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Company Claims Patent on CD Writing

Posted by michael on from the sco-of-the-cdr-world dept.

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."

4 of 559 comments (clear)

  1. Dates are gonna hurt! by Popsikle · · Score: 5, Informative

    Filed : April 7, 1995

    Granted : September 9, 1997

    This might be hard to beat. Anyone using a cd burner 8 years ago?

  2. Roxio's Response by wo1verin3 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Roxio Response:
    SANTA CLARA, Calif., Dec. 16 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Roxio
    (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.

  3. Re:Predatorial practices by wo1verin3 · · Score: 5, Informative

    >> 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.

  4. I think it shouldn't stand by penguin7of9 · · Score: 5, Informative

    WORM file systems using such techniques have been around since at least the 1980's.