Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Patents Interactive Entertainment
An anonymous reader writes "Embedded-Watch is carrying a story regarding the award of patent number 6,571,390 to Microsoft. The patent would seem to cover pretty much any implementation of a video-on-demand system that you (or at least I) can think of. Read for yourself to decide whether this patent either is not original work or is blatantly obvious to the most casual observer. The patent could certainly be invalidated by the courts on either point, but that'd take a fight in court that won't be cheap."
... from the people who wanted exclusive rights for the common word "windows"
----
http://www.hellection.com
we see and endless string of prior art postings?
Two words:
"Prior Art".
I had "Video on Demand" working on my C64 sometime circa 1983 in conjunction with a couple of VCRs.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
So they patented a directory of videos in thumbnail view?
This isn't just going to affect the big boys. There are companies that make various kinds of useful video-delivery, conferencing, and broadcast software that do the exact same things. Not a big market, but a market nonetheless.
.
This patent covers what they're doing too. I've seen at least two hardware/software suites designed to create similar functionality on a smaller scale.
If Microsoft gets aggressive, I wonder who they'll go after first .
As to the patent, I'd say I'm surprised . . . but I'm not surprised.
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
i'm pretty sure both RealPlayer and Apples QT in online mode would fit the description of the 'available programs list'..
And they where both doing it looong befor MS started trying.. the software patents are becoming more and more ridiculous.. cant somebody with som time and money to spend just sue MS for 'deliberately sabotaging market' or something ?
That explains... This eliminates everyone in Redmond. Given that they have no clue what happens outside their own planet, this is not a surprise.
... since when did Microsoft ever actually create anything innovative, creative or original in-house? No matter how far I think back in time, all products coming out of Redmond were blatant rip-offs...
So why change now?
Video on demand... does that mean when I want to watch a movie I simply turn it on... or You request a movie and MS streams it to my brand new MS-certified video-on-demand box which cost me $500 that I hook up to a TV and a broadband internet connection?
Either way, I'd say there is prior art... and if they win... I wonder who gets to provide that broadband connection? and for how much?
thoughts anyone?
Someone patent the Blue Screen of Death. Then you can cross license with Microsoft!
The adult entertainment industry has been doing this for years. Surely all manner of pr0n video-on-demand services must fall under this (rather large) umbrella. It seems to me that pr0n led the way in this department, and that Larry Flynt should make Bill Gates star in one of his films if he wants to keep this patent.
On a related note, I wonder what Bill's name would be if he appeared in one of Flynt's works?
Oracle Video Server.. around before 1998. Now owned by Thirdspace
Way to go Larry!
Who will patent "Superfluous Patents" first and start hurling lawsuits; SCO or MS?
Trolling is a art,
I was wondering why MS continued to stake their XBox claims on XBox live, while PS/2 and Gamecube were offering freestanding systems.
Legally, this will allow MS to shut down EA from providing a portal to all their sports games on PS/2, and Sony and Nintendo will not be allowed to provide a one-stop front end for their modem services either.
Tivo may already have prior art here (Starz on demand) as well as Compuserves networked games and AOL. (Depends on what a "set top box" is).
More than likely this patent was awarded for the rate selecting feature, as that seems to be the novelty in the patented claims. Hopefully the scope will not go beyond that either...
If this goes through, then we might see Microsoft installing coin slots in homes across the world. Want to fire up a game of Vice City after work? Turn on your PS2 or PC and insert a quarter! Oh, the memories! It will be just like a 1980s arcade in your living room! And on Fridays, a strange, sweaty man will show up to empty the machine and send all the coins back to Redmond!
Microsoft Degenatron! Fighting the evil of boredom!
1.Patent things that have already been invented years ago
2.Wait several years before enforcing the patent
3. Profit!
I fully expect that MS will be sued for infringing on Amazon's patent on patenting obvious things with tons of prior art.
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
Really, animorphic menu systems, screenshots for chapters.... its all the same thing
I remember my old ATI-TV card that displayed 30 channels at once, I wonder if that counts, I mean i don't think it is non-obvious to anyone skilled in the art. I mean didn't people have lists of MPEG's before 1998?
... both of them.
sulli
RTFJ.
...Featuring Iron Chef Time Warner vs the contender from Redmond, Chef Bill Gates.
I'd really love to see Microsoft and AOL/Time-Warner trading legal blows over this one. I don't even care who one. I just want to see them blow money and whip up on each other.
404 Error:
Simple really, think of a way that MS or another company can screw you. Than all you need to do is get this patented. Once patented the EFF should have a fund to reimburse people for the cost of the patent. At which point the patent should be placed into an EFF trust dedicated to making sure that particular bad idea can't be used. Come on people, let's use their system against them instead of getting it used against us again. For not that much money we could head off a lot of DRM and other such madness before it does it's damage.
The patent could certainly be invalidated by the courts on either point, but that'd take a fight in court that won't be cheap.
I'm sure AOL will happily buy Tivo and sue MS for any sort of award a la the Netscape vs. IE award.
"Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door." - Emily Dickinson
Microsoft Patents Entertainment
http://use.perl.org
Why doesnt anyone speak up when the apps are available for public review?
It's TOO FUCKING LATE to wait until slashdot posts about the patent being granted. You can cry and whine about prior art and whatnot till the cows come home from fucking your mom, and it aint going to do a lick of good.
If you want to fix the patent process, get involved. Find out about pending patents and work to invalidate them.
Either that or all you linux hippies are jealous that MSFT thought of it first, while you still cant get the TV out feature on your video cards to work.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
If MS were to use this patent against other companies, how easy would it be for the companies to overturn/invalidate the patent? Would it take lots of money for a big legal team or could you just have one good(but not exceptional) lawyer? And if it takes a big legal team, then why on earth does it take a bunch of lawyers and a bunch of money to uphold the law? Something is wrong with this country if you need to spend money to uphold the law.
When did Microsoft hire Jeff Bezos?
Somehow I'm not shocked by this..
"Where can we make you go tomorrow?" to hell!
This is definitely a fraud. I doubt the patent is even from Microsoft. You can see an obvious error, if you refer to figure 4. See the button labeled '78' 'Choices?' See the problem? We all know no Microsoft interface would ever feature a button labeled 'choices.'
I would believe it's a Microsoft interface if figure 4 consisted of the single button labeled '76' that took up the whole screen.
Cases like this make me wish people who file for obviously invalid patents were held responsible for the costs of litigation to throw their patent out (watch out for the borderline cases that honestly believed their application was valid, though). Of course, we wouldn't have this problem if the patent office didn't grant them in the first place.
Then the inspectors were given bananas and spent the rest of the night swinging in trees by their prehensile tails.
If this patent really does cover any and all media on demand stuff, it'll get shot down quick. Not because our legal system is somehow honest, but because there are powerful interests that won't want to pay Microsoft licensing fees. i.e. the momment MS tries to demand cash from AOL/Time Warner this'll be slapped down.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Wouldn't Pay Per View services on cable and satilitte TV constitute some sort of video on demand? Everyone watch for Microsoft Tivo, and the PPV expansion of MSNBC.
-
The INdrema had a similar goal.. content on demand. They had hoped that you could buy a game online, and then play it. Additionally, what happens to those companies that "stream" games? In any case, this is obviously going to be an addon to the xbox, thus eliminating any pvr functionality ina any future homebrew xbox pvr/vod app. (Xbox mediaplayer anyone?)
Step 1: Lock the Cable Companies out of providing content on demand, or at least raise more barriers to entry so that they don't crash the party later.
Step 2: Push the Windows Media edition and provide tv schedule info free over the internet
Step 3: Drive Tivo out of business
Step 4: Profit!
Disconnect your television. Do your own research. Draw your own conclusions. They're probably lying. Don't be a sheep.
the patentable feature in this patent is not VOD. check out class 725/87 for a number of VOD systems.
Read claim 1, the patentable feature is dealing with scroll rates and adding/removingfor a number of listings in a VOD environment. This is not a patent for VOD itself there are several hundred existing patents for that.
VOD by the way is streaming to a user on demmand imediatly after a program is selected, this is not a patent for just that function rather it builds on it to deal with entries/scrolling.
I can't believe you have a fucking typo on your fucking sig. How's that for pathetic.
From what we've all learned is that microsoft collects patents and typically doesn't use them to force themselves onto other corporations like a frat boy at a sweet sixteen party.
