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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."
So they patented a directory of videos in thumbnail view?
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 ?
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?
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).
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
Actually, my English book (circa 1997) contains an essay written by Bill Gates, about just this. He talks about how asynchronous exchange of information is better and more convenient than synchronous exchange. He talks about how the telephone has made us be able to talk when we're not in the same room. The E-mail allows us to talk when we're not in the same room, or at the same time. The main point of the essay was about Video on Demand, and how it would revolutionize the way we watch movies.
Etiquette is etiquette. He kills his mother but he can't wear grey trousers.
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...
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. Sorry, it's in the public domain, microsnot.
And don't forget the other two words:
"Bloodsucking Lawyers"
Now that MS has the patent, the burden is on others to take on the legal fight to overturn it. Screw systems work, the real gravy has got to be in IP law...
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
Given that trademark, they have to protect it; similar sounding names trying to cash in on that name have to be pursued, just as Pepsi would undoubtably chase a company makeing "Bepsi cola" or whatever.
The Lindows defence is trying to use the leverage that "Windows" should never have been trademarked, which I don't believe it should have, since WIMP was a term dating back to, IIRC, the late 80's (or possibly earlier) and the trademark wasn't approved until the 90's.
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
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.
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.
Actually, the more broad a patent is worded, the less likely it is to be awarded in the first place, and if it does survive an overworked patent examiner who just wants to go home and eat dinner for a change, they are much easier to defeat in court.
My company won't let us file patents unless our patent attorneys believe they are narrow enough to ensure defendability. We don't make our money suing people over bogus IP claims, so we actually have to do it right.
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.
"Would it take lots of money for a big legal team or could you just have one good(but not exceptional) lawyer?"
That is precisely the problem with the US legal system. It is a distinction which the Dutch language captures rather effectively with "gelijk hebben" and "gelijk krijgen". The first means to be right. The second means others acknowledging that you are right, deservedly or not. (lit. "to obtain/be given right") "Gelijk krijgen" in a US court is the hard part...
You can have the full strength of the law on your side, but without legal clout and stamina (i.e. a well-filled war chest) you will end up face down in the dirt against a powerful opponent. If some company takes on Microsoft, MS will simply draw the battle out with every legal trick in the books that their team of lawyers can dig up, until the plaintiff runs out of money. Then they'll make you settle or they just buy your company outright to make the lawsuit go away. A settlement is a double win for Microsoft: one less opponent in this matter, and their patent stands as strongly as it did before.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
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".
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.
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"How can MS use the law in one hand and flaunt it with the other."
Winston. You need to know doublethink. It's for the good of the PARTY Winston. The party needs you to think 2+2=5. What is 2+2, Winston?
Seriously, business executives would praise the law like God one instant and shit on it the next if they thought they'd get money from it. These people are usually sleaze, they usually embrace the Dark Side (love of money) wholeheartedly. It's like the doctor/sabetour guy from Lost in Space (Forgot his name...) after he got bitten by the spider: First you're OK, then the greed starts small, then it grows and grows until it turns you into something completely different.
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.