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IBM Patents Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Movies
An anonymous reader writes "IBM, whose former patent boss is in charge of the USPTO these days, and which claims to support patent reform, has just been awarded a patent on choose-your-own-adventure style movies, despite plenty of prior art. Whatever happened to fixing the patent system, rather than continuing these mistakes?"
The idea of a branch-menu based book may be old, but the idea of a branch-based movie theater experience is new. Sure, it's easy to join digital video files to run back to back, but to branch to a different film segment without there being a visible gap is quite the work of art. Notice the gaps between the previews/ads that are shown before you get to the ones that are already on the movie's film.
This is a lot more than a film strip you saw at school. This is 24 frames per second and you've got to get the right film for the "choice" up there in fractions of a second. This is a patent on IBM's way of making this work, you could easily come up with another way.
Didn't we used to call those "Video Games"?
I remember a short lived period from the late 90's where "interactive movies" tried to revive the adventure game. Wouldn't this be the same thing but with more footage?
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Whatever happened to fixing the patent system, rather than continuing these mistakes?"
What happens is that every time a big company gets hit with patent lawsuits, they learn from it, patent a lot of stuff, and turn around and start making money off the system (IBM, Apple, Sun, Microsoft.....Sun wasn't even the sue-happy type, and they still made a ton off patents). So they don't feel motivated to try and change things anymore. Why should they? Then you have guys like Amazon, and their one-click patent, who pay lip-service to patent reform, but in practice they defend their stupid patent every chance they get.
Qxe4
The simple essence of "Choose your own adventure" is only a small part of the patent.
If you RTFP, you'll find voting mechanisms, pricing models, variable vote weighting based on a pricing model, and a proposed rating system.
I think they deserve the patent.
That other way is called a "video game." Such as Indigo Prophecy, Resident Evil 4, or Heavy Rain. There's not enough to distinguish between a real-time adventure game and this concept. Just because you put it in a theatre doesn't make it patentable. That's just making the screen bigger and adding more participants.
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
Tender Loving Care, anyone?
Living With a Nerd
The editor claims lots of previous work in this area. I challenge him to find something that does all this. It maybe that there is previous literature but there isn't a huge amount. Basically the editor doesn't know what a patent is. It's about the claims not the area the patent is in. You can patent something if there is no previous literature that does everything in the claim. If someone has left out one thing here then that doesn't stop the patent.
Here's the first claim.
1. A method for selecting a logical branch in a storyline among a plurality of available storyline branches on a computing device, based on voters' votes, comprising: obtaining and accumulating, the votes from the voters on a computing device for at least one of the plurality of available storyline branches, during the presentation of the storyline; selectively excluding votes, using the computing device, based on voter characteristics from the accumulated votes for a specific storyline branch; multiplying, using the computing device, at least one received vote by a weight factor based on voter characteristics, the weighting factor being based on at least ticket pricing; calculating, using the computing device, a total for the accumulated and weighted votes; and determining, using the computing device, a winning tally that corresponds to one of the plurality of available storyline branches; selecting and presenting, using the computing device, at least one of the available storyline branches with the winning tally as a future storyline branch during the presentation of the storyline, and generating, using the computing device, a media version matrix specifying a selected storyline having a particular set of logical branches selected by the voting for later use and retrieval, by recording each selected corresponding storyline branch of the plurality of available storyline branches on the computing device.
They did this in silent steel and Flash Traffic City of Angels.
Isn't the porn industry already doing this? I mean, I HEARD they are already doing this.
I'm on a chair.
As usual, the common mistake is made of claiming that the patent is for "choose-your-own-adventure movies". Like any patent, it's for a particular method of displaying and running a choose-your-own-adventure movies (or rather, a class of similar methods).
I'm curious what examples of prior art there are, and whether they actually fall under the claims made in the patent, or if they're simply similar int hat both are "choose-your-own-adventure"-type presentations.
Linda, you're absolutely fantastic!
(google it)
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
...Calculon to race to the laser gun battle in his hover-Ferarri, press 1...
From here, it looks like yet another case of reading the abstract of the patent, noting that you've seen something fitting that description before, and blagging about how it's a ridiculous patent with prior art. One of slashdot's more incautious editors (well, yeah, that's all of them, but you know what I mean) then approves it without a second thought, and a thousand nerds join in the comments, but nowhere along the line did anyone consider the actual claims of the patent (y'know, the part that's legally significant). Got a problem with patents? Fine -- so do I, the way things are. But don't lie about it, and don't make deliberately uninformed statements so you can't know it's a lie -- that's still lying in my book -- and if your ignorance of the patent claims is not deliberate, well START READING THEM!