The thing is, if microsoft suddenly finds its share price dropping or people quit the windows habit cold-turkey, we're all in for something that looks kinda like the end of Akira.
Just my $0.02
I don't know.... I've never had any interactive entertainment.
but, I thought that patent office had to actually validate the possibility of a patent before accepting it.
I may just be naive, and they accept every patent application until proven wrong, but I honestly beileved this was the case.
http://use.perl.org
Why must the abstracts always be so abstract?
People pick which content they want (videos, games, tv) and it's all put into a list. And then they 'rent' what the want for a certain period of time?
So is this some sort of self-organized, pay-per-view for movies, games, tv..?
Did the US Patent Office hire Rip van Winkle, or what? Hell, I live in Mississippi and the cable companies here even have video-on-demand, so I know the whole rest of the country has it. The guy that investigated this patent request must not have a television. Or indeed electricity. Or eyes or ears, for that matter. I'd say it's even debatable whether he had half a brain.
It's pretty well established that you can't patent something that you didn't invent, and you certainly can't patent something that you didn't invent and everyone else is already using. Something as common as video-on-demand can't be patented... not at this point anyway. I mean, ten years ago, when it was still a novelty (if available at all... I dunno), then yeah. Of course, it's only recently that this has become a big thing and is actually looking profitable.
And that, of course, is always when Microsoft steps in. "Oh look, a dollar to be had! Quick, sue somebody!" Baaah...
The popular geek-news site Slashdot has applied for a patent on alarmist patent stories. One anonymous editor was quoted as saying: "What can we say -- overstating the scope of a patent makes for good news -- it keeps the nerds coming back!"
"The dinosaurs died because they didn't have a space program." - Niven
Eh? As far as I know, patent applications are private. The applications are only public once they've been accepted and the patent granted, right? Where can we go to view pending patent applications?Hopefully people will start to realize that (software) patents are worse than copyright.
b, for sure... three times b :P~~~
I didn't really ask much of a question. I'm just somewhat dumbfounded that ever since amazon, every company patents something that I would think would be unpatentable.
The whole concept of all of this seems moronic to me. I will go download some Metallica MP3s in spite.
http://use.perl.org
This joke appears on every single patent article.
...patents prevent innovation.
Doesn't this fall under the category of "prior art"?
I have played around with digital cable systems that seem like the video on demand system the patent describes. Click here for movie. Yay, you've got a movie...Browse through listings, see previews.
How about Freevo? and MythTV? Even TiVo. They do similar things, or are at least a good base.
From the article
"Upon expiration of the rental period, however, the program is no longer readily accessible until ordered again."
This is pay-per-view for Windows Media Player and cie. This is "blatantly obvious" because it talks about customizable SCROLL BARS. Quit bashing the patent case, it's not for what you think. It doesn't englobe EVERYTHING. You'll still be able to enjoy pay per view porn. As long as it doesn't have any scroll bars and any order, LOL have you read that?
Trolls dont like to be Flamebait, because they burn so well. Protect our Troll heritage!
I am filing a patent on "Use of a Computer System Controlled by a Central Monopolistic Body"...
Abstract:
A method for a very large controlling company, for example a monopoly, to increase consumer ties to an operating environment. What the computer is allowed to do is regulated by the mother company. This mother company is frequently contacted by the computer. This company has control over the computer, possibly including, but not limited to encryption keys, user permissions, software, data, hardware, and the right to protect the interests of the company. The user signs a legal agreement before the computer is purchased, outlining that it is only an indefinite term lease to expire upon breaching any of the company's rules. The computer is controlled and/or monitored as to disable any breaking of these terms. However, running unauthorized software not over the Protected Interface is a breach of contract, and devices will signal that the company's interface is no longer in control and will render the computer and all data useless. In addition, the user may be required to pay the company a fee and/or return the computer to the company. Computer vendors using the company's products will be restricted as to only manufacture these devices only to be available under the above Lease. Any other manufacture of of any device by the company not adhering to the company's strict guidelines will result in the company and all users of that company's products to lose their license and all units will be destroyed.
(well, noone else can patent it, as I 'published' it)
"© 2003 EmbeddedWatch.com. If you pick up this story, please give credit to Alexander Wolfe and EmbeddedWatch.com, as well as a link to http://www.embedded-watch.com and/or http://www.embeddedwatch.com/wolfemicrosoftexclusi vemay31.htm "
Way to go poster!
If Microsoft is able to pursue this it will completely destroy my company. We want to deploy video on demand to hotels. It's completely linux/java based. Cost is a significant factor because hotels don't want to pay for anything...ever. If we have to pay royalties it will ruin us.
"BSD: Free as in speech. Linux: Free as in beer. Windows 10: Free as in herpes." --Man On Pink Corner in #52607549.
I wonder if there is partial prior art in my satellite provider's pay-per-view system? You select programs from a scrollable list. Speed of scrolling is variable based on how fast you hit the buttons on the remote (and how fresh the remote batteries are). Previews are peppered all over every channel during commercial breaks. You never wait more than 30 minutes for the start of a show. A feature called "themes" groups content.
It might not wash, but it might be worth a shot.
www.wavefront-av.com
Back in the mid 90's, I wrote a number of programs using IBM's OS/2, ActionMedia2 cards and a langauge called AudioVisualConnection, or AVC. With it, I wrote Touch Ottawa/Hull, an interactive tourist infromation application running on Kiosks around Ottawa..in Hotels, Bus station, etc. All the data - graphics, audio and video was served off a central server (running BSDI) and cached on the kiosks. I also wrote a stand-alone system for use at Trade shows...it was called The Interactive Business Show, and was used at CeBIT, Comdex and the Montreal International Film Festival. I wonder when MS went for their patent...maybe I should apply for a retro-active patent?
ttyl
Farrell
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
I *KNOW* TimeWarner has prior art on this. As in, WAY before October 1998. My dad, a Veep of Engineering at ATC cum TWC cum AOL, was demo'd VOD systems when I was in high school (1996). I know, because he was telling me how cool things were going to be, how DVD was going to revolutionize media, how digital cable was coming and addressable boxes were night, etc.
I seem to recall an online "public domain" film site in 1997 as well.
How MS got the patent worries me. They had NOTHING to do with the world of entertainment services until 98 or so...really, until Windows Media Player hit version 5 or so. They thought about offering the same thing that the addressable in my dad's media room had since the summer of 97...and had to market last year.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
The patent isn't for Video on demand, in fact they stipulate the fact that vide on demand is common. The patent is for their system of categorizing and selecting items. I know it's fun to bash MS off the cuff, but cmon...
For people that look at opensource software and think it infringes on IP because of SCO, Linux, IBM LOOK WHAT CORPORATIONS FUCKING DO. THESE BULLSHIT PATENTS ARE GETTING OUT OF HAND
i mean
come on
intereactive entertainment is older than spin the bottle
back in the day we didnt have no old school
Free cell phone tracking
And why still have a radio section? The last story was a year ago!
:)
The last story was June 29. That's 3 1/2 weeks from now
Here are the claims to the patent:
This is like hoarding sticks. Our gang can collect them, but if the kid down the road wants one then well we'll just have to beat him up (with our sticks). The patent system works exactly the same. Next time Acme Media Corporation rolls out a VoD system, they'll need their own pretty good patent library to keep the MS legal team away.
"It's not your information. It's information about you" - John Ford, Vice President, Equifax
you have some sort of disorder which causes you to miss entire words in sentences?
some people will do anything for a +1 funny.
i'll do anything for a -1 troll.
This patent is and interface patent on an interface that allows you to scroll through a list of videos one item at a time. You could make a system that didn't violate it by only displaying one video item at a time in a page style instead of list style, or by displaying a multiple item list but change the entire list on a button press instead of scrolling one at a time, which is arguably more useful anyway. This patent is pretty narrow as to the type of interface it covers. Congratualtions Microsoft, you have exclusive rights to an annoying interface.
Somebody should patent exactly this, but add a claim for a "page down" feature. Microsoft will be forced to cross license that patent in order to implement this one in a user-pleasing fashion.
...the US Patent Office is not "asleep." They are not "clueless".
THEY ARE DOING THIS DELIBERATELY. They are working from a philosophy that amounts to "patent everything, let the courts sort it out." Yes, it's atrocious.
