Streaming Patent Buoys RealNetworks

rishimathew writes writes to tell us The New York Times is reporting that RealNetworks recently received a patent for a specific way to stream multimedia content over the internet. From the article: "The patent, which is described as being for a 'multimedia communications system and method for providing audio on demand to subscribers' (No. 6,985,932), describes the idea of permitting a PC user to play back audio, video and other information on a PC. RealNetworks executives said the technology was distinguished from other similar systems by the fact that it permitted "intelligent" streaming of data in potentially congested networks."

Comments

Patents stink

[LiquidCoooled]

How the hell can the patent office survive for so much longer?

This Real patent is just stupid "Click to stream", I'm actually wondering whether its announcement comes on the back of the changes Microsoft made to force people to click to activate?

They should be bouyed up by the yellow stream coming out of every web developers *censored* as they piss all over them with newer improved methods for getting the data across.

On that score, does anyone know which sites use Helix so I can blacklist them? (hosts format would be nice ;))

The article also mentions that Real shouldn't even have it anyway:

The new patent is known as a continuation patent, with additional claims based on an original filing in November 1994. One of the challenges that will confront RealNetworks in enforcing the patent is an earlier one owned by Apple Computer. Apple applied for a patent related to its QuickTime technology for streaming media in May 1994, before RealNetworks' first filing. The Apple patent, No. 5,561,670, for "method and apparatus for operating a multicast system on an unreliable network," was issued in October 1996. It appears the patent office examiners did not consider it in their evaluation of the RealNetworks patent.

grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

Re:Patents stink

[Psykosys]

The article's point wasn't that the patent shouldn't necessarily have been granted, just that the Patent Office should have considered prior art as a factor in its decision. Real's actual patent application seems to be fairly specific, pointing to the format's inclusion of metadata, and, more importantly, lossless audio sent out simultaneously to the lossy, to be used only when enough has been buffered. I don't think Quicktime adopted the same solution.

Re:Patents stink

[mpe]

The article's point wasn't that the patent shouldn't necessarily have been granted, just that the Patent Office should have considered prior art as a factor in its decision.

The US Patent Office appears to have a specific method for finding "prior art". Which whilst it often results in false negatives, AFAIK, never results in false positives.

I think

[Anonymous Coward]

I think they patented the "fallback" scheme of streaming server/client.

When your network goes havoc the 128kbit realaudio/video falls down to 96kbit first, than 64kbit etc. The trick is it also somehow "senses" the network lag has been fixed and it goes back to the normal level.

That is half of the reason why on movie trailer sites you see multiple stream rates for windows media and one stream link (unified) for real media. The other reason is the "layered" way of doing things in realmedia. A single file can have multiple bitrates.

These are things they invented or not, I don't really care. I don't also like the "patenting" of such things. There should be a way to make it free for opensource community implementing and not to Microsoft.

Helix open source leg can do it?

As I got my lesson from last time, posting as AC. Sorry :)

Re:Vague? Only at NYT

[xiando]

"Abstract

An audio-on-demand communication system provides real-time playback of audio data transferred via telephone lines or other communication links. One or more audio servers include memory banks which store compressed audio data. At the request of a user at a subscriber PC, an audio server transmits the compressed audio data over the communication link to the subscriber PC. The subscriber PC receives and decompresses the transmitted audio data in less than real-time using only the processing power of the CPU within the subscriber PC. According to one aspect of the present invention, high quality audio data compressed according to lossless compression techniques is transmitted together with normal quality audio data. According to another aspect of the present invention, metadata, or extra data, such as text, captions, still images, etc., is transmitted with audio data and is simultaneously displayed with corresponding audio data. The audio-on-demand system also provides a table of contents indicating significant divisions in the audio clip to be played and allows the user immediate access to audio data at the listed divisions. According to a further aspect of the present invention, servers and subscriber PCs are dynamically allocated based upon geographic location to provide the highest possible quality in the communication link." http://patft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=P TO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch- bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PTXT&s1=6985932&O S=6985932&RS=6985932 The term 'intelligent' is no where to be found in the text of the actual patent, that's just the term RealNetworks used to explain how the program which apparently does little but show the fancy text message "Buffering" works.

Real Alternative & Media Player Classic

[citking]

Before I found Real Alternative and its necessary companion Media Player Classic I stayed far, far away from anything that used Real Player. I didn't want messages about Brittney Spears in my system tray, I didn't want to click 4 different links to bypass their premium player, and I certainly shied away from the massive load time.

I found out about it only after Click and Clack switched back to Real Player's format after having temporarily using Windows Media Player. Their reasoning was similar to mine; many older folks were having trouble locating the free Real Player. Despite the fact that Tom and Rau were able to make nice with Real Networks, I was never able to. But, thanks to my friend Sean, I shall never have to go through 4 different option menus to disable a message center again.

