of the Future of Music Coalition and Green Witch Internet Radio; and Kevin Liga, CTO of interactive TV company, ACTV.
Geoff "Mandrake" Harrison
Some Random UI Hacker
I'd like to see a time limit on selling patents. Something like 3 years sounds good to me. I think that would stop all these silly and expensive lawsuits. No longer could company X buy company or patent Y just so they could sue company Z. Like wise 3 years is enough time to find a buyer for a patent. For all those /.ers that think selling patents is wrong first look at IDEO. Selling patents are a good idea as it keeps researchers and sales seperate and lets everyone perfect there respective industries...IMHO of course...
"Only one thing, is impossible for god: to find any sense in any copyright law on the planet." Mark Twain
Doesn't the doctrine of equivalents mean that you can infringe a patent without having an identical architecture?
Patents like this wouldn't be so objectionable if the doctrine of equivalents didn't give them such a broad scope, and didn't create such a chilling effect on further innovation.
stupid wait a minuite cowboy thiny stoped me from posting a real comment and i forgot what i was posting so this is it now.
If people were not allowed to sell patents, that would leave patent protection only for those who had the capital to mass produce their inventions. What about the guy who has a million ideas, but only a hundred dollars? Of course we should let him sell his ideas to those who can do something with them!
Pause Technologies does not have a patent on the idea of being able to pause a live TV stream.
They have a patent on a mechanism, a process, an implementation of one way that an end user can appear to pause and resume viewing a live TV stream.
Whether Tivo used this patented implementation in their own designs is something for the courts to decide.
-Poot
I have a patent titled: "Concurrent drawing in and exhausting of air by living things" SO PAY UP OR STOP BREATHING!!!
Didn't either he or Michalangelo invent a helicopter way before it was possible to actually be constructed...?
I think they just patented the idea in the plans of actually being the first to create and market a product, then fall short for whatever reason, but still want to maintain control over the patent.
hrrm.
It doesn't matter if you independently come up with the idea, or if you use someone elses patent as a source of information. Either way, you are infringing on their patent.
However, a clever attorney could use independent invention as evidence that the invention in question did not deserve a patent because it was so obvious as to make it inevitable that somebody would reinvent it.
Will I retire or break 10K?
How is this different from the "tape delays" used in radio and television to protect against when someone curses when Howard Stern is live, or when Madonna talks like a drunken sailor on Letterman?
I mean, I am sure that hindsight is 20/20, but this doesn't seem that novel to me, even as a TiVo owner... I never thought the technology in the TiVo was very new, just recently cheapified....
sean
I still say it's a bad idea to allow a patent on just an idea without a 'reference implementation. That would stop these people from patenting ideas and just laying in wait until someone implements your patent, and then you can jump on them.
If there's not a working implementation of your idea with 12 months, the patent is invalid.
-- You can't idiot-proof anything, because they're always coming out with better idiots.
This patent basically describes any kind of variable digital delay circuit. Does this make it a new invention ?
If this kind of thing were legal microsoft would have patents on word processors and everything else by now.
The thing that really suprises me about patents, is how long it takes patent holders to respond. TiVos be around for a few years, and this patent is from 1992 ... What takes so long to respond. Oh gee, I forgot I had that patent. I am sure at least one of there employees must have relized this eailer.
until (succeed) try { again(); }
Why is it there are so many cases where the patent holder doesn't come forward to bitch about something until a long while after the infringing product has come out? Are they just waiting to see if it is successful before trying to grab their piece of the pie?
That would make some sense...if they want to see their idea succeed, it would be best not to impede it in any way as it is starting up. Still, it kind of smells to me.
This is what buffers and FIFO's are for... to allow transfer of data between two asychronous streams; specifically, when either the consumer or the producer has large amounts of jitter (hint: think PAUSE). All such buffers are circular, because making an infinite size FIFO is impossible. Hence: this patent IS obvious AND has prior art. Just because you think it is clever doesn't mean a damn thing.
Their ancestors most likely died before the inventors you mention. Perhaps their DESCENDENTS might have made some money if there was a patent system then.
Gotuit Video, Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary of Gotuit Media, Corp. Both companies were founded by Logan, who is also the founder of MicroTouch Systems, Inc. (MTSI) a $160 million manufacturer of touch screen systems. He was a board member of Andover.Net, parent company of famed tech community Slashdot and a leader in the Open Source movement, which was recently sold to VA Linux.