Everytime the US patent office does something like this we get page after page of Slashdot comments saying "WTF? ARe they stupid? Are they asleep? whatever happened to prior art?" It's getting tiresome--the USPO is doing this DELIBERATELY.
Stop asking "why" and DO something about it. Write your representatives, make some phone calls.
Seriously. The rest of the world is DEPENDING on you Americans do DO this. Why? Because unelected institutions like WIPO want to impose the horribly broken US patent model ON EVERYONE. They've already threatened Canada. Who's next?
Hell, I was ordering porn^H^H^H^H"art films" in motels back in the 80's....
Microsoft may be amassing patents primarily for defensive purposes. This makes sense, as Microsoft is an obvious target for infringement lawsuits. They've learned their lesson from DOS 6.0 DoubleSpace and Stac.Now, as you have mentioned, they could always change their mind and start enforcing all those pretty patents they've collected.
From the claims section of the patent:
...
[quoting]
1. A user interface unit for use in an individual home...
the user interface enabling a viewer to adjust the selected rate [of display scrolling] according to personal preference
[/quoting]
Thus any VOD system which does not include a way for the user to adjust the rate at which entries scroll (so that they may be selected) would not seem to be covered by this patent.
I haven't used a VOD system yet which allowed me to set a scrolling speed preference; it sounds like that will remain the case.
People just start whining first...it's saves them time.
Oops, replying to my own post: For those that don't know, WIMP="Windows Icon Mouse Pointer", an acronym for windowing environments such as Macs and AmigaOS etc of the time.
I can't belive that you care. Now you look like a fucking moron for caring. How's That for Really Pathetic.
Is it just me, or is the US Patent Office totally worthless? Well, maybe not worthless, but you have to wonder if they even bother to think about the implications that these broadly described processes may affect, or whether you should be able to lay claim to something so general in the first place.
It seems like there's been a whole slew of stupid patents running across Slashdot's front page the past while, and it just boggles my mind each time I see a new one, how open-ended all of these are.
Is the purpose of a patent really supposed to be able to provide rights to a general way of doing things, or is it's purpose supposed to be relative to an actual invented way of doing things?
I could see MS's approved patent making more sense (in my mind) if they actually invented the infrastructure, and the methods, and the technology. But it seems to me they're just saying, "Oh, that's a good idea -- we'll patent it!"
I dunno... what is the point of patents, anyway? I thought it was originally created to help small inventors protect their ideas from corporations. But now it seems like its become a cash cow for the government and big business.
Both the writer of the article and most of the respondants here seem to be confused about how patents work. If you read the actual patent, the things MicroSoft is attempting to patent are spelled in the "claims" section. They are claiming the actual interface and the interface box as the things they are protecting. They clearly are not attempting to patent all VOD. Hell, they even describe interactive television as the field of their patent. Clearly you can't claim to patent the entire field, the patent office would laugh at you and that is in no way what MicroSoft has done. The author almost gets it with "an astute legal observer might opine that Microsoft is merely attempting to patent a program guide for an on-line video system." But then rambles on about the secret meaning of the background and preferred embodiment as if all the important claims are hidden in the fine print. It don't work that way. All they really seem to claiming is the rights to a programmable automatic scrolling method in a VOD implementation. I'm as willing to argue MicroSoft is evil as the next guy, but it would be helpful to the cause if you didn't find conspiracies under every rock.
I just read the patent and although I am not a patent lawyer, I have written patent applications and hold two so I know something about reading them.
This patent does not cover video on demand systems. Read the claims of the patent, which describe the novel features covered. These boil down to:
A user interface widget that allows you to see a list of available items, where the UI widget is scrollable and the user can control the scroll rate via a preference and the widget shows videos available on a back-end VOD system.
This is so far from a "patent [that] would seem to cover pretty much any implementation of a video-on-demand system" that its laughable. It covers a very specific feature that is used in a proscribed and specific way. Most VOD system's probably don't have this UI and even if they did it would be easy to work around it.
The short story: don't over-react, this is not a patent on VODs.
Sailing over the event horizon
Quote by Dennis Hopper's character in the movie "Speed":
"Interactive television, Jack! It's the wave of the future!"
This was, of course, some 15 years after pong, atari, intellivision and similar products.
Oh, the irony.
that VideoLanis developed in France. By the way thanks to all that help out with the VideoLan project.
Let's just create a P2P network with sure purpose of providing VOD. They'll never stop us with there evil patent!
Later,
Phil
Before you post, make sure to read the actual claims at the USPTO site.
They haven't patented video on demand at all, in spite of all the description in the patent.
They've patented scrolling
What gives them the idea that these claims will hold up for even a minute is anybody's guess.
But besides that, the claims are quite narrow. An implementation that scrolled smoothly or 2 items at a time would completely avoid this patent.
Given that, it's clear that they went through quite a few rounds of "Ha! I bet you can't find that in the prior art" with the patent office.
If blatant is offensively obvious, would not blantantly mean offensively obviously? And there for blatantly obvious would just mean offensively, obviously obvious?
Of course this is still redundantly repeating oneself.
The cancel button is your friend. Do not hesitate to use it.
Not that I want to replace one big corporate entity with another in this situation, but Comcast, or for that fact any major cable company has had prior art on this for at least the past 10 years that I can remember with Pay Per View( which is streaming video on demand) or Video on Demand which allows you to pause.
This is very stupid, I can understand a patent for a certain algorithm used for compression, delivery, etc, but patenting a very basic concept is stupid. I say a patent should at least involve some form of merit and credibility behind it. Our government has been disappointing me for 21 years and I see no change in sight.
After some very brief research I can find prior art that dates back to 1974.
Click Here [museum.tv]
The patent deals specifically with Video on Demand services, and even more specifically, the claims deal with features pertaining to creating favorites lists of content you might want to order, with preview video thumbnails.
It's got nothing to do with online gaming, or modem services by any stretch of the imagination. Even if it COULD be stretched to include online games, all the online games you mentioned are games installed/running on the local machine, that uses a server matchmaking service to connect to other users. Not even CLOSE to a Video on Demand system.
It boggles the mind that the parent is modded up.
You forgot my favorite.. "Salsa Sauce" or sauce sauce :)
I would play those cheesy on demand AOL games, like slingo! Now, that game wasn't on my HDD, since I had to visit that particular site. (I'm sure it was cached in there somewhere, but I just wanted to play, not analyze my AOL directory) This was around 97.
What, me Tweet?
Of all the Microsoft bashing that goes on here, please remember that Microsoft has been a pretty good Patent Citizen.
They hold an extensive portfolio, but use them defensively: if someone else had gotten that patent, even with Microsoft's prior arts, you can be sure they'd take Microsoft to court about it.
The number of situations where Microsoft was the bully in patent litigation is very small... can you list any examples?
[
yes, but obviously obvious obvious obvious does not seem obvious enough for the typical patent examinator
read the article before you post how your video collection is video on demand.
Who would have ever thought of on demand movies or video games? Well for starters, a hotel I stayed at for an FFA convention in Montgomery, Alabama let me watch video on demand (Kinda-like pay-per-view), but also let me play video games in my room (the controller was the only thing in my room. All the rest of it was probably down at the desk). You'll just choose what game you wanted, an they would start it up.
TV-on-Demand - Ingenious. Doesn't ReplayTV or Tivo do something like that?
Music on Demand - Oh, kinda like MP3.com / Kazaa / or Internet Radio?
It sounds like all microsoft's ideas have already been used.
Stop the Slashdot effect! Don't read the articles!
This is just stupid, and WILL be challenged by the other 500 pound gorilla in this space.
I'm pretty certain that any NDA i signed expired, and much of this is publically known anyway...
I worked at Time Inc. New Media in 1995. At the time, Time Warner had a fully functional video on demand system rolled out to a few neighborhoods in Orlando, Fl. It was both a source of pride and joy, but also seen as largely unworkable given the economics of the day.
It had features that included random access video, over fiber, distributed from a head-end, an electronic program guide, I believe, that showed either image or video previews, a remote control, pausing, ff/rw, the whole shebang.
The thing was run by an army of centrally located SGI Onyx servers, and the set top box was an SGI workstation, with a lot of stuff stripped out. It even included video games on demand, downloaded to an included Atari Jaguar. It had its own remote control design optimized for VOD. I think that they recycled the design for TW's current on-demand service; I'm guessing that a lot of Orlando tech and know-how is in there, too.
