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Company Claims Patent on CD Writing
rborek writes "According to CNet News.com, Roxio is being sued by Optima Technology over Patent 5,666,531 which covers 'Recordable CDROM accessing system'. It looks as though the patent describes DirectCD and its packet writing technique. Many different programs and operating systems use this - including Linux, which opens the door for widespread patent licensing issues if the suit is valid and the patent upheld."
Filed : April 7, 1995
Granted : September 9, 1997
This might be hard to beat. Anyone using a cd burner 8 years ago?
Roxio Response: /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Roxio
SANTA CLARA, Calif., Dec. 16
(Nasdaq: ROXI), The Digital Media Company(R), today responded to Optima
Technology's allegations of patent infringement.
We are aware of the Optima '531 patent and the claims within and believe
that any claim of infringement by Roxio's software products is utterly without
merit. At Roxio, we respect the legitimate intellectual property rights of
others but in this instance there is no colorable argument that the claims set
forth in the patent read on any Roxio products. We intend to aggressively
defend ourselves in this litigation.
http://www.petitiononline.com/pasp01/petition.html
I don't know if it will really do anything but any bit helps. Of course, getting someone into the patent office who actually has a clue as to how computer software/hardware works would be much more effective. These kinds of patents are akin to a rock band having a patent for a standard rock song chord progression and suing everybody who uses the same chords. Ridiculous.
-- tokengeekgrrl
>> Come on- people have been burning recordable
>> CD-ROMs on their PCs for about six years now.
More then 6 years good sir...
In one of the SCO articles I read about part of the law stopping companies from waiting for long periods of time to maximize damages.
However, the patent doesn't cover all CD burning, it covers a specific method of creating the image, best described by The Register:
Essentially, it describes the technique used by many CD burning apps and utilities of creating an image of the disc in memory or on the hard drive which appears to the user as a CD. The virtual CD's contents can be updated at will, until the user is ready to burn the contents onto the disc, at which point the information can no longer be changed.
Older versions of the software did not by default create a CD image and then burn it to the disc in the way some apps do now.
Consider supporting the following groups:
Free Software Foundation
Electronic Frontier Foundation
... and read
The Danger of Software Patents
-t
http://unmoldable.com W:"No one of consequence" I:"I must know" W:"Get used to disappointment"
The Recording Technique provides a directory which indicates the location of only the last version of any stored information or modified entry of stored information, prior versions being transparent to the operating system. The Recording Technique further provides a directory recorded on the CDROM which is transportable to other computers having the Recording Technique installed thereon. As a result, the user of a computer with a CDROM reader will interface with the CDROM in the same manner as with a non-volatile memory device that is read only.
OK, so I'm not a CD engineer, but:
All these things existed well before September, 1997, AFAIK!!
Troil? Patents are required not to be obvious. This one is obvious - if you are writing a multisession CD, there is really only one way to present a uniform directory, and this is it. It should have been thrown out, but nobody at the PTO is qualified to determine what is and is not obvious, so they simply don't apply the obviousness test.
Sigh.
If your definition of "a few years" means about 20.
That might be acceptable in some fields, but in computing it just plain isn't.
Sep. 2003 Optima Technology files multi-million dollar lawsuit against Network Solutions
Jul. 2003 Optima Technology Settles Federal Patent case in California
May 2003 Optima Technology Corporation took an innovative action today and offered a $1 Million bounty
Apr. 2003 Optima approved by court to be excluded from EZ-Datatech's Bankruptcy and now continues to push forward in both its State and Federal Courts regarding patent and trademark infringement against EZ-Datatech, Michael Decorte as well as others.
Feb. 2003 Optima partners with the Lava Group www.lavagroup.net to enforce Optima patents, trademarks, copyrights and intellectual property
Feb. 2003 Optima seeks Federal Court's approval to void Michael Decorte/EZ-Data bankruptcy on grounds of Fraud
Nov. 2002 Michael Decorte/EZ-Data whom Optima sued for fraud and stealing of trade secrets avoids multi-million dollar Federal Court judgment by filing Chapter 7 in Bankruptcy court
Oct. 2002 Optima files for default judgment in Federal court
May 2002 Optima ships CDR-Access Pro(TM)v4.7 for Macntosh OS 9.2
Apr. 2002 Optima ships DeskTape Pro(TM) v5.7 for Macintosh OS 9.2
Mar. 2002 Optima files Federal lawsuit against EZ-Data, Michael Decorte, alleging patent and trademark violations on its software's: DeskTape Pro(TM), CDR-Access Pro(TM), DiskArray Pro(TM) and Xchange(TM) and Xchange Pro(TM)
Feb. 2002 Optima Technology Corporation hires law firm Cox Castle Nicholson www.coxcastle.com with key attorney Frederick "Rick" Kranz to protect Optima's Intellectual Property from company's unwilling to respect Optima's Royalty rights on patents and trademarks.