Remember that you are unique, just like everybody else.
According to the RealNetworks web page, they've been around since 1995. They have been buffering incoming video while letting you play, pause, rewind, fast forward, and jump to live for quite a while. Doing the same to TV doesn't seem to be all that different. Is RealNetworks paying royalties to some company with a patent on it?
:)
God knows how long their predecessors in streaming video (possibly in research) have been doing similar things. Does anyone have any related info?
People have been buffering streamed data forever. It's hard to believe (though not impossible) that no one ever paused that stream while still recording before 1992. If they did, this is just a logical extension, and probably not patentable.
Of course, I'm sure their patent lawyers realize this and did their research and either concluded that 1) no one had done it before or 2) no one would sue them.
-Puk
I don't like the way this looks. I could be wrong (I can't read much legalese) and they might be patenting some device or hardware, but I am always irritated when I see people or companies trying to make money off of one "pay us cuz we thought of this" idea. Why isn't every production company in the world paying Ford for the assembly line, then?
"Intellectual Property", as its called, and its laws need to be revamped major league. It is at the core of many of 'our' (you know, 'us' - the opposite of 'them') problems. But what organizations or methods exist to allow us to speak out for change? To my knowledge, none - shouldn't this be as big an issue as open source? We geeks need to mobilize - we need a technology lobbyist group, or something, an organization that can influence law but not be devoted to a single issue. I would be a paying member of such a group - lots of people I know would.
Let me add that in true geek fashion (or the geeks I know) I have no interest in founding such a project - projects mean lots of work, staying at the office late, mondo responsibility and jack squat if the project falls through. But geeks (like all people) come in all flavors, so surely one of us must have this kind of drive...
Your
Does anyone own a patent on breathing, cuz there's a big market for that. Don't try and beat me to the punch, I thought of it first! Yes, I can see it now, it would involve a sequence of chemical reactions that would allow ambient oxygen to be absorbed into one's blood stream whereby it is transported throughout the human body to tissue cells. Imagine being able to charge people to breathe.
If I can read the above, I must be a programmer, therefore you don't need to assign the expression "programmer" to me, as I already am. You should better assign "programmer" to someone who is not yet a programmer, like this
if( !read(this) ) { you = programmer; }
else you are only wasting CPU resource.
Now if you wanted to describe a computer's reasonning, you should consider not using an imperative, procedural language, like "c". You should opt for a non-imperative language like "prolog". This would give something like
read(this, you)
programmer(X)
which can be read as follows :
1) it is stated that you can read this.
2) For any give X, one can prove that X is a programmer, by proving that X can read this.
Now an exercise
Knowing that :
wrote("if( read(this) ) { you = programmer; }",NGeran),
and assuming following law
isAWannabeProgrammer(X)
Which conclusion will any decent prolog inference engine draw about NGeran ?
My take on this is that Mr. Logan and Goessling had a good idea, but too soon. The fact that it cost too much for them to implement the thing in 1996 does not invalidate the patent! And for those whining about needing a limitation on the time to bring a product to market, there is one. It is 16 years, the duration of the patent. It takes time to get the funding to bring a product to market.
Pausing. Obviously, a new idea, and one worthy of patenting. I think I'm going to patent the play button.
This is exactly what the patent system was created for, new ideas. I agree, most of the patent (Amazon's 1 Click shopping comes to mind) infringment stories we hear about are stupid, but pausing live TV is an invention worthy of a patent.
-jon
Remember Amalek.
I work for a company doing digital image processing from 85-89. We created a frame grabber to capture live video from a TV camera. store the information in storage memory. and then play it back.
I was taking TV pictures of my family and playing it back for the kids. I was also able to do false colorazation. I think the company is still around.
I would like to talk to someone about trashing this patent.
svvsavage@yahoo.com
I've made this offer before, and no one has taken me up on it, but I'm making it again. You say that this patent fails the obviousness test, and is invalid. I'm a patent attorney, and I've successfully invalidated patent claims through the Patent Office's re-examination process. If you provide me with the prior art necessary to prove that the patent is invalid, and pay the re-examination filing fee ($2520), I'll prepare, file, and prosecute the re-examination for free. It's one thing to complain that a patented invention is obvious because you have a gut feeling about it, and another to prove that it's invalid by backing up your contention with prior art and a good argument. If you don't like that these companies assert patents that you think are invalid, let's do something about it. Put your money where your mouth is.