It should be mentioned that it featured an interface that was totally based on 3D imagery, and would appear advanced today. 8 years ago, it was just science fiction come to life.
This was not just pie-in-sky - it was completely functional. It just wasn't economically scaleable given the computational and compression limitations of the tme. Which is why I think that they mothballed it - to wait for cheaper servers, cheaper storage, cheaper bandwidth, better compression. And $200 set top boxes to display the video and interface.
Now, I'm not the biggest fan of Time-Warner, but they did, at least in the 90's, do some innovation.
Now, INAPE (not a patent examiner), but I'd say that Orlando pretty much invalidates this patent, from the EPG to the actual video-on-demand aspects. More importantly, the prior art has a muscle bound organization behind it to hopefully invalidate this straight away.
Jonathan
Posters: READ THE GODDAMN ARTICLE! You look like an idiot is you reply based on just the summary. It's pretty ovious a good number of posters haven't read it.
Editors: Stop posting stories with misleading summaries! It confuses the Slashdot community, who likes to post their knee-jerk reactions.
I'm gonna lose my karma for this, so be it. Slashdot sucks more and more every day, with duplicates, misleading summaries, and Ask Slashdots that could be solved by Googling, eopinions.com (Color laser printer), or reading your manual ("broken" V-chip is actually CC text mode). Check out "Not Slashdot", kuro5hin.org
this reminds me of an old onion article
Microsoft to Patent Ones, Zeroes
The validity of this patent is not really the issue here. Regardless of whether there is prior art the problem is that programmers cannot generally afford to fight invalid patents. M$ accomplishes its objective which is to prevent programmers from doing their jobs.
This patent is just another example of why WE NEED TO ORGANISE an OPEN SOURCE PATENT ASSOCIATION and each of us needs to throw in $100 bux or $1000 or whatever it takes to finance an organisation that can both patent and fight for us. As a member of an organzation like this we would have the right to use any patents that we hold and we _CAN_ prevent M$ and TI and IBM and everyone else from using these patents. If _our_ organisation simply picks the best ideas we come up with and patents them in very short order we'll have a rather mean shief of patents up our collective sleeves.
excuse me my ignorance - but how does the names "Windows" and say "sun" differ? There are both common words are there anything i don't see here?
/Esben
"Nobody really checks their email any more. They just delete their spam"
If a company submits a patent that is too broad as in this case there is clearly a large body of previous work that supercedes this patent. In this case the company should be refused the patent. They then reword the patent until the Patent office lets it through.
How do we change the current patent system to remove this incentive? The brute force method would be to strengthen the patent granting process to ensure that no such patents are accepted but the cost of this solution falls soley on the patent office. Do we punish companies when patents are rejected with fines to fund the patent office?
STFU UP
The entire patent is all about a user interface with selectable favorites, a user selectable scroll-rate and video previews.
That's it.
It's got absolutely NOTHING to do with XBox Live, EA's PS2 or Nintendo's games, or anything of the sort.
I am not a fan of M$ however I can't see the problem with this.
An interactive entertainment network system has a video-on-demand (VOD) application which allows viewers to create their own customized lists of preferred video content programs, such as movies, games, TV shows, and so forth. Viewers are permitted to select criteria for grouping various video content programs into manageable sets. Lists of programs are provided in one or more scrollable lists, the scrolling rates of which are programmable. Once grouped, previews for the set of programs are displayed. The VOD application allows the viewers to browse the previews at their own rate, skipping forward to the next preview or backward to the previous preview. During this automated browsing, the VOD application enables the viewer to add any of the programs of interest to a customized list. The viewer can retrieve the customized list at any time. If the viewer orders a program from the customized list, the program remains available to the viewer for a rental period (which is adjustable). Upon expiration of the rental period, however, the program is no longer readily accessible until ordered again.
This does not patent VOD. It patents "interactive entertainment network". It seems to be similar to payper view for your computer. This is a patent for the interface for that payper view network. It is TV and Movie programing on demand. This simply explains that it uses VOD. Did you guys even read this?
If you knew anything about Australians, you'd know that they love ripping shreds off their leaders, institutions and anyone else who makes themselves a target.
the novel feature from reading the claims is dealing with a scroll rate. as long as you are dealing with a video on demand system in which a user sets a prefereence for a scroll rate, microsoft has patent protection. if you dont implement that, you aren't infringing on this patent.
the user isn't choosing a personal preference, as defiend by the specifcation for a scroll rate.
the specifcation shows in paragraph 27 that a user makes a scroll rate choice on an onscreen display for browing VOD program listings.
pressing page up/down may be a user action, but it is not a preference when read in light of the specification.
Pay-Per-BSODs and Error-On-Demand. What a blast!
Philips/Magnavox (Let's make things better) had a VOD system in 1996. They contracted Whittle Communications to provide content. Spent millions in development, got a source license for every UNIX kernel at the time just to evaluate it.
Then after the first successful demo, the engineering team is giving each other high-fives, when upper management announces the canceling of the project and laying off of the engineers.
They took the demo systems into the parking lot, hung them from a tree, poured kersene on them. Then lit them with a match, and had a round of target practice with some rifles someone had in their truck. Hence, Philips now will not be able to locate the prior art.
The new slogan coined by the engineers was Let's just make things.
After all, someones once patented a XOR cursor routine (patent #4,197,590)
You may be amused, or horrified, by some of these software patent examples. It appears that Europe is not really that much better, something the Patent Horror Gallery explicates.
So Be Aware: If my karma drops below good, I may issue a patent for a system that karmafies people and then sue the hell out of OSDN ;-)
I can't tell. I think everyone that ever worked for the US patent office is going to hell... could be wrong but i'm pretty sure...
Is this purely the purview of "frat boys" and Microsoft? Not hardly. Amongs my many African-American students, if you strive to become educated and get your grades and speak correct English and be able to speak a sentence without profanity, then you are ridiculed and ostracized as being a 'white boy' or 'white girl' or 'sellout', an 'oreo', which is crazy. But if you're on the corner, drinkin' a 40, smokin' a blunt, holding your privates, then you're keepin' it real
Enough Microsoft bashing already!
Microsoft Patents Existence: You are, therefore you pay.
Is anybody infringing on the butt hinge patent yet?
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
Prior Art
the odometer lives!
if thats the case how come michael seems so sensitive about stuff which criticizes australia? i dont know about that original post and story which seems to be about France v. england ( is Timothy english??) ....but there do seem to be lots of storys about australia when michael is modding and if anybody posts anything even vagley (sp) critical of australia the aussies here - like yourself - quickly flame it to perdition!!!
;-)
whatever happened to Taco and Hemos and the rest anyways?
I'd better take down my web pages that have thumbnails linked to avi files from my digital cameras.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
This patent includes being able to look at Previews After Selection etc., The motels/hotels have had VOD systems which scrolled lists (but not a "scroll bar" for some 15 years. They also allow previews of selections although you could not select a subset of programs like the patent seems to call for. The patent looks like an attempt to control the on-screen setup for making VOD selections. It seems to me that that should have been "obvious to a person familiar with the industry" especially since scroll bars are already the norm for selecting nearly anything done with computers.
Didn't Apple have scroll bars before MS reverse engineered the windows interface? Have they waited too long to patent them? Has anyone yet decided to patent those scroll arrows at the end of the scroll bars?
Perhaps the use of scroll and VOD and a couple of other things make the application unique, but I don't see anything that seems to be "not obvious".
Bitch-slappin', 12 sandwich-eatin', high-priced laywers paid for by larger and larger companies make deals to keep the kids out of the sandbox.
Why would you change if you were the patent office? You get your money, the companies battle it out, the lawyers are red-eyed with hookers and blow - everybody wins!
Oh, except for that pesky citezenry.
The word 'sun' wasn't in common use to describe mainframe Unix machines.
The word 'windows' WAS in common use to describe that particular style of GUI interface.
Happy to be of service.
Isn't it unlawful to benefit fro a crime. If MS has been convicted of antitrust violations - you get that point.
Now, I guess that the distribution of patents doesn't relate to the criminality of the holder, but in gerneral principle, how can MS use the law in one hand and flaunt it with the other. If this is going to be a band of pirates, let's get to swashbuckling - if we're going on the other hand to make rules, let's keep it as fair as possible.
AIK
...for years now, well before the filing date of 1998. There's got to be PLENTY of prior-art for this sort of thing...
