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SONICblue Granted Broad Patent on DVR Technology
hayb writes: "In another miscue from the U.S. Patent office, Sonicblue has received a patent for everything under the PVR sun. Now comes the question if they will go after others, or at least Tivo. To quote the first line of the patent: 'USPTO patent number 6,324,338 also covers methodology that creates, names, prioritizes and manages recorded programs on the hard drive for DVRs.'"
and earn a Slashdotting - that'll teach 'em.
How is this different than ye olde filesystem directory? Does that qualify as prior art?
The patent numbers are becoming dangerously close to 6,666,666. I wonder who the lucky inventor will be?
Is it possible to patent things that others have been using for years? Those goes against every patent law I've seen. Basically to be patentable, you have to establish that it's *yours* and that nobody else has developed the technology simutaneously.
How did Tivo let them get away with this.
Can't Tivo claim prior art?
These people didn't exactly do anything new here. They just put together a bunch of old ideas. I hate the idea of software patents. Software patents should be outlowed!
At the next eco-hypocrisy-meeting, count the private jets used to get to the meeting. Should be interesting to see that
TLAs leave me ROTFLMAO b/c 1/2 the time I can't figure out WTWTS.
More Patents mean more lawsuits!
(with appologies to Simpsons)
-Q
"I was not put on this earth to listen to meat! Frylock..were you?" -Master Shake
Is the TiVO underground prepared to help out in case of war/collapse?
Fuck prior art, recording video onto a hard drive is hardly "non-obvious".
-- Sigs are for losers
I love the fact that patent wars might erupt between the PVR folks while at the same time theyre battling copyright wars with everyone else....Damn, I love capitalism ;)
.sig wanted: Must be concise, funny, and display my cleverness.
Ho! Ho!
It's funny that slapdash mentions sonic "blue", because that's what slap is going to be very shortly !
Ho! Ho!
MEEPT!!
I understand that the USPTO office has no idea what is involved in any sort of tru innovation, but I really begin to wonder if things, such as organization of recorded programs, should ever be patentable. I understand patenting the technology behind the way that PVR stuff works, but to patent the idea of a pvr seems very silly to me. Couldn't the same thing have been done with an archive of VHS tapes and a computer. How is the technology behind this really new other than the fact that it is done with a different medium (tapes vs hard drive).
So it has an advanced search feature and a somewhat interactive selection stage. Don't most software packages have the same features? There is nothing novel about these features; only the physical setting has changed (from the PC to the PVR). I think the U.S.P.T.O. has been infiltrated or something...
"What is the sound of one belly slapping?"
What happens with add-on boards for the PC like the WinTV-PVR which can essentially turn your PC into a DVR?
I wonder if ATI's All-In-Wonder and others will get swept up in this? Just a thought since there are several graphics card co's creating TV tuner and recording capabilities in to their cards and providing software for doing TiVo and Replay like functions (record and organize).
Just wondering how far SonicBlue will push the patents? I imagine we'll see TiVo and others reach some sort of license deal and eventually pass the cost on to us in the end, as it usually happens.
-s
There are two things to note:
There is prior art for this stuff. Besides TiVo, people have tried to do this kind of technology before in the past; Java was spawned off of an 'embedded systems language' called Oak; which IIRC was built for things like PVRs, etc... but in the early 90s the public just wasn't ready for that kind of tech. Regardless, at the least TiVo was around before ReplayTV. Prior art is a powerful thing. Besides, SonicBlue has M$ To contend with as well, M$ having that UltimateTV thing (Which I strangely haven't seen/ heard ads for lately; i remember them blitzing the media early this summer.)
Additionally, as referenced in This Slashdot Article from earlier this year, TiVo was also recently granted a slew of patents on PVR Tech. I'm not sure which company got what tech patented however...
Me wonders - given SONICBlue's flamboyant flaunting and flouting of The Media interests - and now this patent - could SONICBlue be a media industry trojan horse? Conspiracies, conspiracies everywhere.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
I'd be very surprised if a lawsuite comes out of this except as a tactic to leverage a little better price on patent royalties. Sonicblue will give Tivo a call that goes a little something like this:
Sonicblue: Hi, Tivo, we were thinking you might want to license this patent from us for $X.
Tivo: But that's not a valid patent, we've been doing that for years.
Sonicblue: Well, you can fight us if you'd like. I'm sure your lawyers will only charge you 10-100 times $X.
Tivo: hmmmm... okay, where do we send the money. We can always pass the cost on to the customer anyhow
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
The first lines of patents tend to be broad, but not because the patents are broad, but rather because the first lines are introducing the field that the patent is in.
