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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.
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.
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?
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
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)
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.
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...
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.
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
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
...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.
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).