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
Jeez. Why do people disrupt discussions with such petty remarks? What's the point?
Naked hostility against random strangers. If you're angered by complete strangers over their spelling errors, something is wrong with you.
Yes
Disposable pant-type diaper having enhanced extensibility around leg opening
novelty is important, but if there isn't prior art or its not ovbious the patent office has to issue the patent.
35 USC 102 says, something to the effect of, a person may have a patent unless it was described in a publication prior to invention.
As a result, a number of patents are given to things that may not be earth shattering, practical or even commerically sucessfull, but its not up to the examiner to decide that.
There's a reason for patents.
If this patent was rejected, would it have stopped MS from developing and rolling this out and collecting profits from it? Would it have given competition unfair market share away from MS? Does the award of the patent justify return on investment for developing this new invention?
Who the FUCK are these people in the patent office? I'm a noob when it comes to law and patents, and I don't know much about VOD, but even I can tell you to chuck this out. Can someone with some clout or maybe who has a friend in the news industry or technews (online or paper) please convince a reporter to go visit the patent office and find out what they are doing? It doesn't appear to be that the people with decision making roles in vital positions, whether they are in the seat of power or not (it may just be a paper-pushin dweeb like me) has any moral, ethical or mental capacity to defer judgement of this sort of thing. Either that or he knows nothing about technology (and he works in the patent office?). I'd like his name, face, address and phone number plastered all over slashdot so we can harass him from time to time. People must be accountable for their actions or we continue this path. It doesn't take alot of imagination or visionary forsight to see where it leads.
"What are you doing."
"I'm processing a patent for..."
"What are you doing."
"Well I was telli..."
"What are you doing."
"Wa... I..."
"What are you doing."
"I'm just..."
Smack!
"Ow... that hur..."
Please see previous article: Auction Patent
"Last one in is a rotten goblin!" - Kepp
Searching even more refined keywords for:
"video on demand" movies personalized
yields a discussion of a prior (claimed to be patented) personalized system that looks (to my unskilled eye) the same as what's in the Microsoft patent:And this is what I found in ten minutes looking around. I'm sure a deeper search would reveal a heap of scifi stories and movies and tv shows (probably Star Trek and friends) that take such capabilities and even UI techniques totally for granted and that pre-date the application date.
The whole original notion of the web's design in the first place was of "lists of resources" where text pages were just one of many "resources". I bet the original design documents for the web, somewhere, mention the idea of customized streaming video movies.
Kent M Pitman
Philosopher, Technologist, Writer
Headline: Microsoft Patents Interactive Entertainment
*me sweats bullets*
Summary:The patent would seem to cover pretty much any implementation of a video-on-demand system that you (or at least I) can think of.
* me breathes sigh of relief *
For a moment, I though M$ finally had the means to patent the sexual act.
Mod Karma -1: I sed bad wurds. If I cep my mouf shut, I wud be at riyses.
Now, correct me if you've delved deeper into the details than I.
After reading the Claims and Summary of the Invention sections, it appears that the inventions Microsoft is claiming are:
That is all.
It may seem that Microsoft is claiming world+dog in the VOD realm, but that's only because they have to describe the entire system to provide the appropriate context for their claimed inventions. This is the mistake Mr. Wolfe makes in the linked article on Embedded Watch. He seems to think everything in the detailed description is part of the claim.
This sig intentionally left blank.
Please, turn your computer off and bury it in the backyard before you hurt yourself permanently.
How typically microsoft, using the legal system to get around any and all obsticles in their way, be them competitive or design flaws.
On reviewing the MS patent, I found this from IBM which apparently is a patent on the listbox control!
This just in.
Microsoft files for patent for simple exchange process. Said process involves a transfer of carbon dioxide and oxygen between a semi-permeable membrane.
Damn...guess I can't breathe anymore...
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
the novel feature from reading the claims is dealing with a scroll rate. as long as you are dealing with a video on demand system in which a user sets a prefereence for a scroll rate, microsoft has patent protection. if you dont implement that, you aren't infringing on this patent.
the user isn't choosing a personal preference, as defiend by the specifcation for a scroll rate.
the specifcation shows in paragraph 27 that a user makes a scroll rate choice on an onscreen display for browing VOD program listings.
pressing page up/down may be a user action, but it is not a preference when read in light of the specification.
While your link certianly lists a VOD system from the 80's i dont see anything dealing with scroll rates.
Why would I change? Because it all amounts to nothing in your life without investing some piece of your belief and your role in humanity. Call me a tree hugging philanthropist. I've been at a law office as you described (I wasn't a lawyer, but the techie who supported their systems, but I got more than a fair share of the action). At the end of the day there's nothing left but pure emptiness. There are people in those world that care. About this, or that, or any stupid little thing they do in their life. But they do care.
I guess if it's all about winning and money then the world is going in the right direction, isn't it? It is, isn't it?
"Last one in is a rotten goblin!" - Kepp
Yay! they just patented Digital Cable a year after Digital Cable!
actually VOD goes back to the 70s/80s
the patent is for setting a scroll rate within a vod listings application, read claim 1.
yes you found prior art on VOD, but to invalidate the patent you need art on a VOD application that lets a user set how fast listings will scroll via a personal preference option.
that makes sence - thanks
/Esben
"Nobody really checks their email any more. They just delete their spam"
I'm sorry, this discussion board is specifically for people who have never read a patent filing. ;)
I've said it a hundred times on here, you can't patent an idea, only the specific implementation of an idea.
You're right, in that that's the general idea of the patent system - but specific incidents have proven this to be no longer necessarily the case. The most oft-cited and egregious example is the one-click patent. If ever there was a patent on an idea, it's that one. If I were Ford, I'd go patent an engine with more than 40 MPG, because it's the same thing: efficiency of use. And that isn't an implementation.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
I already patented the pre-emptive DRM patent. I'm sure we could work out a liscence payment plan though.
So what you're saying is that MS has patented the storage of user settings?!?
Sorry, but you were asking for it ;-)
It doesn't matter, because Slashdot wanted an attention-grabbing headline with an attention-grabbing summary that paints Microsoft as evil in some way. So it gets posted with no forethought, so as to generate page hits and draw out the pseudo-intellectuals who will espouse patent laws they know nothing about and the anti-Microsoft Slashbots to come out of the woodwork for the day.
We get a Microsoft article at least once a day now, often more. Remember when it was more like once a week and even less?
"Sufferin' succotash."
People aren't looking for a one man show anymore. It's about social interaction nowadays. Who'd of thought?
why run from Vincenzo?
www.theonion.com/onion3311/microsoftpatents.html
I think future stories on Slashdot need to start calling patents by what they really are in practice. I'd lean towards something that better conveys to the public at large just what rights and privileges a patent confers to its owner.
I thought something like 'monopoly grant' would have a good ring.
Do not spread "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0" over the internet, thank you.
Actually, I think the redundancy makes sense here.
Things which are obvious are not supposed to be patentable -- and this idea appears to be obviously obvious.
... to be cross with Microsoft licenses.
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
Depends... Which one churns out more shit? That's the USPTO.
to:
Your !(Rights) Online
Since M$ has been involved with the creation of several VOD protocols (T.128, T.126, et cetra) one would think that they have point in applying for such a patent.
Everyone read the patent! With a little bit of dedication, I would bet we can bring the USPTO server it it's knees -- it's slow to begin with. To increase the effectiveness, we should all try to find the patent by searching for it instead of following the link. Yee-HAW!
Windows was a common word used to describe a graphical user interface that had...well..windows. X-Windows, Mac, MSFT Windows all utilize windows. It's a generic term. On the other hand, Sun (I'm assuming you are refering to the same people that made Java) did not use a generic name in regards to the company. Unix didn't already run a version of Sunlight, Daylight, or Firey Star. There was nothing already to confuse it to. Two organizations can have very similar trademark as long as their respective uses do not overlap and it would be obvious to anyone (Patent/TM office excluded) that they are different products. Examples being Lexus (car) & Lexis (Law database), Apple (Computers) and Apple (Records) and Apple (Employment).
Sorry MS, I think SCO owns the Intelectual Property of that technology which you licensed from them last week. Thiefs!
No, it's a programmable scroll-rate that responds to user selectable preferences. A Page up/down button is not the same thing.
Well, maybe they only intended the patent to cover the spesific method they used, but there have been video-on-demand systems in the works for decades from companies like AT&T and the like. Dosn't anyone remember the whole 'information superhighway' thing that people talked about constantly back in the early 90s?