The first few claims are often the same way, giving definitions and context for claims built on them. Claims aren't supposed to be that way, but often they are anyhow. I was once told that a claim had to be a single sentence and could not contain the word "or". Makes things tricky.
In another miscue from the U.S. Patent office
Why is this a miscue? ReplayTV was the first to develop PVR technology and patent it. I can remember first hearing about the ReplayTV several years ago, and then several months later I heard of a competitor called TiVo.
If this patent is a miscue, where is your prior art evidence to back that up?
"And like that
It looks like this thing is practically patenting copying video to a hard drive... so couldn't not only Tivo, but also RealPlayer, Windows Media Player, tons of independant video players, etc. be used as examples of prior art if SonicBlue were to go after anyone with this?
Seems like a pretty weak and unenforcable patent when prior art is EVERYWHERE.
Well, I've patented the use of the letter "e". Not in general, obviously. It's really a very narrow patent, only covering the use of the letter "e" in any DVR on-screen message. I make no claim on any other letter. The plethora of letter options available means manufacturers are still able to create DVRs without a license from me. They just can't use the "e" without a license. I'm not unreasonable about it.
"Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded."
The USPTO has issued patents to various organizations for dubious reasons, apparently. But they've done this for a long time. Such as allowing software patents and things like human genetic structures... This isn't what bothers me alone.
The major thing is that nobody appears to be shocked over this. This is what is really scary. Why? Because if these patents become increasingly ambiguous, who is to say that it can't get worse, without public scrutony? And worse, are patent laws going to be changed so that a filing party can "contribute" to the USPTO or any other organization to receive a "limited disclosure" filing? I know that is highly hypothetical and probably won't happen, but stranger things have happened.
Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think. -Ayn Rand
I recall a previous /. article about a little IP-licencing-wannabe company called Pause Technology that held a 1992 patent on the whole DVR idea. Where do they fit in all this?
My spoon is too big!
I, for one, think this is a good thing. After a brief visit to Microsoft's "Re-education" Center I've learned that competition bad, patents good.
Interesting how Sonicblue were "good guys" to your average Slashdot goer for fighting the evil entertainment industry...
Then they went and won a patent. Now they're EVIL! How *DARE* they attempt to make money!
end communication
"Say Goodbye to 20 years of Network Oppression! "
(crowd cheers)
"And Say Hello to 20 years of SONICBlue Oppression!"
(crowd continues to cheer)
Jack Valenti and the MPAA are to technology as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone
Is that most of them are completely obvious to anyone with the proper training, and shouldn't be granted.
And one patent is broad enough that it covers every possible implementation of the solution, which is unlike mechanical patents.
These two things make tech patents a threat to innovation rather than promoting it.
I wonder if this patent mess just involves computers, or is it just that we hear about it more because of the web?
love is just extroverted narcissism
I don't care if they go after Tivo... the market has already shown that ReplayTV is the better product. What is really great is the fact that they can prevent Microsoft from dominating yet another market with the "UltimateTV" POS. If they grant MS a license for use of the patent, I hope they rob them blind.
This patent is not just about recording video onto hard disks. Most of the claims are dependent on a clause that says "a processor selecting future shows from a channel guide database for recording based on said user specified criteria, wherein the selection of shows is based on one of either pattern matching or fuzzy logic analysis of the user specified criteria and the channel guide database, and wherein the processor further selects for removal a previously recorded show having a lower priority than the selected future shows if insufficient capacity exists for recording the future shows;" This allows you the box to learn that you like SciFi and automatically record all the SciFi shows. Not hard, once you hear the idea, but I remember thinking that was a good idea when the product first came onto the market.
Other claims talk about automatically recording portions of a program that repeats. That way you always have the latest CNN sports news. I don't think anybody's product does this yet. (But it does seem kind of $illy to have two dependent claims that mention CNN.)
This patent is not just a software patent. Yes, some of it can be implemented using software, but not all of it. I don't know all the prior art, but this isn't completely obvious, and it's certainly not as fundamental to the industry as the press release implies.
So should your inability to spell, but you are still a free man aren't you!!!
I think this kind of statement sort of implies that they may use it as a stick to beat down their competitors, including Tivo. Unfair, since ReplayTV actually disappeared from the market for a time, suddenly popping up as SonicBlue.
But what really bothers me is the destructive effect that this may have. Tivo has worked very hard to not only provide a unique and valuable product to their customers, they've also been very careful to "play nice" with the networks. They have, for instance, refused to put a 30-second-skip button on the remote. They've also, discouraged copying of programs from the harddrive (how effective that is, I don't know). And so on.
Meanwhile ReplayTV/SonicBlue have done the skip button, and with the latest incantations of their boxen, claim to be able send shows between units (a scheme that will undoubtably be cracked, if it hasn't already) which, of course, can't make the networks happy at all.
