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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 ?
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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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