Dec. 2001 Optima Technology Corporation hires Los Angeles based law firm Katten Muchin Zavis Rosenman www.kmzr.com to take over State Patent and trademark lawsuit against former employees and companies.
Jun. 2001 Optima files lawsuit for patent and trademark violations against EZ-Data and former employees Michael Decorte and Raymond Martin
May 2001 Optima reopens its Irvine, CA office and moves its corporate office to USA
Apr. 2001 Announced release of CD-R Access Pro (TM) for Macintosh OS 8.5
Feb. 2001 Announced release of DeskTape Pro (TM) v5.5 for Macintosh OS 9.1
Dec. 1999 Optima ships DeskTape Pro(TM) v5.1 for Macintosh OS 9.0
Jun. 1999 Optima moves corporate office to Paris France
Mar.1999 Optima reorganizes its office's and closes Irvine, CA
Jan. 1999 Announced release of CD-R Access Pro v3.6 for Macintosh OS 8.5
Nov. 1998 Announced release of DeskTape Pro(TM) v4.6 for Macintosh OS 8.5
Mar. 1998 Announced release of CD-R Access Pro v3.1 for Macintosh OS 8.1
Feb. 1998 Announced release of DiskArray(TM) v2.0 for Macintosh OS 8.1
Jan. 1998 Announced release of DeskTape Pro(TM) v4.5 for Macintosh OS 8.1
Dec.1997 Released CDWriter(TM), the world's only super fast rewritable DVD/CD drive with up to 21.9 GB capacity
Nov. 1997 Released GigaBank(TM) Fibre Channel and Ultra Wide SCSI RAID subsystems
Nov. 1997 Release Award-Winning RAID Bundles for Windows 95/98/2000/NT/XP
Nov. 1997 Released SCSI Inspector(TM) for remote configuration, testing and monitoring of RAID systems
Sep. 1997 Patent 5,666,531 awarded to Optima Tehnology on Recordable CD ROM Accessing System
Jul. 1997 Announced release of DeskTape Pro(TM) v4.0 for MAC OS 8.0
Jul. 1997 Announced release of CD-R Access Pro v2.3 for MAC OS 8.0
Jul. 1997 Released DeskTape(TM) video, enabling QuickTime movie playback direct from tape
Jul. 1997 Matthew Bahrami is elected as Optima's new Chief Executive Officer
Jan. 1997 Released DisKovery (TM) 7300 CDR and CD-R Access Pro to enable write/read of 7.3 GB of data onto a standard CD
Jan. 1997
http://www.optimatech.com/
/. ;)
have at it,
Um, I'm pretty sure the PTO gets paid whether your patent is granted or not. So there's no profit motive for them in granting patents.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
ummm - since I worked at the Dept of Commerce, I can assure you that you are incorrect. The PTO is a decent moneymaker - Congress has made sure all their money goes into the big mushpot.
In patent circles Lemelson was the name of the game .... The basic concept was to file a patent, and then let it sit and sit and sit, and when enough people were using the patent, then Lemelson would get the patent issued and sue. Not exactly the same here, but as some other posts have mentioned, the effect is essentially the same. The Patent Office recognized this and I think designed systems to avoid the Lemelson Strategy ... I think these were also called the "submarine patents."
So, it is adopted as a Standard, and then Optima sues after almost every CD burner is using it ....
From the Lemelson Patents Online Website http://www.lemelsonpatents.com/
I haven't been following the Reno case, but sure do hope that the Roxio defense is successful, and it cripples Optima's patent enforcement efforts. Best of luck Roxio.
To see a world in a grain of sand, and then to step back and see the beach where the sand lies
Why does their patent's number appear on this page at the USPTO website:m ?
http://www.uspto.gov/go/og/2001/week46/patexpi.ht
How can they enforce an expired patent?
As far as my own opinion of this debacle, I'm confident that prior art will be found to invalidate the patent, whether it's expired or not.
But if Roxio settles, this company is going to come after small companies. You bet they won't tangle with Microsoft or Dell or anyone like that.
You are in error. No-one is screaming. Thank you for your cooperation.
Because they sat on this patent for six years while other people invested significant time and money independently inventing and developing this technology. They quietly waited and said nothing while other people built up valuable businesses selling this technology to countless millions of customers. Then they pop up and sucker punch them in an effort to grab the loot without actually having to do the work of producing anything.