Terrific. So now are choices are a company that the networks like, but that is doomed by patent infringments (maybe), or a "bad-boy" that the networks will eventually crush because of their disregard for the networks' well-being... Ugh....
And somewhere, in the shadows, is Microsoft (UltimateTV) waiting to step in with their "Content owner-friendly" box....
Anyone want to buy a TV-set? Cheap?
Where the value of X-Mailer: is the true measure of a man...
And in other news:
Head and Shoulders receives broad patent regarding method and implementation for shampoo application, "Lather, Rinse, Repeat". After careful consideration, the U.S. Patent Office determined said patent was not overly broad because, "There are other ways of doing it, such as 'Rinse, Repeat, Lather.'"
When: 12/4/2001
Company: The United States of America
Severity: 100 - new hall of fame inductee!
Points: 0 (The rest of the world already knew)
-FF
SQUEAK, the Death of Rats explained.
Someone needs to come up with a metta-mirror site, which mirrors all the controversial software (DeCSS, mp3 encodes, crypto, etc.) and puts it in a form that's easy for us mere mortals to mirror.
If I could put "wget -m http://www.metamirror.org" in my crontab and help propogate endangered software for safe keeping, I'd do it in a heartbeat!
Method of processing duck feet
I've finnaly come to the decision...patents, as they are implimented now, suck! I swear they just look for anything that's not patented and patent it just so they can sell it to someone else...
SonicBlue is made out of people!
She's got it nailed. I laugh at the
The destruction of patents (even software patents, which at best could stand to have shorter terms) would eliminate virtually all technology investment - the US is so amazingly productive and innovative in large part because of our patent system. It shouldn't take a rocket scientist to realize that innovation is caused by a good patent system. If the US abandons or cripples its world-leading patent system, we'll see innovations stagnate, the big companies will totally dominate, and it could take the world economy decades or more to recover.
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
to sue the USPTO for neglect when giving a patent that is obviously prior art. One could imagine that there have been alot cases where patents have been awarded that shouldn't have. Is it possible to use legal action as a way of getting them to clean up their act?
The patent. This reads as if it's only the interface they're patenting IMHO.
Best line:
13. The method as recited by claim 10 wherein the default channel is CNN Headline News.
And patenting these tiny details is idiotic too. "methodology that creates, names, prioritizes and manages recorded programs on the hard drive for DVRs". This is not an invention, it is (minor) design issue that has to be figured out somehow (usually apply old techniques to a "new" problem). Unless they've come up with a really revolutionary way of naming stuff it should not be patentable.
OK, I'm not sure, but if you can prove that you've been doing something before someone who has it patented, doesn't that mean that:
A. The pattent is invalid, or
B. They can't sue you/charge you for useing the pattent?
I might be wrong, but with all the proof that TiVo has that they've been useing this idea since before it was patented (it would be VERY hard to get that thrown out). Also, remember that Microsoft's Ultimate TV is also a DVR, so if they wanted to collect money they would either have to
A. Go against Microsoft (we all know how well that would work), or
B. Selectivly prosecute, which TiVo could argue about.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
For instance, an archive of VHS tapes and a computer would not be eligible for a patent, because it is significantly more complex for the user (and probably could not even be marketed). The Replay units are very easy to use and small, and the technology that makes that possible is considered eligible for patent protection.
I talked with one of our company's patent attorneys and he said that the "scale" issue was not a problem here, but he doubted that such an obvious patent would stand up in court. He expects SonicBlue to get whupped in court, Rambus-style, if Tivo and the other competitors don't capitulate first. (Good.)
df
On the other hand, it would give me an excuse to go ahead and get one of those cool ReplayTV things--I must admit, they do have several features I really miss on TIVO. And 320 hours storage would be nice.
I was just afraid they were going too far with the "send shows over the internet" thing and would be the ones put out of business by the MPAA or networks or someone.
PVR are old like hell...
.COM's, you pay to get it and you can get screwed if you don't get all the little bits left and right (like domain.com, mydomain.com dom-ain.com), and even if you do, someone will workaround it (.net .whatever) and you'll have to finish this up in court (only lawyers win)same go if you're legit and if you're stepping on somebody else that can claims anything out of his little left and right bit, you get sued again...
does that mean that if I sell my program I made on my amiga 8 years ago to record TV content with my DPS personnal video recorder, to my hard drive at a precise hour, I'll be breaking this patent?
