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.'"

Comments

Make an overly broad patent

[Anonymous Coward]

and earn a Slashdotting - that'll teach 'em.

Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

The patent numbers are becoming dangerously close to 6,666,666. I wonder who the lucky inventor will be?

Re:Hmm

[linzeal]

Man, I should not hold shit in and read slashdot. I almost crapped my pants. Damn limey humour is infectious I tell ya.

Calling all ethernet equipped TiVOs!

[pedaws]

Is the TiVO underground prepared to help out in case of war/collapse?

Don't forget!

[albeit unknown]

SonicBlue is made out of people!

Re:oh the irony,

[interiot]

circlefuck!

(YASP) Yet Another Software Patent

[Lonath]

(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.