Does "live" mean that it can't be recording and playing at the same time? Does it mean that it can be recording and playing, but there is a required gap between the two?
To be nit-picky about it, there is a second delay between when live and when the TiVo plays the video stream. I can flip back a forth between my live stataion and my TiVo to prove it.
Hey Telek, do a little more research before posting. Did you ever think there might be more than one "James Logan" in the USA? Those 17 patents that you found were from at least four different people living in MA, NH, WA, and CO during the 1990's.
Check the facts!
Every time I see one of these patents that obvious, I get the urge to try to submit a patent for "An error resitant approach to online shopping - Multi-click". The idea behind the patent would be to extend the Amazon one-click patent to require clicking more than once to buy something to avoid getting orders by mistake. As I understand Patent law it is ok to build on another patent it just means that if I sell the rights I for mine I have to get rights to the base patent first. In any case Amazon would own one-click but I would own all of the rest of the online shopping scene.
Then I wake up to reality and go back to work.. It is fun to dream though.
--- Liberty in our Lifetime
Can I copyright rewind and make money selling those rights?
TV stations in 1990 had the ability to PAUSE LIVE sports play in telecasts, and recontinue later...
All this shit was done in HIGH END expensive gear for tv stations.
There will be buckets full of prior art.
Every radio station on the planet has been using the seven second delay for decades. those machines took a live signal and delayed it for later use. their entire reason for existnace was to be able to "pause" the live program when necessary, "skip" over portions of the live program, and then "catch up" after the fact. By 1992, all of the newer ones were digital. They all used disk drives. Nothing new here, except the price, the UI, the target market.
Every TV station on the planet had (and still has) boxes called frame syncs. Again recent ones are digital. They take a live signal, delay it, and replay it for the convenience of the viewer. The same could be said of old slow-motion machines used at live events. They even recorded their video on disks...
The fact that TIVO has more than seven seconds of buffer makes it an evolved product based upon similar devices in use for decades. That they store audio and video digitaly is evolutionary as well, and predates 1992.
On a more basic level, FIFO buffers have been used ever since there were clocked digital circuits. That the digital bit stream contains live video is mere circumstance. FIFOs predate 1992 as well.
Just another stupid patent.
...you're both missing the point and making a ridiculous challenge. I don't believe for a second that you'd go through with this even if you really were a patent lawyer.
First off, there's a lot of space between "annoyed at a stupid patent" and "willing to spend $2520 (plus God knows what) to get just this particular patent struck down."
Secondly, there's a huge gap between truth and a court finding. The fact that an invention is stupidly obvious to any professional in the field is no guarantee (or even a good indicator) that the technologically incompetent courts will find this to be true. You yourself call for "prior art," which has nothing at all to do with obviousness. Prior art would invalidate the patent whether it was obvious or not. The most obvious things are never said, because it's a waste of breath and an insult to the intelligence of the audience. This is especially true of trivial applications of an emerging technology, such as using a hard drive to buffer incoming video until the user wanted to view it.
Finally, fighting these cases one at a time is the wrong way to go, there are thousands and thousands of patents that shouldn't exist, only symptoms of a deeper problem. The proper solution is a change in policy.
How can we do that? By whipping up public opposition. In short, by complaining about the worst abuses continually, and blaming the patent office and the laws which allow them to occur. When a fair portion of the general population understands the cost of an incompetent patent office there will be irresistable political pressure to change it.
Fighting within the system is for those who have their own urgent stake in the matter. The rest of us are far better off doing what we can to change it.
---
You'd be surprised at the broadband connection available to things crawling around in your hair.
You have no idea of the irony in using a "frame sync" as an arguement in a patent discussion.
Many lawyers made lots of money over that one.
Is there really *anybody* who *didn't* want to do this with their vcr (or, for t
hat matter, didn't *try* it, having failed to think things through [namely that
it stopped recording while you played {Not that *I* ever made that mistake}]).