<rant type="tangental">
By the way, I think it's intresting that pretty much the only application people could think of for the 'information superhighway' was video on demand. And shopping of course. The people behind this (Including Al Gore) only thought of people as information sinks. Brainless consumers shoveling down mindless entertainment and buying things. Pretty sad. Of course, big media companies would love that.
What sucks is that they are trying to make the internet, for a lot of people, into a system just like that. Consume only, and if you do make content they get to stick their adverts on it (like geocities).
Oh well
</rant>
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I don't know what kind of hick area you're living in *chuckles*, but out here in the middle of nowhere, Time Warner cable has had VOD for a while now. I've got HBO On Demand, pay something like $7/mo as a flat rate, and I get all of the stuff they've got on there.
Yeah, if you're wondering where the middle of nowhere is... Warsaw, NY, pop ~4000. It's between Buffalo and Rochester, it's about an hour from any city with >20000 people. The middle of nowhere.
Restating the obvious since nineteen aught five.
Does it disturb anyone else that we're talking about patent number 6,570,390 when 6,000,000 was awarded for HotSync just a couple of years ago?
And I though the tech economy had collapsed? Perhaps now that they can't make money on real products, they have to make money on royalties.
-twb
So I'm telling you this another way. Applicants have a one year grace period before filing, in which they may publicly disseminate their invented feature. If someone else published something describing the same idea within that grace period, the applicant would need to "swear behind" that publication. It's not at all as simple as you seem to imagine it.
In the early 1990s British Telecom was trialing a Video on Demand system (over phone lines) in the UK.
Sounds like prior art to me.
http://www.usvo.com/tech/store_forward.html
the iPod's scroll wheel let's you variablly scroll through a list of music, and then demand to listen to it. So it's music on demand with variable scrolling through it's interface.
It was also an acronym for
8 235.shtm l
Sanford University Network
which the company was started from...
Now IANAL, but trademarking the initials of your whole name is common, probably accepted practice...
Now microsoft just needs to figure out what Windows is an acronym for...
google.com site:slashdot Stanford University Network
yields, among other things
http://slashdot.org/articles/00/02/09/163
This isn't an instance of a catch-all patent, despite the flame-bait article title. It's a very specific patent of a very specific type of user interface.
And if you were smart enough to get software patents, you would agree.If you have software patents of your own and want to disagree go ahead and disagree, otherwise keep it to yourself and quit whining about software patents and Microsoft being evil and do something useful for others.
If you wish to live up to the lofty goals of freedom, you'll have to give it to everybody, or risk looking as hypocritical as the current US administration. There isn't much profit in that, but no one said freedom was cheap. ;)
Besides, the whole theory of Open Source is "implementation", not ideas. I mean, come on, the whole GNU/Linux (I never thought I would use that term) premise is a UNIX workalike.
And the last absurd idea, if this is some "open" organisation, what reasoning would allow you to keep people like IBM and MS out? I can think of a couple of ways, but all of them can be abused...
Sure I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?
When
I
Need
Downtime,
Operate
Windows
Server
Don't patronize whatever company is behind such foolishness. It's the one true way. It will work. No lawyers required.
Me, I like to get my hostility out on these kinds of post (not your, the spelling flame). I only flame people who flame others. It's easy, because most flamers are pretty clueless.
Patent system is different in the US to Europe. For the moment you can't patent software in europe.
Having had a quick scan of the patent it is fairly clear that M$ is not trying to patent interacive interactive. it looks like they are patenting vod playlists with a preview function. Which to be honest I have no idea if it has been done before or not.
I confess I've not read the filing, but:
Isn't every RSS reader prior art?
Ok, not all of them scroll, but those that do the rate is selectable, they have previews, and you can select your favorites by choosing your news feeds.
I think can we all agree here that the USPTO is handing out common sense patents like they were candy. Something has to be done, or it is going to get very expensive to fight all this garbage in court.
Let's start a petition (one per state) to move for the abolition of patents. Let's get this on the November ballot. Let the people vote to strike down the patent system. Who will step up to the plate?
At the very least, we need:
Come on guys (and gals), let's do something productive for once, rather than just whining about how broken the system has become.
Please read this idea on abolishing patents.
They've been keeping track of your fav porn vids online for ages and ages.. Where you left off, where you want to continue.. What ones you've seen, what ones you might want to see, etc etc.. This is nearly decade old technology people...
I checked out kuro5hin, and it looks pretty good. I will start reading it, as well as scanning the slashdot headlines.
The slashdot editors are notoriously bad, but I'm pretty sure they're not paid, right? The slashdot readers and raters are pretty good. If you sort by highest score, you can almost always get a good summary with some real insight in the first 10 articles or so. In about thirty seconds I found out that the limiting claim on this patent is the scroll rate of the title display, and that there is another tech geek site that may be good (or even better.) So slashdot isn't really too bad at all.
Frothing ON the keyboard seems more appropriate.
This is...umm...interesting. You could basically already do the same thing on your PC by going to rottentomatoes.com and bookmarking the pages of the various movies. The list of bookmarks becomes your "custom" list.
I can already get video on demand. Well I could if I owned a TV set and had cable hooked up to it...
This has Prior Art written all over it.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Drexel... http://www.dval.com/channellink.htm
...patent, that is. If MS didn't patent this, AOL/TW or some other company might have. If MS patents it, everybody accuses them of being part of the patent problem.
The companies aren't the problem. The system is the problem. The patent system is set up to encourage an escalation of silly patents. Patents are the weapons, the patent office is the arms merchant, and small companies are buffer states between superpowers. Until that changes, MS, SBC, AOL/TW, IBM, and every other corporation on the planet will be filing silly patents to get ahead of their enemies who might file the same silly patent.
There are plenty of reasons to point fingers at MS, this isn't one of them.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
And throughout the rest of the document, Games readily appear along with "Video". The CLAIMS make references to an INTERACTIVE ENTERTAINMENT SYSTEM.
Oh, but because it doesn't SAY Xbox, it has NOTHING to do with it? Right.
The author of the article seems to base his analyis of the patent primarily on what is written in the abstract. This is meaningless. What matters primarily in any patent is the claims. The description and figures can be used to indicate intent in some cases, but this is very much secondary to the text of the claims.
Strongly suggest that, before forming any opinions, you read the patent itself (follow the link in the main posting). Pay particular attention to the claims, and bear in mind that, in order for a device to infringe the patent, it must do *all* of the things listed in any given claim. Doing only some of the things doesn't count.
I keep seeing posts on how companies are patenting this that and the rest, what ever happened to the competitive spirit? Why not let customers decide what technology they like through competition, as in most other industry's?
Let competition drive innovation!
I could go on a micrsux rant, but I won't, they are just providing competition to drive development of linux/macos/bsd etc etc, and that isn't a bad thing, unless someone works out how to patent operating systems.
Weired
W hiny
Insane
Neorotic
Dangerous
Obfuscated
System
Probably because filing a patent isn't free. I don't recall offhand what the fees are, but considering how many defensive patents would have to be filed, the amount would add up fast.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Will
Install
Needless
Data
On
Whole
System
(not mine...I forget where that one comes from)
"Proudly Posting Without Reading The Article"
When
In
Network
Deliberately
Obstruct
Worthy
Systems
and as a bonus:
Make
Incompatibilities
Common
Retarding
Other
Software's
Operation,
Furthering
Takings
This sig is part of your complete breakfast.
as long as the user can't adjust the rate of scrolling, you don't infringe.
:D
I've got a TV made back in the seventies, and I can adjust the rate of scrolling with a little knob on the front labelled "horizontal hold".
That seems like a pretty limited (ang obvious) patent
If it's obvious (and I agree that it seems pretty obvious), then it shouldn't qualify for a patent. I've been yelling "go faster!" at the TV guide channel for years, and when I first saw digital cable, my very first thought was, "ooh, can I set it to scroll faster?"
I agree that slashdot has (yet again) completely misrepresented the story, and made a mountain out of a molehill, but it's still a lame patent that doesn't deserve to exist. One thing that conventional slashdot wisdom does have right is that it's too easy to get a patent on something obvious, and much too hard to get a crap patent grant overturned.
and they have the money to challenge this. Yup, that's Singapore Telecom. Maybe someone could sell them on the benefits of being seen as the good-guys.