Since we've got folks going on about prior art, someone presumably can cite an extant choose-your-own-adventure movie where (just from looking at the first claim) the storyline is controlled by audience voting (basic), where some votes are automatically discarded "based on voter characteristics", and votes are weighted by a factor "based on voter characteristics, the weighting factor being based on at least ticket pricing" (yeah -- pay twice as much, get twice (or 10x, or 0.5x) as much say in the adventure!); otherwise everyone saying prior art needs STFU & GTFO -- while you can certainly argue this should fail obviousness or some such, unless you can actually name prior art that fully covers a claim of the patent, just don't fucking field that argument!
My brief tenure at IBM (circa 8 years ago or so) made me realize the company that once was the great giant of the industry had become a pissing match between MBA's and PHDs as to who could get the most patent applications on their wall.
Same shit, different day. Someone probably is 1 patent closer to winning a bonus.
Although it is equally stupid. It appears to be a patent on voting for the outcome, including stuff like having people charges for a vote.
So, it's essentially a patent for an 'interactive movie', except with a group of voters deciding the outcome. This exact premise has been used in science fiction before, which should be enough to deny it a patent.
In fact, it's actually been done over TV before, even with the 'pay for a vote' aspect. American Idol does a version of it, but it's been done with prerecorded stuff before, which people could call in and influence one way or another. For example. Or a very early live example.
I'm not certain how something that happened in 1982 over television should be patentable simply because it's in a movie theater.
But someone needs to find a scifi story that has people go into a movie theater and picking what story they want to see by voting with buttons on their chair. Hell, early scifi had that stuff all the time, before it was clear that home media consumption would take off. People were always going to movie theaters and whatnot.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
When I see IBM and choose your own adventure movies all I can think of is a new interface for sys admins. Brings a whole new meaning to "adventure."
Sorry but to me all IBM does is mainframes.
I suggest that everyone view this talk regarding patents and open source software. It focuses on how open source developers can maneuver around patents, but also provides a lot of information regarding how patents can be better understood. After viewing this presentation, I've realized how moronic a lot of posts on Slashdot regarding patents truly are.
After watching the video and examining the patent it seems rather trivial to dance around it. It's a completely stupid thing to patent, but it isn't going to impede anyone who develops something similar.
I skimmed through the claims. I've seen and participated in public showings of technology that covers most of this. Some commenters mentioned the Dragon's Lair laserdisc arcade game, which I was never very good at. I've also seen interactive stories (both pre-recorded and realtime rendered) where the audience votes at various points in the story; sometimes it was computer vision based, and sometimes we had devices with voting buttons (including our own cell phones). Students in Carnegie Mellon's ETC have created a number of public demonstrations along these lines. But the important claims in this patent that I haven't seen before are:
- Your individual vote's weighting is based on your ticket price
- The total story arc that the audience voted for is saved for future viewing
- The audience votes on the total story arc, so that future audiences can pick the most popular arc
That's where to start looking for prior art. I don't remember whether prior art has to exist for all claims or just one claim in order to invalidate the patent, but Claim 1 describes the entire setup with all of these parts.
FMV games are now patented? I guess since IBM and the USPTO weren't around in the 80s and 90s, so they wouldn't remember.
anyone remember that game or any of the other 'laserdisc' style games which did the equivalent of emulating a laserdisc remote with arcade buttons?
Bundled with the *IBM* Aptiva with Win95 on 6 CDs. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sv0CO7kiBFg 90Mhz was never so sweet.
Games like Plumbers Don't Wear Ties was nothing but this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjMAG5IDnek
In answer to your question, what happened was Disney and the corporitization of copyrights and patents beyond their original usage and terms for the profit of others and not society as a whole.
In other words - Disney.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Futurama - S02E08 - Raging Bender. The crew go to a movie theatre and vote for what Calculon should do next. The result: Tedious Paperwork
You do understand that when you patent something, you are patenting a specific implementation of the idea, not the idea itself? Like for example, you don't patent "a clock" but you could patent a portion of a "clock mechanism" that is implemented in a unique non-obvious way.
I don't want to defend dumb patents, or the USPTO, but at the same time, everyone here seems to only consider what they think they see at the surface.
What is the specific implementation system / method of what they are claiming and has anyone done this before? If so, is this an improvement on that prior system?
You CAN get patents for improving prior inventions, and there is nothing wrong with that if you are the first to come up with that non-obvious improvement.
Prior art? Rule of law? What the heil are you talking about?
The point of patent law at this point is to earn CEOs money to pay for their private jets to go to Thailand to pay for their private...
Sounds like Shear Madness.
"The ending of the play is different every night as the audience members hear clues, question the characters and then vote on who they think is guilty."