Yet another stupid patent that shows that Patents are becomming stupid
While I do understand that technological patents are a pain to filter and there's no black and white yes/no approach to them, and that if you're not precise enough, people go around you, if you're overkill and patent every screws in your system, of course you're blocking anything else using the same screws so it's ridiculous, but c'mon... some people are actually PAIED to work this out and THINK about how to manage these issues, it's not our job, but then again, it seems like they aren't doing theirs and it's the rest of us that are penalized.
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
(Ok so maybe they have some hardware, but they looked like they were talking about software in the press release.)
But seriously. Do you remember back in elementary school? The way that you would have math class and do some math problems, and some of them word problems? A word problem being a math problem where the data sent into it and/or the data generated by it is given real-world meaning. Do you remember how some people couldn't "get" the word problems because they couldn't see how to make the math work with real world words wrapped around it? Do you remember how you thought it was really easy and then you went on to become a real hardcore geek? Do you remember how those people who couldn't "get" word problems weren't very good at math?
Q: What ever happened to those people who sucked at word problems?
A: They grew up and started patenting solutions to "word problems" errr no wait I mean "algorithms and processes embodied in software designed to create a technical effect". I would never want to be accused of trivializing the amazing difficult process of giving real-world meaning to math. After all, doing abstract math on a computer, even if it's really hard, isn't patentable, so the last step...making the math correspond to something in the real world, must be a really really really big and important step to take something from being unpatentable to patentable. And I would certainly hate to compare that step to being able to do a word problem. That would be rather snide, wouldn't it?
But, this is the problem. We're arguing against people who don't "get" word problems and who therefore think they're not math anymore, so it's ok to patent them. Perhaps sending all of the patent examiners, judges, VC's, patent lawyers, CEO's and everyone else involved back to elementary school to let them learn how to do word problems will settle this once and for all.
Best. Comment. Ever. Enjoy!
The problem with tech people is that they are completely unqualified to understand the scope of a patent, yet refuse to acknowledge so.
The fact of the matter is that this entire thread is based on a high-level description of the patent that has very little to do with the ultimate scope (i.e., claims) of the patent.
I'm not taking the time to fully analyze the patent, but its ultimate scope is undoubtably narrower than most posters think.
> So should your inability to spell...
As well as your ability to read. It was "Outlowed", not "Autolowed". Autolowed is what programs do. Outlowed means "made lower than", or, alternatively, "mooed more than".
Virg
Well, prior art means exactly didley-swat!
:-)
For example, Julius Caesar used to have a combover two millenia ago. But look what i found in Delphion.
Scary, huh. If you're gonna try that you've got bigger problems than both hairloss and patent infridgement.
This kind of thing is very common in the tech world.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
Patents are a weapon.
SonicBlue is in a couple of fights: they're fighting Tivo, Microsoft & Dish Network (who likely soon will be a DBS monopoly in the USA) for PVR marketshare, and they're up against MPAA and the networks for the Replay 4K.
So far, they seem to be on the side of the angels in all the fights they're in. Don't begrudge them a badly needed weapon.
Lawsuits are expensive. Why would Tivo spend millions of dollars and years in court tangling with SonicBlue when they can just pay them a few bucks per unit in royalties and pass that on to the customers?
Now conceivably Sonicblue could try to monopolize the market by refusing to license to Tivo but it's not like they want a huge court battle either. It's in their financial best interest to license it to Tivo. Lawsuits might come up as a negotiating strategy but I think it's very unlikely this will ever end up in court.
Remember, when you go to court the only people that win are lawyers.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
The guys who are losing in the market go out and get a patent and then turn around and sue the hell outta other companies. Oh well, Novell did it too, owning the rights to Unix and all and making other companies pay them (probably one of the few things that have kept them around). Though maybe this would be good, maybe SonicBlue will sue Microsoft instead of Tivo.
...country would have that kind of patent laws and "possibilities" anyways?
Oh. Ermm... forget I said anything.
It is funny, however, because that system and the abuse is unique *in the world*.
You may want to find out about the latest PVR developments here.
Dang SlashDot, telling people where links go. Ruins all the fun.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
My company developed a multimedia system that recorded (crude greyscale) video to a hard drive, in real time, with random access to files. We also wrote a groundbreaking proposal for a digital information storage media standard (UDiS Media). Said proposal sent to various major electronics companies and written up in at least one British computer magazine. In the UDiS Media proposal, we described a machine (based on the aforementioned multimedia system that would record TV programming based on content of interest. When? In 1988. We intend to develop our machine and it will be good to know that our 'prior art' (which was demonstrated in the UK in 1988, and in the USA in 1991) will at the very least mean SonicBlue / ReplayTV will not be able to sue us when it comes to some of the basic claims. A final point of interest, I just today found out that my US patent attorney represents SonicBlue. What a tangled web we have weaved.
O'WONDERWe're working on it.