Check out www.usvo.com for news releases about its (US Video Interactvive Corp) several suits recently brought agains the biggies in film distribution business.
From BusinessWeek Online:
"USA Video Technology, based in Delaware, Conn., filed suit Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware against Movielink, a video-on-demand service that USA Video says violates its patent rights for an online movie delivery system.....
USA Video, a unit of USA Video Interactive, was awarded the patent, called "Store and Forward Video System," in July 1992; it broadly covers a method for Internet users to request and receive "a digitized video program for storage and viewing," according to the complaint. Movielink, which sells digital copies of films for download from its five partners including Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Viacom's Paramount Pictures, violates this patent on the basis of its service, the complaint says."
I swear people just don't both to read the stupid thing. It's in English, it isn't that difficult.
The patent is specifically about a method of displaying available interactive content (games, PPV, whatever) in a continuously scrolling list. It describes how the list shows previews and allows the user to speed up or slow down how fast the list scrolls.
The description of the "invention" itself goes into implementation specifics, but the patent (unless I'm horribly mistaken) is simply for this auto-scrolling list showing previews of available content.
The parent post quotes the patent application but conveniently leaves out some of the specifics, such as the continous scrolling criteria, in order to bolster his case. That's just reckless.
This is no different than TV Guide's patent on display program grids -- it'a just patent on a way of presenting information. It's not a patent on the information itself, or video on demand, or time-shifted viewing, or even a patent on continously scrolling lists. It's just a patent on using a continuously scrolling list to show previews to allow the user to browse available interactive content.
their purchase of Placeware?
???
Blogging because I can...
how is it obvious? Are you one skilled in the art at the time the invention was made?
Please explain how you feel it would be obious to implement a scroll speed control preference within a VOD ordering application. Please show me where you can find a scroll speed preference within the electronic program guide art. Please provide sufficent motiviation to combine a scroll speed control preference with a VOD ordering application that it would have been ovbious to one skilled in the art. PLease explain how you would counter an attorney's argument that it is not ovbious. Please explain how you yourself are an expert in the art of video distribution.
Just because it is possible pull prior art from two different areas to achieve the same invention doesn't mean that it is unpatentable. Doing such is called hindsight, meaning not only there is no motivation to combine two teachings, but such acombination would not have been obvious to do, especially back in 1995 which is when this case has priority too.
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
To put this slashdot engine to work for us, how about a system like this: we post a message on slashdot calling for people interested in being the initial organizational head. This post is placed in a volunteer's journal or as a response to a semi-relevant article. Word is spread via a link to the post in many volunteers' sigs. All respondents to that message by a certain date are in "the pool". At a fixed date thereafter, all pool members view the slashdot postings of all other pool members and use that info (along with any out of band communication they'd like) as a basis to determine who they'd like to elect. All pool members post a ranking of whoever they'd like to see elected. Votes are tallied up and an officer declared elected.
All of the above is achievable using existing slashdot mechanisms, and all is publicly verifiable. Spuriously created accounts are prohibited from voting by cutting off at a maximum account number as of, say, today, or two months ago. Splinter or competing posts can be differentiated by a minimal application of public key cryptography signing. No special server need be set up, and postings serve as a history of what has been written by whom and as a starting point for evaluating people.
Once the above is achieved, there is of course a ton more to do: figuring out the charter, constructing a legally sound document to protect donated money from non-related uses (thereby paving the way for actual donations), electing other officers... but despite so much to do, at that point we have already achieved recognition of a seed group of people who care enough to have put in the time to vote, and someone who has been elected by them as the initial officer probably will have the initiative and skill to organize for that stage. I'm ready to do things. Who likes this? What changes would make this better?
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
It seems there's never a week goes by without the USPO letting someone file something stupidly obvious, and there being appropriate backlash on slashdot. Yawn.
:)
Someone needs to sue the patent office for incompetency.
Which can put an end to all other obvious patents:
"A method and procedure which involves spending a time duration greater than 1 sec and less than
10 years to think of the next most obvious thing to do. Write this up in the most obscure
format using the longest words your vocabulary permits and file it with the USPO.
Hire the most expensive lawyers to now hunt down and sue all the people who are arrogant enough
to be using this obvious idea for their own selfish gains"
DO NOT PANIC
EFF does not need to patent - they just need to disclose in an easily searchable way. The patent office should not issue patents for ideas that have been disclosed in the past (they are far from perfect), and disclosure is enough to cause a patent application to be rejected - it doesn't need to be a patent.
...except that Apple Computers managed to get Apple Communications (who ran cheap long distance phone services in Australia) to change their name to iGreen
The ability to use Tivo's guide to find what you want and then click to save, means it violates this patent as it "allows viewers to create their own customized lists of preferred video content programs".
The patent does not say that the video has to be streamed in real time. So Tivo's auto recording based on users' preferences (selected or guessed) would therefore constitute a breach.
Also, as the patent describes a head-end and network, Tivos bought independently may not violate, but Tivos or other DVRs bought from Pay-TV operators, like DirectTV, do violate. yes? no?
It's a feature claimed as part of a network connected to a video server, going by the preamble, isn't it?
How are you going to define a "software patent?"
If I can patent a multiplexer or a jpeg decoder that does x,y and z, who cares if it's done with switches and logic gates or with a programmed computer?
Mostg
Applications
Crash
If
Not
The
Operatin
System
Hangs
heh...
To some extent, the original video-on-demand system was the Dragon's Lair arcade game. If you think about it...
Gates, thy name is Greed.
Maybe AOL-Time-Warner could sue Microsoft for attempted claim-jumping/patent-infringement?
I just wish there were such a thing as frivolous patents applications, which could be prosecuted similar to frivolous lawsuits.
My dreams have been shattered for inventing and marketing the first video lister that has no scroll bar and uses various sizes of arrow-shaped up and down icons instead !!!!
and at /. Microsoft Patents turns into Interactive Entertainment
99,999 bogus patents on the wall, 99,999 bogus patents. If one of those patents should happen to fall, 99,998 bogus patents on the wall...
This message is encrypted with Quad ROT-13 to protect the author's copyright under the DMCA.
After all, Microsoft did evolve the PC and the age of computing as we know it. As the most important company in the software business, they're just pursuing legal routes to ownership of technologies in which they've invested hundreds of millions of dollars.
So good for them. If they're supposed to be challenged, they will be. But if not, then they will prevail. Let's hear it for the free market.
Chr0m0Dr0m!C
What do you think?
It would also reduce the cost of running the patent office, would make it easier for them to review prior art, and be more efficient.
Patents can be made by people who just sit on those patents and do nothing with them, therby preventing other people from developing the idea...If, however, the company makes a new patent for a bright new idea, they would probably release a patent that they are not using...Would also bring a whole new strategic importance to business. I also believe it would help the economy by allowing the little people back into the market...
Karem Lore
When all is said and done, nothing changes...
No.
"Surely all manner of pr0n video-on-demand services must fall under this (rather large) umbrella"
Surely? Name one -- please identify each element of the claim and the part of the apparatus upon which it reads. Note the prior art distinguished during prosecution (discussed in and listed on front of the patent) and ask yourself how Microsoft avoided those with its claims.
Before defining the umbrella as large, it would be a good idea to actually find out how large it is.
But first some general notes about the patent.
This patent has a tortured prosecution history as the related cases suggest:
This is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/179,545, filed Oct. 26, 1998, which is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 08/437,096, filed May 5, 1995, which is now U.S. Pat. No. 5,861,906.
Without the prosection history, one can only speculate as to why this is the case, but commonly there is a procedure in the USPTO known as a "file wrapper continuation" where the applicant can continue prosecution of a twice rejected application by simply paying a new filing fee and filing the application all over again. An assumption would be that this is what has happened since there are 40+ US patent prior art references and NO non US patent prior art references. Since US examiners are prone to cite US patents as prior art, I assume that all of the prior art references were dug up by the USPTO.
A reasonable conclusion is that the USPTO worked damn hard to kill this application, or at least reduce the scope of the claims. Hats off to examiners Andrew Faile and Jasom Salce at the USPTO for giving it their best effort.
Let's see what the zealous lawyers at Lee & Hayes PLLC were able to get for their client.
The patent contains only three independent claims (hmmm, MS probably paid at least $25,000 to get this patent and the zealous lawyers at Lee & Hayes didn't even bother to add some dependent claims. tsk, tsk, tsk.)
