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Microsoft Patents Interactive Entertainment

Posted by timothy on from the getcher-patents-get-'em-while-they're-hot dept.

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."

11 of 466 comments (clear)

  1. It's been done before... by _Sharp'r_ · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.
    1. Re:It's been done before... by BillyJoJimBob · · Score: 5, Informative
      If you bother to actually read the patent, I have not come across any examples of prior art. Not that prior art may not exist, but I've never seen or heard of it.

      The patent is for the storage of your preferences and selections from a database of available digital and/or broadband content, which you may or may not decide to order at some point. If/when you do order the content is delivered on-demand. The point being that subsequent "visits" do not require you to start from scratch indicating what types of content you want to browse/select from, and previously marked items of interest are immediately available to order without the user having to "search" for them again.

      --
      _-=^=-_-=^=-_-=^=-_ Can you imagine a world without hypothetical situations?
    2. Re:It's been done before... by angle_slam · · Score: 4, Informative
      Do a search on google for "microsoft tiger video on demand server" and you'll see they had this out in 1995, years before they filed the patent.

      Actually, the patent in question is a continuation of patent 5,861,906, which was filed May 5, 1995.

  2. WRONG by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  3. Did anybody RTFA?! by shroudedmoon · · Score: 5, Informative

    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...

  4. Has anyone read the patent yet? by angle_slam · · Score: 5, Informative
    People here are apopleptic because Microsoft patented video on demand. But look at the claims. They are patenting a program guide with an adjustable scroll rate. That's it. The parent patent is a lot more broad, but has been out there since 1999. Has MS tried to assert it?

    Here are the claims to the patent:

    1. A user interface unit for use in an individual home, the user interface unit being connected to an interactive entertainment network system having a content provider, the content provider providing video content programs to the user interface unit, the user interface unit comprising:

    a processor;

    a user interface which executes on the processor to display at least one list of entries pertaining to the video content programs;

    the processor causing the list to visually scroll at a selected rate while being displayed whereby one entry is removed as another entry is added;

    the user interface enabling a viewer to adjust the selected rate according to personal preference; and

    the processor being programmable, in response to the viewer's inputs to adjust the selected rate at which the list is scrolled.

    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:

    generating a list of entries pertaining to the video content programs;

    displaying a number of entries on the list;

    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

    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.

    3. In an interactive entertainment network system having a content provider that is connected to provide video content programs to a plurality of user interface units in individual homes, a computer-readable medium having computer-readable instructions for performing the steps comprising:

    generating a list of entries pertaining to the video content programs;

    displaying a number of entries on the list;

    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

    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.

  5. Re:Not a problem by lspd · · Score: 4, Informative

    I was under the impression that the BIG companies just cross-license all the stupid patents like this. That way it provides a nice barrier to entry for upcoming companies. A new company will have to develop a product, find a market, and fight it's way through 300 obvious, stupid patents...or they can just sell out to the big boys.

    Amazon's One-Click patent was never invalidated. Faced with a certain defeat in court, Amazon licensed the patent to Barnes and Noble, and as a result if YOU want to compete with Amazon YOU will have to shell out for a legal team to prove the patent is bullshit.

  6. Re:What this patent is. by Tuxinatorium · · Score: 4, Informative

    porn websites have been doing that years and years before Micro$haft ever thought of it or filed the patent.

    --
    Repeal the DMCA!
  7. Prior Art: Time Warner, 1994, Orlando by hirschma · · Score: 4, Informative

    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

  8. restraint of trade/ideas by cdn-programmer · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  9. Read. The. Claims. by AzrealAO · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.