Honestly, I think it's a good thing that they got this patent. They've made so many bad choices in the last 5 years, that maybe this is what they need to get themselves out of debt. They no longer have a hold in the video card market (read, s3, Diamond). Their share in the portable mp3 player market isn't that impressive anymore since It's been flooded with alternatives that work as well, if not better than theirs. I've used both a TiVo and a ReplayTV, and they're both awesome products. Personally, I'd choose a ReplayTV over a TiVo though. Anyhow, just my $.02
Are there any good open source PVR projects?
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
Here's the patent in question from the USPTO's website. Note that it was filed August 7, 1998 - long before TiVo went into operation. I also notice that I don't think it reference's the 1992 patent on pausing a live TV feed (as other posters were asking about) - I could be wrong on that though.
-"Zow"
It's the claims which count, not what the marketing folks say.
Claim 1 requires a channel guide database, user criteria, that the processor use pattern matching or fuzzy logic, and an interesting kicker -- the processor also "further selects for removal a previously recorded show having a lower priority than the selected future shows if insufficient capacity exists for recording the future shows..."
Most of the independent claims (1, 19,30,36,42,48,49,50) have this limitation, namely the leabillity to automatically remove old recorded shows.
If you don't have this limitation, it seems to me you've avoided those claims.
On the other hand, I don't know what Claim 26 means!
namaste-
Just because one company has a patent doesn't necessarily mean it will put another out of business. (I know what I'm talking about, I was a US patent paralegal for the #1 computer company for several years.)
If either company holds any value to Intellectual Property, they should have a flock of patents coming down the pipeline for any given product. (Don't go looking for them because you won't find them until they're issued.) Patents usually take 2 years to issue and they are typically issued with fairly specific claim language (unless it's something stellar like a time-machine).
Also, many companies have in-house attorneys who handle IP problems like this all day long. It's nothing new. Often times both companies will end up cross-licensing their patents with each other to keep new competitors at bay.
In the computer industry, this kind of thing happens all the time. There is so much cross-licensing going on between the major computer manufacturers you'd think it was a cartel. I'm not even kidding.
Trust me, this is nothing to get worked up about. The only reason that the Amazon one-click patent was so problematic is that their competitors didn't have any patents at all, and business methods (at the time) were thought to be unpatentable. Did it put their competitors out of business? No. It just made things really uncomfortable.
Even in most worst cases, a negligible royalty fee is usually negotiated for - and even then, the damages (royalties) only START since the time the "infringing" company is put on notice from the owner of the patent.
*yawn*
"They said I probly shouldn't fly with just one eye," "I am Bender. Please insert girder."
My impression of SonicBlue is a good one. Not only do they make a good product, but they have stood up to law suits and other such drivel that is dangerous to fair use and personal rights (30 second/ant commercial button, etc...). They're revenue is going to come from users who decide that they need Sonic Blue's service and have a good impression of SB. If they start suing my video card's manufacturer and prevent me from using other such resources, not only is prior art going to be established and the patent is going to get thrown out, but they are going to lose my business as well as, I hope, yours.
I have a winTV card, this card has a VCR program that lets you save video from your cable in connection to the hard drive, which i have used several times, I have a video out card, which lets me watch it on my TV, and I have it on my hard drive. Is this not constituting the same things that these DVRS do? and other than the fact that you have to have a computer its not that expensive to implement if you use your computer otherwise.
If you don't vote, you don't matter, so don't waste your time telling me your opinion
The Patent was filed August 7, 1998
A video data recordable having integrated channel guides allowing a user to control recording and storage of television signals into personal
channels for later playback and viewing. In the described embodiment, the user may specify criteria for recording of shows from an input source
such as a broadcast signal and shows are then selected based on the user specified criteria and recorded for later playback. Storage of the
shows may be organized into personal channels in order to facilitate later playback, e.g., the user may specify a channel of action movies, a
channel of nature programming, a channel for sports, etc. The shows to be recorded may also have a predefined format which may be used to
ease playback of recorded programming by allowing the user to easily locate and playback sections of programming of interest.
Inventors:
Wood; Anthony (Palo Alto, CA); Woodward, Jr.; Donald (Palo Alto, CA)
Assignee:
ReplayTV, Inc. (Mountain View, CA)
Appl. No.:
130994
Filed:
August 7, 1998
> the market has already shown that ReplayTV is the better product...
How exactly? By buying three Tivos to every one ReplayTV? By leaving ReplayTV based machines on store shelves in such droves that ReplayTV was forced to bail out of the PVR mass market, and most major electronics chains have discontinued the Showstopper, Replays defective macrovision-crippled half brother?