Three claims: an apparatus, a method, and a method used in an apparatus.
Looks like claim 2 is the broadest one....
2. A method for operating a user interface used in interactive entertainment network system, the interactive entertainment network system having a content provider which is connected to provide video content programs to a plurality of user interface units in individual homes, the user interface being executed on a processor provided at each user interface unit, the method comprising the following steps:
hmmmm nothing new or interesting in the preamble
generating a list of entries pertaining to the video content programs;
displaying a number of entries on the list; nothing much clever about this element.
scrolling through the list by continually updating the displayed entries, whereby one entry on the list is removed as another entry on the list is added; and
sort of maybe a little novel - deleting one entry as another is added...
enabling a viewer to adjust a rate at which entries are removed and added to thereby modify a rate at which the list visually appears to be scrolling.
sort of maybe even a little bit more novel - adjusting the rate so that it appears to be scrolling...
my guess: probably a valid patent - a narrow, useless, easy to design around patent. but probably a valid patent nonetheless.
it certainly is NOT as the title suggests a patent "covering" VOD - "distantly related to" VOD, perhaps, "covering a minor, unimportant, and irrlelevant feature of" VOD is more accurate.
looks like the USPTO did a good job on this one.
so do as sql*kitten says and "read the claims!"
and please - lay off the examiners and the USPTO and read the bloody claims and try to make a reasonable conclusion about what the patent covers before spouting off with animal food trough water, empty headed wipers of other people's backsides slashdot reactions about patents.
bottom line is that this is a narrow, unimportant, easily avoided, easily designed around patent which adds very little value to MS's portfolio and should give no one cause for concern - except's MS's legal department who paid alot of money for it.
happy now?
At which time, MS could point to their product as "prior art", and have the patent destroyed.
Sorry, your arguement doesn't fly. MS is using the system to make money of of anyone who utilizes these simple techniques. It's the fault of the system that they are ABLE to do this, but it's not as if they don't deserve any blame for their own actions.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
they have priority back to 1995, it is a continuation of an earlier patent, this giving it priority.
How is storing a scroll rate preference not an advance on technology, it is something which apparently is not included in the art (goto http://patft.uspto.gov/netahtml/search-adv.htm search VOD and "scroll rate and you get only 3 patent listings all commonly owned by microsoft and invented by the same inventor having the same priority application date). Since the USPTO prior art database doesn't have anything on scroll rates in VOD and presumably neither do any journals, publications etc, the examiner doesn't have any choice but to allow the patent, unless they find some other teaching and they can find sufficent reason to combine.
Read most patents and you will find they are a very specific implementation of technotlogy. Apparently, no one within the VOD/EPG fields has thought to do this. Perhaps you can educate me where you can find a GUI scroll rate feature that is set by a user themselves, not the programmer? I can't think of any in the pre 1995 area, particualarly in a windows environment (I don't remember in xwindows either, but im not intmatly familiar with that system). You can set a mouse movement rate, but I personally haven't seen a scroll rate atribute in pre 1995.
What Im not sure if you understand is that when an examiner rejects something, they have to provide a specific motiviation to do so to convince an attorney, if the examiner does not, the attorney can appeal the case to a board of appeals. An examiner can't take prior art from two unrelated fields and try to combine them. Thats forbidden by the courts and called improper hindsight reasoning. While you personally do not have to prove if you are one skilled in the art would have known about such a feature or would have been ovbious to include a feature, it is up to the examiner to decide, in the particular case, if it would have been ovbious back in 1995, not 2003, thats where the hindsight problem lies.
This can be a big problem, if you look at some recently issued patents, you can see that they were filed in 1991, 1988 etc, but issued in 2003 (almost makes you wonder why they bothered for just a few years of patent protection), it is difficult for both the examiner to figure out if it would have been ovbious that many years back and to find prior art that teaches such a feature, because many of those features are not documented within the established patent databases, but are instead found in journals, manuals etc, which the examiner may or may not have access too.
As for the features you have listed, all of those are currently patented, and now are ovbious to include, but if you go back a few years were not because they were new features at the time. That is the difficulty for the examiner, having to put themselves in an engineers shoes knowing only what was known in the past.
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
There is even plenty of prior art even for a limited interpretation of the two main patent claims. We KIT have been doing this for about 5 years and we where not the first.
In one application we have aggregated news clips, they are displayed down the screen in a list and are played from the top at normal speed. When pressing fast-forward >| jumps to the start of the next clip, each pressing of >> accelerates the stream by a factor of two (2x/4x/8x/16x/32x) for each press. Another version allowed the stream to accelerate the stream by a factor of two (2x/4x/8x/16x/32x) for each second the button was kept pressed.
Not to be nitpicky, but I think adding -ly to a word that means "Offensively obvious" would give you "Offensively obvious-ly" so "blatantly obvious" would be "Offensively obviously obvious," which is still a bit redundantly redundant, since it's hard for something to be obvious without it being obvious that it is obvious, but at least it sort of makes sense, and is not quite as offensively offensive as UPC Code or PIN Number.
Using "prior art" to overturn a patent isn't as easy as you think. If you go to court, and the other guy has a patent and you don't, then you have to prove that his patent is invalid. All the patent holder has to do is wave a piece of paper in front of the judge. By default, the patent holder has the patent. The "prior art" claimant has to change the status of the situation.
In other words, you are blaming MS for not putting the burden of proof on itself.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Hehehhh.. I ought to get a *trademark* on the word "Gates", and sue ol' Billy (The Kid) Gates everytime his name comes up. I have a feeling that, if we work at it, we can use this DRM crap (and other such garbage) to get even. Bastards, the whole damn lot of them. Take their guns and shoot 'em with their own pistols. Poetic Justice!
Are you on Lithium or Ritalin or anything?
Patents like this are useless, and degrade the patent system into utter decay. Leave it for this industry to destroy it's protection by useless patents.
Case in point, Microsoft sponsored in part SCOs hit on open source. It will back fire as it is an admission that Linux is real and good enough to be the best.
We should not ask how much commercial source is in Linux, but rather how much open source is in Microsoft and SCO products?
Business will spend billions on sale hype and bribes, but will not pay coders to produce OSes. Treated like a comodity the "programmers" at heart types will code Microsoft to be the next legacy systems provider.
Unless we see Microsoft Linux 2005.
Viva la Open Source, may the MBAs get unemployment enjoyment too!!!
The truth is, it takes nothing to start a lawsuit... Saying they MAY be able to avoid a lawsuit is crazy. If someone wants to start a lawsuit with Microsoft, having a patent isn't going to stop it. Besides, patents aren't cheap. If they weren't going to use it to make some money, it wouldn't be worth filing.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
The truth is, it takes nothing to start a lawsuit...
LEGALFEE.EXE has caused an invalid page fault in BILLABLE.DLL. This post will be shut down. If this problem persists, please think before you post or contact a lawyer who will start a lawsuit for nothing.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Ahem, I meant that it doesn't take any real cause to start a lawsuit. If someone wants to sue Microsoft, they can find ample reason, wether Microsoft has a patent or not.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Ahem, I meant that it doesn't take any real cause to start a lawsuit
JUDGE.EXE has caused a general protection fault in module VALIDCOZ.DLL...
If someone wants to sue Microsoft, they can find ample reason, wether Microsoft has a patent or not.
Yes. For example, "we're suing Microsoft because we hold the patent on Interactive Entertainment". Thank-you for proving my point.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
An even if Microsoft had a patent, you could still find plenty of reasons to sue. A patent doesn't mean you'll win a lawsuit, and not having a patent doesn't mean you can't sue.
I didn't prove your point, and I have no idea what would make you think that.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
An even if Microsoft had a patent, you could still find plenty of reasons to sue.
That's a truism.
A patent doesn't mean you'll win a lawsuit, and not having a patent doesn't mean you can't sue.
I never made either statement. I simply said that having a patent makes it easier to win any potential suit, and less likely that you will be sued. If you are sued then by default, you are the patent holder, and the other guy has to overturn your patent.
Of course nothing can prevent you 100% from being sued, and no legal defense is 100% effective, but I think that goes without saying.
In other words, that's a truism.
I didn't prove your point, and I have no idea what would make you think that.
This boils down to a statement of opposition and nothing more.
You're argument seems to have evaporated like the Chesire cat, and left me with nothing but a grin.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?