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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."
There really ought to be a statute of limitation with this stuff. Seriously, packet CD burning was new like 5 years ago.
1)Quietly Register Patent
2)Wait for some company to make lots of money totally legitimately
3)Sue until your stock price doubles!
Just look at their home page:
Their "accomplishments" consist mainly of suing the pants off everyone they meet!Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
The technique may apply to DVDs too. Hard to say.
See you, space cowboy...
In looking over the patent, it does seem to describe exactly what DirectCD does - allows the disc to be continually written upon and accessed by other computers with a DirectCD-like reader on it. So it looks like Roxio might be screwed.
But does this affect the general user? I've personally never used DirectCD for anything; around our office we just burn a CD once, close the disc, and ship it out wherever it needs to go. Is there really a need for a continually writable procedure on a CD when there are so many other mediums more suitable and with more capacity than a CD?
If, as it initially appears (I'm no expert in this area), this patent represented a useful step forward in CDROM technology at the time, and the technology was picked up and used by Roxio and others without license, then why shouldn't Optima get due credit and compensation?
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
as long as the patent office continues not to do its job and simply rubber-stamps every patent that comes its way, then yes... a business model built around patent litigation is not a stupid idea.
Stupid people make stupid things profitable.
Yes, actually.
It was an enormous external Phillips (I think) SCSI unit. It took up about as much desk space as a 500-watt home theater receiver. It burned CDs at 1x and consumed all of the resources of the 150mhz Pentium II that it was attached to. Don't remember what software I was using to burn the CDs, though...
I worked for a company that bought a "WORM" (Write Once Read Many) drive for backup purposes in 1987. We were amazed at a technology that could store over 650 megabytes on a single replacable CD-like platter! It cost something like $10,000.
The cake is a pie
Actually, I live in the DC area I know someone who works at the patent office and what you describe is actually pretty close to how it happens. Although, they do actually have people help them understand the processes described, they do no research on prior art what so ever. Apparrently there is not time. The validity of a patent is for the courts and ultimately the tax payers to figure out.
Actually, there is - a legal doctrine called "laches." Essentially, you can get bounced out of court if the delay in filing suit (1) is unreasonable, based on the totality of the circumstances, and (2) creates material prejudice (e.g., the company being sued has invested millions in marketing the product and has built a substantial customer base). Furthermore, a delay of 6+ years is presumptively unreasonable, shifting the burden to the plaintiff to show a legitimate excuse for the delay in filing suit.
According to the patent: "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."
Packet writing does not leave behind the old data and only make it "transparent" to the operating system....it in fact rewrites the sectors that are not allocated in directory entries (file allocation table??); I would also assume that this multi-session writing is already an ISO standard.
"The strong will do what they want, the weak will do what they must."
-Thucydides
3)Sue until your stock price doubles!
SCO stock didn't just double, it went up twenty-fold at one point. If you are as smart, you'll short the stock like some of the smarter geeks out there. The stock will eventually be sued into the ground and you'll have made 100 percent on your investment (minus comission and interest).
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
Of course, IANAL and this was gleaned from the web:
It's been mentioned here before, but a patent holder has to make reasonable efforts to secure their patent in the marketplace. If a patent holder neglects enforcement of their patent when an infringement occurs, the patent holder may be guilty of a "submarine patent", where the patent holder specifically withholds action on infringement to maximize allowable damages. The defense to such ocurrences is termed the doctrine of laches and was laid out in a Supreme Court ruling.
The doctrine of laches defense has two elements:
- The alleged infringer will suffer serious harm to their business if the patent were enforced or if the period of time before action was such that important evidence or witnesess were lost.
- The patent holder delayed action for an unreasonable and inexcusable period of time.
Typically, six years is held to be a reasonable amount of time before the doctrine of laches may be used as a defense. Note that the burden of proof rests with the infringer and that both elements must be proven on the proponderance of the evidence and any further infringement is actionable.
That's as much as I could find.
In order to address the issue with the patent system, the RIAA, SCO, the MPAA, and any other acronym you decide to dislike today, we have to figure out what it is the patent / copyright holders are requesting and what customers want (i.e., the reason innovation is Good).
Firstly, let's say I have just come up with a neat little gadget. Now if I'm a small operation, I don't want some giant company to come and use my idea to beat me out of business through mass production. I simply want to be able to make a living off my idea. If I'm an artist, or an author, I want to be able to make a living off my concepts / performance. There's a little difference between both these concepts, so I'll focus on the patent idea.
A patent, historically, applied to a new device or a new way of doing something (there are process patents, but typically they apply to things like "here's what you need to do to make chemical X"). Now, consider a patent to be something like an "implementation right". Basically a patent says that only the patent holder or the holder's approved agent may implement the said concept. This is similar to a copyright, which states that only the copyright holder or the holder's approved agent my copy a work. I don't have a problem with either of these concepts - with some caveats but I won't discuss those here.
Now, we can argue whether or not it is good for society to have a single entity or authorized group implementing some process. It is generally assumed that it is good for the person implementing it - assuming that the implementation yeilds something for which people are willing to pay. However, what about situations where the person holding the rights to implementation isn't really good at it, and someone knows they could do it better but aren't allowed to because the original holder won't give them approval. This would be a Bad Thing.
Now, what we see here is that independent of what is being implemented we can have unintended consequences with any "exclusive rights" kind of philosophy. What it is saying, though, is that such philosophies only work for "the greater good" if people are inherently altruistic, which history continually demonstrates is not the case.
On top of the above idea, there is also the question of "what constitues an idea for which the implementation authority should be limited?" This is the current hot-topic with IP, specifically patents. What implementable ideas should be protected? What are the costs and benefits of both? Who benefits from the choice? Rarely do we see some small company which is unable to manufacture many things, with small market presence, and some company comes and stomps on them by "copying" their idea. Typically we see one guy with a patent, no ability to produce it, not trying to produce it, but only waiting for someone to copy it. From time to time we may see a small entity with a patent and license (i.e., authorize) some company to produce the product. That is the intended purpose of a patent - to allow the authorized to get started. We also see large corporations, with no real risk of losing their "livelihood", with large portfolios of patents - typically they use these to keep other people out of their industry by requiring large licensing fees, which is opposite the desired effect of patents - they prop up artificial barriers to market entry.
As an aside, I have some issues with performance copyrights. For instance, people might be paying to see a particular person perform a song, not hear the particular song performed. For instance, me performing Beethoven's 9th on a kazoo is hardly the same as the London Symphony Orchestra playing it. So performance pieces, oddly, have a weird effect of there is the thing that is being performed i
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
If you read the claims in the patent, simple multi-session CDs are covered as well. The patent was filed April 7, 1995. I'm fairly certain multisession technology was implemented on CD-ROMS before then.
Also, the patent only applies to "CDROM"s. It does not apply to DVD-based media.
I also think the patent is invalid because they had to limit their patent to applying to CDROMs. Meaning it was already in use for other types of media (other filesystems, whatever.). Meaning it is one of the "logical next steps" the patent office isn't supposed to approve.
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How can it take seven times longer to research an application and write a letter citing existing patents or prior art, than to research an application and write a letter granting a patent?
Oh, our poor, poor PTO.
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."