You might want to hop on out of that tub of ReplayTV kool-aid you've been drinking from and do a bit of research on what the market has really been saying.
...and i found some stuff from some years ago. it seems that while i was high on crack one day, i filed the following patents:
10312934823: "Using red for a record button"
10312934824: "Pausing live TV using narcotics"
10312934825: "Recording TV using memory performance drugs"
10312934826: "Demolishing buildings with airliners"
and 10312934827 (which could change everything): "Patenting everything that everyone else hasn't thought of yet."
MR BIN LADEN I WANT MY ROYALTIES!!!!
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
As for the rest of it, you can get an IR port that acts like a serial port for your PC. Setting up your PC for IR (or bluetooth) remote control should be pretty straight forward.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Wait a minute...doesn't ATI do that too? Hasn't ATI done that forever since the implementation of it's All-in-Wonder line of video cards? Hell, even before that, I indexed video on my hard drive with a friggin' qbasic program. Sheesh. Crazy patent people.
I'm interested in hearing a *thoughtful* analysis of the *specifics*
How the heck can you know what it covers if you just scan the outline?
Hmm...
This was posted at 5:15.
You replied at 5:18. You spent a whole three minutes familiarizing yourself with the details, then? I guess that's why this gets moderated up to a 3.
If the only thing that these guys can claim to have invented is the concept that, if the disk is full, the least-priority previously recorded program is deleted, how can they claim that such an invention is such a blindingly brilliant contribution to the world as to merit patent protection?
Anonymous Coward is right. We should take a few moments to READ the patent before commenting on it. My initial reaction was an off-the-cuff remark - another reason not to post unless you have something to SAY. Anyway, on to the point:
IANAL, but I readthe 338 Patent and a couple of the others. This patent references pre-existing technologies and - my reading - basically says that they're patenting their feature set and particular implementation. Nothing new here. Yeah, they may be over-reaching, but that despends on your point of view and what they do.
It's something that, yes, a company can whip out and club another one over the head with. Yeah, it can be used to squeeze royalties out of someone for an infringement. Any patent does that, for a while anyway.
All patents are designed to squeeze the maximum claim for the maximum legal "protection" and financial gain. You stand on the shoulders of prior art, but ultimately what decides whether you violated patent rights or not is a judge or collection thereof, the size of your bribe, and/or your legal budget. There are whole business that do nothing but hold patents and sue the crap out of any industry player that does what that paper says (e.g. link to a document) and make them pay a fee that will be large enough to satisfy the blood sucking leeches, but cheaper that going to court over it. They may allege something STUPID, like they invented the wheel or the hyperlink, but it's often cheaper to pay than litigate and risk huge leech fees and huge damages. This is patent law, friends. Blah.
Anyway, my personal opinion is that patents are freaking stupid. They don't protect what they should protected. Instead, they're used like clubs to beat other companies with. Another tool in the legal arsenal.
I'd rather see a return to trial by combat. Each company chooses a champion who fight it out to the death (or tap-out) or whatever. If only Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Xerox Parc squared off in an arena with axes or something. Panem et Circenses.
Beat that fucking sonicblue putz.
Beat that!!! SonicBlue SOBs
Multimedia time warping system
Patent number: 6,233,389
Filed: July 30th, 1998
Granted: May 15, 2001
Next we have the replaytv patent:
Video data recorder with integrated channel guides
Patent number: 6,324,338
Filed: August 7, 1998
Granted: November 27, 2001
The only difference between the 2 is that the tivo patent isn't as broad as the replay tv patent. What is also interesting is that the tivo patent was filed 8 days before the replaytv patent. They also got the patent awarded to them about 5 months before replaytv. I have read thru both patents, I am not a lawyer, but they are describing pretty much the same device.
Saying that, and what I found on the web about prior art
What Can Be Used As Prior Art For Invalidating A Patent?
In essence, any publication, in any language, located anywhere in the world is valid prior art for invalidating a U.S. Patent. One copy of a thesis, written in the Chinese language and stored on a dusty shelf of the Beijing University Library will invalidate any and all U.S. patents that were filed one year after that thesis was published and that claims as an invention ANY of the subject matter that was disclosed in that thesis.
A publication can be, among other things: a thesis, a PHD dissertation, a journal article, a text book, a newspaper article, a patent, a home work assignment, a white paper, written materials handed out during a presentation, a product, or a product brochure.
A publication is NOT: your recollection of what someone once said, someone's recollection of what they themselves once said, a trade secret, or a confidential company memo. The upshot is that prior art must be publicly available, and it must be printed (or a physical object).
So, I doubt replaytv could use this patent for much more then ego boosting. If they even tried to touch tivo, tivo could invalidate their patent fairly easily with their own patent as prior art.