Besides, the Real Alternative codec seems better able to stream than Real's own player software. I assume the codec is just the "guts" of the player with no fluff...perhaps all of the extra system resources are being used by, oh, the message center checking on the latest dirt about TomKat or something.

Ogg Vorbis Bitrate Peeling

[fossa]

Ogg Vorbis supports bitrate peeling, but it is not currently implemented. Apparently RealNetwork's SureStream encodes a given file at multiple bitrates resulting in a fat file, while bitrate peeling only needs a single encoding. Real's patent appears to be on the streaming logic to actually switch bitrate though, not the storage of bits in a file.

Real gets streaming patent, includes with FOSS Lic

[kforeman]

Great news for Linux and open source developers. Today Real announced it has added a fundamental patent for certain streaming media technology to its portfolio of patented innovations in digital media AND is automatically licensing the patented technology via its OSI-certified open source license for Helix DNA software, as Real has done with its other digital media patents embodied within Helix DNA Software. The recently-issued "Click-to-Stream" patent (U.S. Patent No. 6,985,932) covers the core methods used when a user selects a link to stream audio-visual content. The patent covers Real's groundbreaking technology innovations dating back to November 1994, four months before the introduction of RealAudio, which forever changed the Web by bringing streaming audio to the Internet for the first time. Real is indeed serious about open source software.

Click-to-Stream joins the portfolio of over 35 patents related to digital media, many that are available to Helix DNA Software licensees. As many of you know, over 50 commercial and open source companies, including Nokia, Linspire, Motorola, Novell, Real, Red Hat, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Sun Microsystems, Trolltech and Xandros, have licensed Helix DNA software and its patented technology to build media-enabled products.

So what about the GPL license you ask? Yes, the Helix DNA Client (the FOSS media framework which supports any format and any operating system) is licensed under the GPL license. And what about patents under the GPL? As you may know, the proposed draft 3.0 of GPL contains an express patent license, whereas the current version of GPL being used by Real (version 2.0) does not contain a patent license. There is broad and public discussion about whether and to what extent an implicit patent license is or is not granted under the GPL, and if so, what the scope of such a license would be. Real's concerns regarding the uncertain nature of such an implied license has led Real to expressly disclaim any implied patent license under its GPL license grant, and to encourage Open Source developers who desire an express patent license from Real to take a license from Real under the RealNetworks Public Source License. For those who nevertheless prefer to use the code under the GPL, we assure you that Real has no plans to pursue any abiding GPL licensee of the Helix DNA Client software - We fully encourage open source software innovation and the collaboration among our licensees.

Here is the actual announcement: http://www.realnetworks.com/company/press/releases

Here is the licensing FAQ https://helixcommunity.org/content/faq-licenses

Kevin Foreman,
GM, Real

We should all be so "desperate" as Real Networks

[westlake]

They're just getting desperate.

Real Networks stock is up 38% since February. Rhapsody's subscription and download service is doing quite well, thank you very much, in a market dominated by iTunes.

Results for the first quarter of 2006 will be released next week, but right now, things are looking pretty damn good for Real.

RealNetworks Benefiting From Video Offerings

Re:Real gets streaming patent, includes with FOSS

[mikiN]

The patent covers Real's groundbreaking technology innovations dating back to November 1994, four months before the introduction of RealAudio, which forever changed the Web by bringing streaming audio to the Internet for the first time.

Not to be rude, as you may fool some younger Slashdotters, but not me. Fact is, there were streaming audio solutions on the Internet well before 1994. How do I know? Well, I took part in the development of one of them, and helped with the porting effort of several others.

I'll keep the list of examples short and sweet, others may add as they please.

AudioFile
The Network Audio System (NAS)

Note: These systems, as were several others, were OSS right from the start.

possible prior art

[Anonymous Coward]

The vat/vic audio/video conferencing projects at Lawrence Berkeley Nat'l Labs during the 1990s led by Steve McCanne et. al., used adaptive compression schemes for real time conferencing over IP multicast networks (the MBone).

Here's a 1996 paper.

F'ing great

[dspisak]

Now RealNetwork's owns a patent on the "Buffering...." nonsense.

I can just imagine folks the world over will be beating on their door to license such wonderfully working software!

Or people could just do MPEG-4 or Quicktime streaming and never have to deal with the unending stream of "BUffering...." seen in almost any Real Networks product.

Red herring. The codecs are still restricted

[Bj�rn Stenberg]

So what about the GPL license you ask? Yes, the Helix DNA Client (the FOSS media framework which supports any format and any operating system) is licensed under the GPL license.

Sure it is, but none of the codecs are. So it's 100% worthless.

There are zillions of "frameworks" avalailable already. It's the codecs we need, and Real still requires their commercial license for those.