It's referred to as the longest (or second longest) running play, though according to Wikipedia, that's crap.
Can anyone point me to a good explanation of what is actually meant by this requirement for a patent (per wikipedia):
A patent may not be obtained though the invention ... if the differences between the subject matter sought to be patented and the prior art are such that the subject matter as a whole would have been obvious at the time the invention was made to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which said subject matter pertains. (35 U.S.C. 103 (A))
I would think that many of these questionable patents we see would run afoul of this requirement, regardless of other concerns. They seem to be using a rather low estimate of "ordinary skill" in the art for most things computer - it almost feels more like any idea at or above "ordinary" innovation in an industry is OK. When innovation and new ideas are the norm in an industry, I would hope the bar for non-obvious would be correspondingly higher.
Of course, all the financial and political incentives are geared toward granting more patents and letting the courts sort things out - I doubt many political figures would even consider not-for-profit innovation and development as legitimate or sane activities. I wonder some days if the state of the patent office isn't more a symptom of how our society values (or doesn't value) non-monetary pursuits and motives - if the only legitimate activities involve money, why not grant the patents and let them get sorted out? That way someone always makes money, even if its only the lawyers and the patent system - if they protect the non-commercial not-for-profit intellectual commons, who makes money there? Maybe I'm too cynical, but with even academic institutions diving head first into the "monetizing of knowledge" the ideal of knowledge for its own sake gets kinda hard to find.
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
Dragon's Lair, mid 1980s? It was a coin operated video game that basically played animated scenes from a laserdisc. Your inputs decides which way things forked at key points.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon's_Lair
Saying Dragons Lair will invaldate his patent is like saying an automobile would invalidate a patent for a plane with wheels. Just because both have wheels and a propulsion unit isn't enough.
It is a sad state of affairs that the readership of slashdot doesn't have enough savvy to read the claims (which actually define the invention),but instead, really upon a headline to determine what the patent is about.
The actual claim langauge is reproduced below. For IBM not to get a patent, the USPTO would have to prove that the prior art taught EVERY SINGLE ONE of these limitations. Teaching 99 out of 100 isn't enough.
A method for selecting a logical branch in a storyline among a plurality of available storyline branches on a computing device, based on voters' votes, comprising: obtaining and accumulating, the votes from the voters on a computing device for at least one of the plurality of available storyline branches, during the presentation of the storyline; selectively excluding votes, using the computing device, based on voter characteristics from the accumulated votes for a specific storyline branch; multiplying, using the computing device, at least one received vote by a weight factor based on voter characteristics, the weighting factor being based on at least ticket pricing; calculating, using the computing device, a total for the accumulated and weighted votes; and determining, using the computing device, a winning tally that corresponds to one of the plurality of available storyline branches; selecting and presenting, using the computing device, at least one of the available storyline branches with the winning tally as a future storyline branch during the presentation of the storyline, and generating, using the computing device, a media version matrix specifying a selected storyline having a particular set of logical branches selected by the voting for later use and retrieval, by recording each selected corresponding storyline branch of the plurality of available storyline branches on the computing device
It doesn't seem to me to be a contradiction for IBM to support patent reform but be a vigorous player in the patent system as is. In fact, it would be foolish for them to abstain as they will simply be trampled on by others.
Currently hooked on AMP
This exact premise has been used in science fiction before, which should be enough to deny it a patent.
There's a concept called "non-enabling prior art".
Sure, science fiction stories have been written describing time travel, cold fusion, AI, teleportation, etc. Go build them - after all, you've got that "prior art". Wait, they don't fully describe everything sufficient to enable someone skilled in the art to build those things? Ah. Then they're "non-enabling" prior art, and are only "prior art" for the few bits they do enable - in other words, the broad concept. You couldn't patent: "A method for time travel comprising (a) traveling through time." because there would be prior art for that, but you could certainly patent a method that went beyond the mere musings of authors.
Johnny Mnemonic: The Interactive Action Movie was made by sony and was good for it's time!
Sounds to me they don't specify any concrete implementation system. At least I can't see it, and in the end they say:
Which sounds to me like they're patenting the idea and covering all possible implementations.
Dilbert RSS feed
The audience-driven video project, Terminal Time combines audience voting (by applause) with video, so it may count as prior art.
No data, no cry
Peep shows.
Have gnu, will travel.
in other words, the broad concept. You couldn't patent: "A method for time travel comprising (a) traveling through time." because there would be prior art for that, but you could certainly patent a method that went beyond the mere musings of authors.
And you sir are not truly familiar with US Patent System.
