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

Applies to more than MS

[NinjaPablo]

How about your car CD player, home console, digital camera, DVD player, etc etc etc? What's next, someone claiming a patent on reading magnetic or optical storage?

Re:Why stop with M$?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup, the amiga would automatically load the 'disk-validator' executable from a floppy when it was inserted. Some pesky viruses took advantage of this mechanism too.

I want to hear from a Patent Examiner

[DarkFencer]

I really would love to see a Slashdot interview with someone in the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office that can explain the process and how things like this happen. They probably cannot comment on a specific case like this, but typically we get two of these ridiculous patent claims a week mentioned on slashdot.

Are they overworked and understaffed and forced to just rubberstamp things?

Are they untrained in technology to recognize things like this?

Are they in need of being hit over the head with a clue by four?

Something is seriously wrong at the USPTO (now more then ever seemingly).

It's a non-starter...

[gillbates]

IIRC, Autoplay has been shipped in MS operating systems since 1996. TVI has been sitting on this for eight years. Which means, of course, that if the statute of limitations hasn't expired, they will be severely limited in the remedies they are allowed to seek. It's not like this escaped their attention for 8 years.

Of course, IANAL, but I'm pretty sure that even if TVI wins the case, they won't be able to collect damages for past infringement because they clearly did not demonstrate "due diligence" in protecting their patent. They might end up with a compulsory license agreement; or to avoid infringement, Microsoft OS's may end up simply popping up a dialog box ("Would you like to play this CD?") when a disk is inserted.

Yeah, I'd put TVI at net loss on this one. Their lawyers are going to make more money than they will.

Patently absurd?

[BitRandom]

Evidently the new idea is that even the product your suing shouldn't be considered prior art. The first patent, 5,597,307, was filed in May 1995. The last Beta of Windows 95 was in March 1995 and the Microsoft DRG people were talking about it in 1994 (Auto-play was evangelized to ISVs - "Mr ISV you need to make sure that your application uses Auto-play"). What it looks like here is that the current patent strategy is to wait until someone releases a product then patent the features that aren't covered. Hopefully this is yet another nail in the stuipidity of patent issuing.

Patent Dates

[ripsnorta]

I did a quick search on the patent numbers in the Patent Office database. The earliest patents was filed in November 1995, and others were filed in 1999 and 2001. Strangely, the wording on all of them seemed to be very similar. (5,597,307; 5,795,156; 6,249,863 and 6,418,532)

November 1995 was around the time Windows 95 was released IIRC. It almost seems opportunistic. Maybe the patent holder quickly came up with a patent after seeing Win95, and filed it hoping that with a long enough gap he would be able to sue for patent infringement.

Cheers