For that matter, the prior art is ancient. It's called "Instant Replay," and wa
s used widely by the American Broadcasting Company for an obscure program called
"Monday Night Football". They used a new device from the computer industry cal
led a "hard drive", onto which they recorded the last several seconds of the vid
eo signal rather than the usual "digital" storage used on such machines.
hawk
back in the 80's when I was working on medical equipment, the ultrasound equipment had this feature. You could hit freeze and go back and forth a bunch of frames to pick the one you want to print. They also spooled to a beta vcr..
No, I don't - what's the frame sync patent story?
I've been in electronics and computers for years, but never directly in the broadcast industry. These days I work peripherally with a radio and TV studio (but not a broadcaster). Frame syncs are a bad example because they only pause for a few milliseconds - although most do have a freeze frame, that is, "pause" button... old slo-mo machines are better because they could paude and record up to about 30 seconds of program.
Really, if you look at the patent system as a way of guaranteeing lawyers income, it actually makes sense! After all, who made those laws? Lawyers!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Donald Norman described an idea like this in his 1992 book "Turn Signals Are the Facial Expressions of Automobiles" amazon link to book.
My copy is packed away but maybe someone else can dig it out and see if Norman's concept beats the 1996 application of this patent.
sorry, couldn't resist.
adéu,
Mateu
"And we're happy here, but we live in fear, we've seen a lot of temples crumble..." - Concrete Blonde
The patent application process is a slow one. The average time for a patent to be granted is roughly 3 years. The late Jerome Lemelson Filed one patent that took the patent office 39 years to grant.
The filers here had to at least think of this idea and file the patent on or before 1989. I haven't read the patent but I would bet it describes how this could be accomplished and before the enabling technology was yet developed. Lemelson's "machine vision" patent was first filed in 1950. If similar things accomplished via different media or technology is the basis of a rejection [that Tivo or other like technologies are "new], then one would be hard pressed to say that barcode and photocopying technology was new in 1950, given that the Gutenberg press was invented in 1445 and the camera in 1826.
Does this mean then that photocopiers, because they perform the basic function that a camera and printing press covers, were not really a new idea?
Personally I don't think so. I do wonder though, when did the patent holders first contact TIVO and what was TIVO's response? That'd be an interesting conversation on which to eavesdrop.
Also interesting would be what the patent examiner cited as prior art if any against the fellows in question and the response to those challenges.
Subtitle, "My Penis As A Candle In Your Ass"
Add a single second delay to the display of the stream and it is no longer "live". Easy to implement (hell Sattelite already has ~2.5sec delay), and falls outside the patent's realm...
I already sent this company a little note.
-Dave
In fact, so do birds and bees.
There should be a clause in US Patent law that requires you to actually implement your ideas.
There used to be. Back in the early 20th century, the USPTO received so many applications for perpetual motion machines that they required any submission actually be working for a full year prior to submission.
In case of fire, do not use elevator. Use water!
Okay, who has the patent on the Play button? Anyone?
What about the fast forward, backward, stop buttons?
Yeah, patents for anyone. Patents for trivialities! Patents are good! NOT
--- Eat my sig.
God I'd love to see someone make this happen. It seems that until someone makes the US government get off their fat backsides they do nothing, about anything.
This example IS obvious, as are many of the US patents. It seems the US patent system lets anything through, then hopes the courts will discard the bad ones. The upshot is that someone who actually has the guts to do something gets ambushed by spurious patent claims, and rather than paying loads of money for the court case pays the licence fee.
The US government has a responsibility to fix their flawed system. What will make them take it seriously?
I can't believe that these people are allowed to patent this without having a working prototype. And what's with the patent reissue thing. Did they get it wrong and then steal some other ideas and word them into the old patent and get it reissued?
Geez. This sort of thing really inspires people to make they're ideas public doesn't it.
DUH!
When shit hits the fan get some of these https://youtu.be/pY-GncsZ-UE
As for the "technology" it's just another kind of flow buffer. These exist everywhere where incoming data/water/etc and outgoing data/water/etc flow rates may differ in the short term.
if pause is so key on their special little idea, why the hell did it take them this long to see that a major player in this field "stole their idea"?
smells too much like the case of unisys' claim on lzw encoding. there outta be a law against waiting (in hiding) while something gets real successful - grabbing a hold on the market - then coming out of hiding and claiming credit for some blatantly obvious idea.
isn't there a statute of limitations? if pause wants to make a living in this field, shouldn't they have been one of the first to realize that their idea was being 'stolen'? isn't sitting by and doing nothing sort of admitting that your idea wasn't really yours, exclusively?
