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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.'"
If the submitter RTFP they would have seen that it was Intel, not M$.
As well as countless others, as M$ tries to rewite history: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VocalTec_Internet_Pho ne
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.
From TFA:
./?
Assignee: Intel Corporation (Santa Clara, CA)
So what happened to actually reading the submission before posting them on
Also Skype is from 2002 and the patent was filed in 2000, so that makes for a poor prior art.
In star trek the next generation '87-'94. Does that count as prior art? No pun intended.
I was with the patent requestors technically until "A preferred program is commercially available from Microsoft Corporation and known as ActiveX control. ActiveX control enables one to develop sophisticated controls...". Now I realize this was some kind of joke.
This story is just another reason to hate patents. If the iPod's clickwheel could be used by other manufacturers, than everybody and Apple would need to offer -more- and thus, innovate, to make sure they keep their customers and sell their devices. (ok. maybe it's not the patent themselves the problem, but how long they are enforced. I feel 2 to 5 years should be enough...) Same for this MS patent which sound a little too much obvious technology to me.
And the off-topic part, Apple came up with an interesting yet-another-patent one for a configurable input system (patent screenshots included). In short: "The concept is based around adding physical/tactile controls over a touch-sensitive pad. By having such a modular system, an iPod or laptop could become even more multi-functional." As much as this patent is interesting and could help transform computers into something more versatile and useful, it's still a patent which impedes anyone else using the idea at the commercial level.
Animoog.org
It seems to work here in Europe: after a big campaign of small IT businesses and citizens, the European Parliament rejected a proposal for introducing software patents in the EU.
Sure, the "war" is far from over, but we have won each "battle" so far. But I fear that we have a big probability of losing, unless software patents are challenged also in the rest of the world.
So, please, if you live in the USA or in Japan write to your MPs and tell them why sw patents are absurd and should never be granted, you will help yourself and us in Europe too! Don't think it's impossible: try!
More references:
There's a hidden treasure in Python 3.x: __prepare__()
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.
I had an IBM Aptiva in 1997 with a phone system. I could telephone other people using the computer. This was done using a normal telephone line, no adsl or cable. The computer was not online. When somebody phoned me, I would hear a ringtone via the loudspeakers, and I could talk using a microphone. I used it several times, but it wasn't really practical, especially because of sound quality.
"CROSS REFERENCE TO A RELATED APPLICATION
Applicants hereby claim priority based on Provisional Application No. 60/121,755 filed Feb. 26, 1999 and entitled "Digital Browser Phone" which is incorporated herein by reference"
If I read this correctly, they claim priority over _someone_else's_ patent filing by referring to an earlier filing by themselves.
Regardless of whether M$ or Intel are the grantees of this bogus patent. VoIP and by extension a digital phone set via PC were invented by Danny Cohen in 1973 via an ARPA sponsored project involving the predecessor to VoIP - Network Voice Protocol (NVP). Read more on Wikipedia. In addition to this prior art, Cisco would probably have some disagreement with the validity of this patent as well with their Personal Communicator Application.
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.
Wasn't that Net2Phone?
s p
w ww.net2phone.com/
Here is the companys timeline. http://web.net2phone.com/about/company/timeline.a
And here is the archive of their website from february 1997 http://web.archive.org/web/19970205073734/http://
For a community so up in arms about patents, the level of ignorance here about patents is astounding.
What a patent actually COVERS is what is in the CLAIMS. The abstract means NOTHING. Here is the text of the three principal claims of this patent:
1. An apparatus, comprising: an interface to connect to a synchronous digital link and to send and receive digital signals to and from a telephone switch over the synchronous digital link; a controller to generate graphical display information and events based on the digital signals received over the interface; and logic to communicate over an asynchronous digital link, to convert the digital signals to an asynchronous format, and to transmit the digital signals and the graphical display information and events over the asynchronous digital link, wherein the logic is arranged to receive key press and hook state commands over the asynchronous digital link.
3. A method, comprising: receiving digital data from a public branch exchange (PBX) over a synchronous digital communication link; generating graphical display information and events based on the received digital data; transmitting the graphical display information and events over an asynchronous Internet protocol (IP) link; receiving a key press and hook state command over the asynchronous Internet protocol (IP) link; translating the key press and hook state command to a different format; and transmitting the translated key press and hook state command to the PBX over the synchronous digital communication link.
6. A computer readable medium including instructions that, when executed, cause a computer to: convert received light events and display updates to a graphical format; cause a first display device to display a digital telephone including the light events and display updates; convert received input device data that is related to the displayed digital telephone into a packetized format, wherein the input device data includes a key press and hook state commands over asynchronous Internet protocol (IP) link; and transmit the packetized input device data over the asynchronous Internet protocol (IP) link.
Also, the patent was based on an earlier application filed on February 25, 1999. For most purposes, the date against which to shoot with any invalidating prior art would have to be Feb. 25, 1998 or earlier. Having to go back these two additional years makes it much harder to shoot down this patent than it would be if the relevant time frame was 2000, as implied by the lead post.
