TVI to Sue Over MS Autoplay Feature

scubacuda links to this Infoworld article, which reads in part "TVI charges Microsoft's autoplay feature infringes on four of its U.S. patents. TV Interactive Data Corp. (TVI) of Los Gatos, California, claims that Microsoft infringes on four of its U.S. patents, three entitled 'host device equipped with means for starting a process in response to detecting insertion of a storage media' and one entitled 'method for starting up a process automatically on insertion of a storage media into a host device.", writing "I hope no one has a patent on the shift key, because that's what I hit when I insert a CD. (That is, when I haven't already edited the registry)" Wouldn't automount / autofs fall under the same shadow?

Comments

Why stop with M$?

[Matey-O]

The Mac has a 'detect on auto insert' for as long as it's had a floppy drive! (IIRC, the Amiga did too.)

Re:Why stop with M$?

[cbreaker]

That's what I was thinking.

I really hope lawsuits like this don't get upheld... but sometimes they are and sometimes they aren't.

Auto-insert notification is such a simple thing, it's been in computers forever (and in microsoft land since '95) and just now the lawsuit?

The worst part is that these patents keep being passed, over and over.. we need some technical people in the patent offices, not temps making $7 an hour.

Whatever. It's just another case of "let people use it until it becomes vital and you can make a bundle of money, then sue."

Re:Why stop with M$?

[R.Caley]

They are claiming a specific way of aranging auto-run, so it may be that (one of) Windows methods infringes, but Apple's doesn't.

5,597,307
6,418,532

Of course, it fails the obviousness test, but since the USPO has aparently interpereted this test to be `obvious to somoene who doesn't know what a computer is and has no problem solving ability at all'...

Re:Why stop with M$?

[Blackknight]

It's Mac, not MAC.

the patents are....

[bpland]

The patent numbers are 5,597,307; 5,795,156; 6,249,863 and 6,418,532.

Priot art (Amiga)

[FattMattP]

My Amiga would detect when a floppy was inserted and start automaticaly and this was back in 1988.

Amiga 500

[MullerMn]

The Commodore Amiga had this from atleast the Amiga 500, possibly earlier and that was in 1986.

Re:Prior Art

[supersam]

I'm afraid that isn't a valid comparison and won't count as prior art in this case. Bootable floppies do not autostart when inserted into the floppy drive. It is only during the boot-up process that these floppies would be accessed and read without human interaction.

autofs etc.

[tubabeat]

Wouldn't automount / autofs fall under the same shadow?

No, autofs/ automount automatically mount media (be that an NFS share or whatever) when they detect it is needed (so the process is demand driven rather than media driven).

Perhaps you're thinking of supermount

Re:No kidding

[bhtooefr]

Actually, Windows (and DOS) always assumes that a disk is inserted whenever the drive is mounted. It does check to be sure that it's the SAME disk, and it only does this on an access attempt. The only hardware that can autodetect mounting of a floppy disk is the Mac, and it's done it since 1984.

Here are the dates on the patents:
5,597,307: January 28, 1997 (filed May 11, 1995)
5,795,156: August 18, 1998 (filed November 1, 1995)
6,249,863: June 19, 2001 (filed May 3, 1999)
6,418,532: July 9, 2002 (filed March 22, 2001)

Also, here's the date on the Microsoft Autorun patent:
6,366,966: April 2, 2002 (filed December 13, 1994)

So, while three of the TVI patents are OLDER than the Autorun patent, the Autorun patent was filed six months earlier than the first TVI patent.

Re:No kidding

[Archfeld]

still think unix automounting FS's predates all of this. When a NFS system is initialized my system detects the mounted media and mounts it for me without any user interference or action. But I do remember the MAC chunking away on the floppy upon insertion as well. IBM Mainframe machines required the controller to let the machine know new media or devices had been attached as far back as 3081's, based on my admittedly flawed memory...

Re:Patently absurd?

[sulli]

I remember using that very feature of the Win95 beta. Also, Mac OS 7.x supported autoplay - here's a model from 1992 that had a built-in CD-ROM drive and used this OS.

Re:One good thing about patent ridiculousness....

[ZoneGray]

When the big gorillas have patent fights, they just sign cross-licensing agreements, effectively forming a cartel. This is actually a case of the little guy suing the big guy, which seems to be more the norm for ridiculous patents like this one.

What strikes me on this one is that it was filed in 1995, and the filing specifically mentions CD-ROMs and Wintel PC's. How could this have escaped notice until now? It's not as if it was hiding in some dusty filing cabinet for years, it was filed by the same company that currently holds it, while Windows 95 was in beta!

I dunno, maybe the USPTO is right, maybe this stuff isn't so obvious. Even the people who filed the damned patent couldn't figure it out.

Thinking like Microsoft

[Tassach]

Microsoft has a proven track record of rolling roughshod over everyone else's IP rights. Just look at what happened to Stac. They patented a technique for doing transparent real-time compression on a mounted filesystem. Microsoft blatantly and fragrantly violated the patent when they build filesystem compression into thier products. Basically, they said "so sue us" to Stac, and used their legal muscle to keep the case tied up in court until Stac went bankrupt.

If microsoft wouldn't pay licensing fees for a patent which was clearly legitimate, why would they pay out for one as dubious as this one?

Re:Thinking like Microsoft

[caspper69]

Actually, Microsoft didn't *violate* a patent, they *stole* Stac's code. That was why DOS 6.2 went on to become DOS 6.22 so quickly. You could even scan the executables for DriveSpace (I believe that's what it was called) and see Stac's name all over it. And actually, Stac got quite a hefty settlement out of it ($50M+). What really killed Stac was that drive space became so cheap, no one really needed to use realtime compression anymore (at least not at the filesystem level).

Really, really prior art

[leonbrooks]

In... let me see... 1982? I dealt with a PDP-11/23 running RSX-11-M-PLUS which autostarted backups and things when you inserted media (e.g. 1600BPI magtape into a Cypher F880(?) tape drive). We also had monstrous great two megabyte removable hard disks the size of a sombrero, and the system would auto-start things when the correct one of those was inserted. It had been doing these things for many years before I arrived on the scene.

A local Fight'o'net BBS operator I know, back in the same era, had a process auto-start when you inserted a tape cartridge (snail-mailed from the 'states) full of downloadables in your '286.

So they're just being SCOlets, pump-n-dump barratrous assholes. It seems to be trendy these days.