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
This looks interesting, could someone with some Mod points, mod this up so it gets noticed. It has a 0 because the poster didn't register and posted as AC.
See my journal, I write things there
Process : Inhalation of a gaz mix in order to sustend life.
This inhalation will occur with any biological or Electro Mechanic device.
Patent fee is 1 cent / Breath.
Please call our regulator to get a yearly brathing patent use right !!!
I might just have found a way to get rich in America ! 8|
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker
Then how could the patent be filed in 1992? The company was founded in 2000...
.sig: Open Source, Open Mind
In the entire patent I only saw one thing that was not already a feature of a standard VCR or a blatant implication of using random assess storage instead of a video tape. The one possibly novel idea is tiling the screen with tumbnails from different time offsets and being able to select one to jump to that point. I'm not a fan of software patents, but if there's a valid patent in there, that's it.
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
The description of a waterbed, although in fiction, was enough information to build one. I Dream of Jeanie would be prior art for pausing a video feed by having a magical being blink at it, but that's not the method in the patent.
rant
... The man turned his head, and wondered what other bizarre features and creatures he would meet in this splendid universe of dreams ...
Lets see....If I Patent the "Eject" Button, :)
then every Player Manufacturer either has
to pay me royalties, or remove this Button
from their product!
Hah!
JK
(David Bowman, EVA near HUGE Monolithic Win-PC in orbit around Jupiter) "My God - its full of Malware!"
So, a friend of mine did this as an EE project at Berkeley in 1990 (it used ram only to store the feed, and had a limit of 10-15 seconds I think, just enough for a, "oh, what was that," replay).
Most, if not all, "Live" TV is delayed at the broadcast stations on purpose to filter out anything "bad". This is pre-92 also. They've been doing this forever. The circular buffer with liveTV has been around since the stone ages.
I think they would have a pretty easy case considering they have already patented their own technology the "Multimedia time warping system". I wonder, have patents ever been thrown out after they have already awarded?
U.S. Patent 6,233,389. The abstract is here
I've read the patent and have come to the conclusion that patent should not have been awarded. Basically the concept of writing any information that overflows the primary memory (SRAM, DRAM, semiconductor memory) to a secondary memory (hard disk, tape), has been in use for probably at least 50 years. Its called virutal memory or buffering. The Pause Patent is just a specific, and non-unique, implementation of this concept for a specific purpose.
Also, I believe NASA satellite technology does everything the patent covers. Exploration satellites record video (periodic series of pictures) which are compressed and saved to a secondary memory via a primary memory, and then pull from the secondary memory for transmission while recording new images. Furthermore the process is controlled remotely. Thus I believe a good lawyer will demonstrate that the patented technology was publicly documented many years prior to the patent. (Also there have got to be similar patents going back to the '70s and early '80s for digital audio, probably by Philip's, who makes a Tivo unit.)
Furthermore, the solution to the problem is obvious to almost any person with vague computer hardware knowledge back in '92. My fellow classmates and I were writing DSP algorithms that used buffering for reverb and filtering back in 1990. We just didn't have a need to write the data to disk or control the process by remote control.
Lastly, tape delay performed the same function, via a different technology. If this patent holds, then when optical memory becomes available, can a new patent be issued on a new implementation which replaces the codec, semiconductor memory and hard disk with just holographic memory?
My BBC Micro, in 1982, had a pause button. DOS has a "more" command. Both can (and I personally have) be used to pause the display of realtime data being inputed via my serial port. While this implementation did not use a hard-drive, its use on a VAX of the time, or any machine with virtual memory, would use a hard drive. However, I'm not sure that you'd have to demonstrate that a specific implementation had already been implemented, only the general idea.
The only innovation here is that the data, in this case, is digital pictures. However, digital pictures are a subset of digital data, and therefor there exists prior art.
Hmmm. Looking at at my keyboard I now see that there is a clearly labelled "Scroll Lock" button. :)
Its 1982.
Prior art.