Zeno
My favorite part of the claims is the typo. They use MEG and MEG2 as examples in some claims. I'd guess M$ Word spell hexer did that for them.
See the full patent at the USPTO database here.
- Tjp
I am in wallow with my inner money grubbing capitalistic pig. ... Oink!
There is a priority for Season Passes that you can access via the Season Pass Priority Manager. But this is only for automatically scheduling future recordings, not for previously recorded shows.
As for TiVo's deleting of previously recorded shows, it doesn't normally do this - it instead gives each show an expected deletion time. When the expected deletion time occurs, the show is marked deleteable (expired). Then any new show can overwrite it.
Two big exceptions come to mind:
- Hitting the record button while watching Live TV, as that can max out capacity quickly.
- Watching an expired program that needs to be deleted when another program set to be recorded comes on.
I'm pretty sure the TiVo deletes the oldest recording (again, not based on priority) for the latter case and gives a big warning for the former case but I'm not at home to check.Admittedly, claims 26 and 45 cover recording something else (e.g. Headline News) while idle and waiting for scheduled programming; there might be a conflict with Suggestions and TiVo Takes (the latter more recently called Teleworld Paid Programming).
To summarize, most of these claims are for ReplayTV's particular idea of space management with its Guaranteed or not recordings and space set aside for particular channels and themes (as opposed to TiVo's method of putting everything into one big pool). For more on this, see http://replayfaq.reidpix.com/faq.asp?id=45 and ponder the question of which is easier to grok - the patent vs this priorities description. BTW, IANAL.
Copyrights, Patents, Trademarks: temporary loans from the Public Domain, not real property ("intellectual" or otherwise)
I read about this in LINUXformat but haven't tried it because I haven't gotten a WinTv-Go card yet. Their Novemeber 2001 issue is devoted to video for linux.
So why don't you download it, try it, and let us know how it works ?
That product presents an on-screen guide, and allows users to select programs with the click of a button to record programs with their VCR. It also had features to choose shows by theme. This prior work predates their patent application by at least 2 years (and probably goes back further than that, since I purchased the TV in 1995.
Granted, the Star Sight system only downloaded 7 days of programming at a time. So the current Tivo/SONICblue devices are nothing more than a natural progression of the Star Sight system.
jeepers. is this not exactly the same huristic that a pc decides to swap pages, mark dirty, steal back. replace data with tv show. and you get the picture.
.. and even include reference counts, page classses and more. been there done that.
fuzzy logic does not exist. how about according to ratings, and tie this in with a ratings database.. so a thumbs down gilligans island is replaced a higher rated episode based upon the fact GI is this guys life . as an example.
Paging algorithms do this too
Stock control systems also use a huristic to manage stock - be it fresh food, or paper bags, only in this case, it is computer packets.
so how about we patent an injection filled with cipro to save lives for people infected with
then patent and injection filled with another drug to cure something else, and claim this is worthy of a patent, because the doctors fuzzy logic brain is being replaced by media server based in hollywood, owned by a big media producer, and that the doctors instructions came down the internet via a dish.
Then we get the RIAA to ban the doctor from phoning a specialist - because this would be reverse engineering...
bloody idiots...
make the bastards pay so much in bandwidth, they'll have to close
/dev/null -m http://www.sonicblue.com
... tivo rocks
stick something like the following in cron
wget -b -q -t 5000 -O
f-them
This is an exerpt from the United States Code (title 5, Patents, Sec 103),
made available by the House of Representatives. I got it off of
http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/35/103.html
It reads:
* A patent may not be obtained though the invention is not identically
disclosed or described as set forth in section 102 of this title, if the
differences between the subject matter sought to be patented and the prior
art are such that the subject matter as a whole would have been obvious at
the time the invention was made to a person having ordinary skill in the art
to which said subject matter pertains. Patentability shall not be negatived
by the manner in which the invention was made.
OK, maybe it seems like this could be hazy. To sum it up, even if a similar
design has not yet been patented, the idea can _still_ not be patented if
the design is obvious to those skilled in the relevant fields. I am an
electrical engineering major, and I can tell you, digital video recording
was "obvious" to designers as soon as digital signal processors became
popular. It is unnerving that SONICblue was awarded these patents.
Why stick up for big business?
I was once told that a claim had to be a single sentence
Easy. "We claim a method for allowing $cool_feature comprising " followed by a list of noun phrases describing the steps.
and could not contain the word "or"
The patent under present discussion contains an "or" in the first claim: "wherein the selection of shows is based on one of either pattern matching or fuzzy logic analysis of the user specified criteria"
However: this particular wording opens up a potential loophole: The word "either" may turn an OR into an XOR by excluding the "both" possibility.