"It was never the object of patent laws to grant a monopoly for every trifling device, every shadow of a shade of an idea, which would naturally and spontaneously occur to any skilled mechanic or operator in the ordinary progress of manufactures. Such an indiscriminate creation of exclusive privileges tends rather to obstruct than to stimulate invention. It creates a class of speculative schemers who make it their business to watch the advancing wave of improvement, and gather its foam in the form of patented monopolies, which enable them to lay a heavy tax on the industry of the country, without contributing anything to the real advancement of the arts. It embarrasses the honest pursuit of business with fears and apprehensions of unknown liability lawsuits and vexatious accounting for profits made in good faith." --U.S. Supreme Court, Atlantic Works vs. Brady, 1882
(Disclaimer: I wrote the UDF support in FreeBSD, but I have offer no other legal or technical advice)
/. headline is vague and misleading. This doesn't look like it applies to CD recording itself, or even packet writing. Instead it looks like it applies to the VAT in the UDF >= 1.5 spec. Basically, the VAT is a sector remapping table. Since CD-R media can only be recorded sequentially, and obviously cannot overwrite existing sectors/packats, the VAT makes this linear recording look like a normal random access filesystem. The VAT is not used on CD/DVD RW media so those are probably clear, and definitely is not used in iso9660 volumes. So at worst this means that the UDF spec becomes encumbered when using the VAT. I'm not clear on whether the OSTA, IEEE, and/or ECMA bodies knew about this patent when they ratified the various specs that contribute towards UDF, but this definitely looks to be an abuse by the patent holder.
As usual, the
Worst case scenario is that this patent is upheld and Roxio (and others like Nero) start paying royalties. The Linux distributors might have to remove VAT support from their kernels. Commercial OS vendors would have to decide on whether to license it or remove it. I'm not sure if DVD mastering software will be affected since the VAT is not part of the UDF 1.0 spec. mkisofs might be affected also if it impliments VAT. Whether the OSTA committee responds with an alternative remains to be seen. But, it's not the end of the world. Like I said, I don't think that this has any bearing on CD-R's that are recorded with traditional iso9660 filesystems. Supporting write-once media and VAT is a PITA anyways, so this gives me a good excuse to not care about it in my implimentation =-)
Cat, the other, tastier white meat.
You're right it's not a part of the kernel, but cdrtools et al come with a lot of distributions. I don't think they are covered under that patent. If you read the patent it states specifically that disc-at-once and track-at-once are pre-existing technologies. That's what most of the linux distro's I've seen use. Now I do believe that nautalis in Gnome 2+ has something similar to DirectCD, which is the type of thing this patent seems to cover. (I'm no patent guru, but I did read the patent claim)
Speak for yourself.
WORM file systems using such techniques have been around since at least the 1980's.
It is my understanding that the PTO is quite good at identifying prior art when it takes the form of previously granted patents. Unfortunately, when they started granting patents for software and business practices, which had not previously been patentable, all of the prior art was documented outside of the patent system. At a previous job, we got a software patent application back with some of the claims disallowed due to prior patents, so that much of the system seems to work. I'm not surprised that the PTO can't deal with the outside documentation of prior art; imagine the size of the job to catalog (as a start) all of the ACM journals, the IEEE computer journals, and the software textbooks that have been published since the 1960s so that you can tell if a particular algorithm used for a particular application has already appeared.
Interestingly enough, Optima waited pretty much exactly 6 years after the Sep 1997 grant date to file the suit, obviously to let the industry get as big as possible. BTW, my reading of laches (IANAL) would indicate the industry might be be protected by laches for the period before the suit but not after; if Optima prevails then they'd have to get licences to continue operating.
Price normally would, but do you remember those stereo component CD recorders that can burn CDs off of tape, radio or other CDs without a computer? Those will only record on Music CD-R's.
This article explains it better than I can.
I tried every decent and legal way I could think of to resolve the issue w/the business before I rented the chicken suit
Well from this history: http://www.roxio.com/en/support/cdr/historycdr.htm l
We can see that we've had publicly available burners since prior to 1995...
As for the patent itself it seems to argue that it doesn't require any special mastering program, which it does, if it's been merged into the shell it's still there, and looking at it, it would require a similarly set up computer at the other end... So it's incompatible with a standard CDR... even if its not, the process of squirrelling away the interface should not be patentable (this would be like patenting the layout of buttons on a calculator).. tough IANAL...
To be or not to be.-Shakespeare
To do is to be.-Nietzsche
To be is to do.-Sartre
Do be do be do.-Sinatra
Laches applies to actions in equity, e.g. injunctions, specific performance, disgorgement, equitable compensation, etc. Actions at law, such as an action for damages arising from patent infringement, are governed exclusively by the statute of limitations.
Um, no. The patent can be rendered unenforceable by laches, preventing the patent owner from recovering any damages for infringement.