Slashdot Mirror
Intel Patents the "Digital Browser Phone"
tibbar66 writes, "This sounds like an invention that has been invented many times before (e.g. Skype). Yet on October 10, 2006 Intel was granted a patent for a 'digital browser phone.' The patent was filed on Feb. 25, 2000. Here's the abstract: 'A telephone system wherein all the functions of a digital telephone can be accessed and implemented on a personal computer alone, thereby eliminating the need for a telephone set. By means of the computer display and mouse, keyboard or other input/output command devices, a user accesses and implement all digital telephone functions without the physical telephone set, the personal computer also providing the audio function. A graphical representation of a telephone set or other telephone-related form is provided on the computer display and accessed by the mouse, keyboard or other command device, this being accomplished by a computer program providing graphical interface implementation. A significant advantage of the system is computer access to and utilization of digital telephone functions from a remote location with communication via Internet, LAN, WAN, RAS or other mediums.'"
Skype ?
Or any SIP or H323 application that predates Skype ?
Isn't it time for Americans to revolt agains the patent crazyness ?
This signature is DRM protected. By the DMCA, you are not allowed to counteract or oppose to it.
The fscking phone itself should count as prior art! Perhaps, just perhaps (I'm not willing to go near it to find out) there is something in this patent which is new and non-obvious (from slashdot alone I'd say not but I know better then to believe anything on here). Odds are however that this is little more then a description of re-implementing a regular telephone with digital circuitry. For some reason the USPTO seems to think that doing $anything "on a computer" is patentable in of itself no matter how unpatentable $anything might be. Would they have accepted a patent for using a general purpose computer (with display, keyboard and/or mouse) as a calculator at some stage? Obviousness test ... nope let the courts handle that?
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
So we get a Slashdot post about the USPTO not looking at the patent application properly, where the poster (or /. editor) did not look at it either. My brain hurts.
Whatever, as someone else here said, Vocaltec started the ball rolling back in 1995. Maybe they only patented in Israel, not the US, but that won't help Intel here.
Mielipiteet omiani - Opinions personal, facts suspect.
The open h323 project was started in 1998 and had a soft phone by 2000. This should count as prior art. http://www.openh323.org/fom-serve/cache/3.html
It also stinks that they get to sit on it for 6 years from date of filing. Patents used to be valid for 20 years from date of filing, now a company can sit on it, tweek it, and get 17 years from date of issue (AFIK).
Heh? In 1994, we were already buying commercial softphone applications for PC to PC telephony. In 1995, we had the ability to click a button on a web browser and launch a voice session with a customer service rep in an ACD pool. In 1996, we demonstrated a macintosh running voip software connected to a gateway that put the voice session out on an ISUP trunk to an M-1 PBX. I'm having difficulty understanding the originality of a 2000 filing on this subject.
in ~1995, I was working at Bell Labs/Lucent on the velociraptor project. Part of that WAS the desktop system as described.
Man, I swear that gov has fallen apart over the last 5 years. Patents as screwy as this show either an actual attempt by the gov. to hire idiots (hard to believe considering the economy of the last 6 years), that it is purposely trying to allow BS patents to major companies (conspiracy theorists unite), or that it is being severely underfunded( Bingo ) .
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I'm not proposing any theories here, but I do think you may be in danger of assuming incompetence where there's corruption.
Property is theft.
Right; patents aren't about common sense. Patents are about suppressing creative thought because some fool got to an office first. Probably the single greatest stumbling block to technology and progress humanity has ever had the misfortune to allow to be thrust upon itself.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Nah, that can't be right. I'm sure society has patents simply to suppress creative thought.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
No, a mechanism already exists for that purpose; it is called "trade secret." The way it works, see, is that if your idea is complex enough to be non-trivial in terms of the resources required to instantiate it, then you just don't tell anyone how you did something, you simply develop it, and market it. If it is useful, you'll have a market window, and this gives you that "very temporary monopoly" you need to make a reasonable amount of income from your idea. What is great about it is that it doesn't involve lawyers, it doesn't involve the government, and it doesn't involve repressing everyone else's creativity. It also has built-in safeguards against simplistic ideas being given the status of unbreakable dams against progress.
You really don't understand how things work. It's not "society" operating here; it is corporations and the rich. And what they want to supress is your ability to do anything at all without paying them, either for a product, or for the use of an idea they've latched onto.
The fact that this suppresses creative thought is a side-effect, one that (a) only injures the general public and so (b) is not of concern to either the government, the corporations or the rich. What they're trying to do (and suceeding very well at) is suppress competition. What you think is of no concern to them. The system is designed to ignore what you think. That's why legislators make law, and you don't get to. It's trivially easy to bribe the very few legislators (think PACs, trips, speaking engagements, employment after politics, re-election support) but it is not easy to bribe the hundreds of millions of citizens at large. Not only do you have no input into the process, you're pretty well stuck in the loop of supporting the system from without by paying for these patents and for the bribes and for the legislators. All those costs are built into everything you buy that has one or more patents, with the single exception of the costs that are built into your taxes.
The system is locked-down. You can get a decent patent (meaning, one you have a slight chance of being able to defend in court) for about ten grand. But even if you can meet that financial standard (and of course, the vast majority of people cannot, nor is there any correlation between those who are creative and those who have such funding available), you have another, much higher hurdle to jump: You have to be able to pay for the defense of that patent in court. You on one side, with your house mortgaged (agin, if you have such a resource) and on the other, for instance, IBM, with (compared to you) absolutely unlimited resources.
But hey, don't worry about it. After all — it's not going to change.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.