Will I retire or break 10K?
2 people were developing the telephone, bell patented it mere hours before the other guy.
That's not the whole story. Mr. Bell submitted his final patent a couple hours before Mr. Gray submitted his first draft.
However, as the population of the United States increases, assuming the proportion of inventors in the population remains constant, the number of inventors will increase, and the probability of two inventors inventing the same invention independently increases approximately as the square of the number of inventors. Your attorney may be able to use independent invention as evidence of obviousness to disprove the validity of a patent.
Will I retire or break 10K?
who judge obviousness?
the patent examiner?
the judge?
an experimented professionnal of the field? how is he compensated for his analysis?
www.cubicles.com
Actually, stupid patents hinder free competition and the growth of the market, so it shouldn't be consider capitalism.
The patent laws and the implementation we have today is much because of big companies with big bucks and lots of lawyers. It realy has a lot more to do with Fachism than anything else.
Just think about it, you want to assemble a few hardware parts write some software and start your business. But you can't somebody has patented the business idea you just got ... Capitalism ?? Bwahaha
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
How do we know it isn't full of moles issuing dumb patents just so lawyers will have steady work?
Maybe SONICblue won't go after Tivo for royalties.. After all, Tivo has some patents of thier own.. Maybe the two companies will just ignore each other, and go for the smaller fish (Are there any other DVR companies besides these two?) Who knows? Stranger things have happened..
~RaGe
www.outrigged.com
Hmm, yeah, I'd say it was a load of b0ll0cks too.
I was working on systems that would learn what you liked to watch by simply taking note of what you would watch and then make recommendations based on time, day, and you could even tell it what mood you were in (I always thought that part was a bit more of a gimmick). It would also automatically record your favourite TV shows if you weren't there, just in case you wanted to see it later.
Now I don't know who developed this stuff first, but seeing as Canon already has patents in this area, I would have side with them.
Here you will find the "we will tell you what we are doing without actually telling you what we are doing" spiel, if you're interested.
The Chicago Manual of Style says I can do it either way in the context I used (punctuation not part of the quote). So that's just a matter of preference.
Virg
The patent examiner is supposed to be a professional in the field in question. They're supposed to be able to assess the claims on their merit, etc. If it's an obvious patent it's not supposed to get past the examiner stage.
There really isn't anything novel here other than TiVo and others made it possible to do things that only much more expensive professional systems are capable of.
There really shouldn't have been a grant on this "Patent".
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Dublin, when I hear you rambling I would guess that your dad is a patent lawyer. I will try some correction:
Software is a great example that patents are not necessary to create a great industry. Sofware had it fastest growth before software patents became the fashion of the day. Both Microsoft and Oracle had until recently very few patents. And even now they seem to use their software patents only defensively.
There exist some studies about the effects of patents on the speed of innovation. In industries where inventions are not related (for example drugs) they have a positive effect on innovation. But in industries where inventions are accumulative (for example software) they have a negative effect on innovation.
Some other examples where patents had negative effects:
- WAP: it blocked further innovations that would have been more appreciated by the market.
- digital and internet TV: only a very select group of companies is active of this market. Most companies prefer to leave this legal minefield to others.
Yeah, that's the theory.
But it's obvious that computers can be used for almost anything, and , according to Sun, for at least ten years, the network is the computer(hope I don't infrige on a trademark, there;).
So how can your description of an ideal situation explains the innumerable patents we observe, and that consist of:
1 adding with a computer to something already known.
2 replacing with a computer with with computers communicating one with another?
Sorry I'm not natively english speaker, and I realise the intended irony in my original comment was to light to be noticed.
Dublin, when I hear you rambling I would guess that your dad is a patent lawyer. I will try some correction:
No, my dad's not a patent lawyer, but he does hold a number of patents, all of which are truly new and innovative.
Some other examples where patents had negative effects:
- WAP: it blocked further innovations that would have been more appreciated by the market.
- digital and internet TV: only a very select group of companies is active of this market. Most companies prefer to leave this legal minefield to others.
WAP died because it was an incredibly stupid idea, and darn near useless, not because the phone.com folks were too heavyhanded with the patents, even though they were.
As for digital/Internet TV, I'll give you only one point there: The Gemstar patent on displaying on-screen program guide information in a grid has caused some minor problems in the industry, but really only for those that refuse to license it. (For those who are wondering, this is why the DirectTV guide works pretty well, and the Scientific Atlanta digital set-top guide is so clunky - the latter are designed around the Gemstar patent.) I personally think this one is not non-obvious, but Gemstar has proven otherwise - to the point that TV Guide decided not long ago to buy Gemstar for that patent...
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last