I don't know if the patent is valid or not, but it certainly has a lot more merit than suggested.
Plus, as has been pointed out above, the patent owner was Intel, not the hated Microsoft.
But, after all, this is Slashdot, so why be burdened by any actual facts?
Only the claims have any real standing when testing a patent... the first claim is for:
An apparatus, comprising: an interface to connect to a synchronous digital link and to send and receive digital signals to and from a telephone switch over the synchronous digital link; a controller to generate graphical display information and events based on the digital signals received over the interface; and logic to communicate over an asynchronous digital link, to convert the digital signals to an asynchronous format, and to transmit the digital signals and the graphical display information and events over the asynchronous digital link, wherein the logic is arranged to receive key press and hook state commands over the asynchronous digital link.
So this patent only covers an interface that communicates over a synchronous digital link, ie, ye old PBX. It doesn't cover any of the VoIP/SIP/RTP solutions. The first claim is too broad, in that PBX's have had this sort of controller/logic etc, so the subsequent claims come into play.
Claim 3 talks about receiving digital data from a public branch exchange (PBX) over a synchronous digital communication link; so it's talking about POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service), admittedly over the newer digital circuits. Again, not VoIP/SIP/RTP.
Claim 6 talks about a "medium" wherein the input device data includes a key press and hook state commands over asynchronous Internet protocol (IP) link;. So if you're not sending the equivalent of key presses and on/off hook states over the IP link, again, you're outside the bounds of the patent.
There used to be something called Dialpad that seems to have done just this. Googling it, it seems that it was recently acquired by Yahoo!
http://www.dialpad.com/ - I used them when they first came out in 1999 because of the really cheap international rates. They had a browser based phone interface which used an activex control for communications when they first started out. Definate prior art.....
Here's some prior art: dialpad in 1999.
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.
Dialgoic, before being purchased by Intel, used to have a program of trying to acquire or patent computer telephony applications in such a way that no one could put a crimp on Computer Telephony based patents in general. [I believe this started after someone patented something involving computer telephone and went after Dialogic's customers who were creating and providing computer telephony solutions. In order to protect their market, Dialogic became involved. If anyone can confirm or deny this history, I'd appreciate getting an authoritative answer one way or the other.] I wonder if this patent is the natural extension of that program, but under Intel's ownership of Dialogic. Is Intel trying to use this pastent against someone yet? If this is from the Dialogic program under Intel's ownership, it might be defensive.
The nice thing is that there were computer telephony applications that provided these types of interfaces and services connecting a computer with the telco switches to deliver services a lot earlier than 1999 (or even 1998).
I haven't read things in detail, but it seems the magic words so far were "digital signals," "telephone interface," the computer serving as the telephone handset, and something about connecting with a switch for these services. If that's really what the claims lay out, then I point you to Visual Voice - a VB toolkit for writing computer telephony applications on windows 3.1 with visual basic 3 and 4. If memory serves, that would be around 1995, before Windows 95 was released. I believe you could use Dialogic T1 cards (satisfying the digital signal claim) and I think there was a sample app that had a telephone interface. What I don't remember is if you could use the microphone and sound card to provide the other end of an interactive phone call; I know you could use them for playback and recording of audio files through the phone, but I don't remember if it supported them live/interactively.
If not, I am pretty sure there were other tools/options in the 16-bit windows environment that did this. Some modems used the sound card to provide telephone/speakerphone use. That was single line and analog, but the extension to a digital signal is fairly obvious; I wonder if ISDN modems offered this feature - that would be digital.
And then there's Quicknet - a company I worked for from 1997 to 2000, their Phone Jack hardware and MicroTelco services were created well before this patent (1999 for sure, 1998 also pretty sure) and would seem to provide the same services.
All-in-all, while it's definitely a lot harder to prove obviousness, if there isn't direct prior art to negate this patent, I think there are enough pieces of the patent in prior implementations of phone services that this patent might be invalidated as being obvious. Of course, that assumes the person making such a ruling actually applies the "obviousness" based on people in the field, and not people in general.
. 62,400 repetitions make one truth -- Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
You are right that it is the claims that matter. In the case, the claims appear to cover a case where the softphone sends key presses and hook-state to a PBX. It seems like a pretty narrow claim since SIP softphones and IP PBXs don't do that. It would be a rather oddball system that was implemented in a way that infringed.
T O1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fs rchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=7012997.PN.&OS=PN/70129 97&RS=PN/7012997
That said, the oddball nature of the claims is also pretty retro. PBX phones worked this way when 8 bit CPUs were hot stuff, and you wanted to minimize what was going on in the phone. It is difficult to believe there is no prior art for something this old-school.
So what is going on here? I bet most of the original claims were rejected, leaving the description badly out of sync with the claims.
Contrast this with another patent filed in 2000 and issued in 2006 (one that I am very familiar with):
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=P
In this patent, all the claims went through, so the claims match up much better with the description.
I wrote parts of this stuff
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.