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
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 ?
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?
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).
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???
... both of them.
sulli
RTFJ.
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
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.
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/
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.
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.
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
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
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!
"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
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...
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
Here are the claims to the patent:
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.
Hell, I was ordering porn^H^H^H^H"art films" in motels back in the 80's....
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.
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
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 $200 set top boxes to display the video and interface.
Now, I'm not the biggest fan of Time-Warner, but they did, at least in the 90's, do some innovation.
Now, INAPE (not a patent examiner), but I'd say that Orlando pretty much invalidates this patent, from the EPG to the actual video-on-demand aspects. More importantly, the prior art has a muscle bound organization behind it to hopefully invalidate this straight away.
Jonathan
Posters: READ THE GODDAMN ARTICLE! You look like an idiot is you reply based on just the summary. It's pretty ovious a good number of posters haven't read it.
Editors: Stop posting stories with misleading summaries! It confuses the Slashdot community, who likes to post their knee-jerk reactions.
I'm gonna lose my karma for this, so be it. Slashdot sucks more and more every day, with duplicates, misleading summaries, and Ask Slashdots that could be solved by Googling, eopinions.com (Color laser printer), or reading your manual ("broken" V-chip is actually CC text mode). Check out "Not Slashdot", kuro5hin.org
The validity of this patent is not really the issue here. Regardless of whether there is prior art the problem is that programmers cannot generally afford to fight invalid patents. M$ 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.
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?
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?
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...
That sounds really bleak. Where did you sleep?
The Spoon
Updated 6/28/2011
Prior Art
the odometer lives!
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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."
www.theonion.com/onion3311/microsoftpatents.html
"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.
Depends... Which one churns out more shit? That's the USPTO.
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).
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
When
I
Need
Downtime,
Operate
Windows
Server
I can then go into detail as to how it would work from the users' perspective, again without being able to spell it out in sufficient detail for a patent application.
The situation is analogous to people coming up to you and saying they have a great idea for a game/application/website/whatever, and that, if you develop it for them for free, they'll give you a (small) cut. Ideas are a dime a dozen. If you've been in the coding biz for any length of time, you've learned how to tell these leaches to fuck off.
Ideas aren't patentable. Implementations are. Or at least ideas sufficiently fleshed out so that they could be implemented, if one had the requisite technology.
Read a patent. While it tries to be as vague as possible in many areas, so as not to exclude any overlooked applications, it also contains enough specificity to allow someone to identify what is being patented.
Yes, it's confusing, but then again, the USPTO is a pretty confused place to begin with :-)
...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"?
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.
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"
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."
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?
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.
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"?