If the goal of the patent system is to encourage inventors to publish descriptions of their inventions, so that everyone can benefit from their discoveries, why do we need an office to approve them? Why not just allow inventors to publish whatever they want, in a suitably widespread publication, and claim patent protection? We would only need experts to review the worthiness of patents when there is some sort of dispute -- and the civil court system has been set up to handle these sorts of expert-witness-based trials for years. (Granted, this aspect of the civil court system leaves a lot to be desired, but it still sounds like it'd be more effective than the bloated, bureaucratic bottleneck we have today.)
-- 77IM
Student: Is it true that the foundation of the universe is paradox?
Master: Well, yes and no.
in a choose your own adventure, i remember finding a page that was not linked to any other page and had no idea if it was intentionally like that or just a bad pointer.
just remembered that now. thanks slashdot.
From Wikipedia: "Kinoautomat (1967) was the world's first interactive movie, conceived by Radúz inera for the Czechoslovak Pavilion at Expo '67 in Montreal. At nine points during the film the action stops, and a moderator appears on stage to ask the audience to choose between two scenes; following an audience vote, the chosen scene is played."
More at Wikipedia or kinoautomat.cz
Someone needs to be quick and grab the Choose Your Own Patent business model that the USPTO is using. No need to worry about them having prior art on that, apparently.
You do understand that when you patent something, you are patenting a specific implementation of the idea, not the idea itself? Like for example, you don't patent "a clock" but you could patent a portion of a "clock mechanism" that is implemented in a unique non-obvious way.
You appear to be confused between copyrights and patents. Patents are for protecting the method of doing something, rather than a specific implementation of that method. For instance, if you went back in time you could get a patent on "using a heat exchanger to increase the thermal efficiency of a steam engine", but you couldn't copyright it. You could, however, copyright a specific design for said heat exchanger.
- fractoid-with-modpoints
I see nothing that is novel or non-obvious in any of their independent claims
Film is another art medium, no self respecting director will trade gimmicks for a chance to tell a real story. It's obvious why so many of your children have ADHD problems, when they are stimulated to have short attention spans.
Milla Jovavich and Ali Larter, saving the world through passionate lesbian sex.
At least it will in my theatre.
There's a concept called "non-enabling prior art".
Sure, science fiction stories have been written describing time travel, cold fusion, AI, teleportation, etc. Go build them - after all, you've got that "prior art". Wait, they don't fully describe everything sufficient to enable someone skilled in the art to build those things?
I'm pretty sure I could build this from a fictional description of it, and could have done any time in the last 10 years. I'm not even particularly skilled in the art of digital video.
A lot of the patents that are awarded todday are basically sci-fi patents that patent a broad concept without describing how to implement it.
Or that laserdisk game with Duncan(?). Was that Dragon's Lair? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon's_Lair.
Then there's Bioware games like:
Baldurs Gate
Baldurs Gate2
Baldurs Gate TOB
Plaenscape: Torment
Or
Deus Ex Machina
But Dragon's Lair is probably the first "movie" that does this.
and it further shows how stupid ass retarded the usa is and how your putting all your apples into controlling the mind of all things and how it will fail
UTTERLY and it will be the end of the usa as enforcement is impossible to other nations that see you for what you ar
greed is just another form of violence heaped upon mankind and one day we'll find a way past it
Just to pluck out one thing you said...
This exact premise has been used in science fiction before, which should be enough to deny it a patent.
There's a concept called "non-enabling prior art". Sure, science fiction stories have been written describing time travel, cold fusion, AI, teleportation, etc. Go build them - after all, you've got that "prior art". Wait, they don't fully describe everything sufficient to enable someone skilled in the art to build those things? Ah. Then they're "non-enabling" prior art, and are only "prior art" for the few bits they do enable - in other words, the broad concept. You couldn't patent: "A method for time travel comprising (a) traveling through time." because there would be prior art for that, but you could certainly patent a method that went beyond the mere musings of authors.
That's fine for time-travel, which is admittedly hard. But given a futurama episode where characters vote to pick a movie ending, any bunch of idiots with some basic engineering skills could implement it. Or should I say, anyone "skilled in the art" would be able to come up with a way to implement it. Same goes for pretty much any business method patent; they patent nothing more than a concept, so if that concept is in 1984, that's reason enough it shouldn't be patentable. (did I mention, IANAPLOAOKOL?)
As much as I'd like to see that movie...I don't think I'd want to sit next to you.
Don't take it personal. :)
I am also against patents...well all patents that aren't mine.
Okay, I didn't read through the patent - I find them incredibly difficult to read whenever they are posted.
But if they are doing this on MOVIES, I don't think it would be considered prior art. If you are referring to being able to control a story line in a video game, that's a bit different. The so called "Interactive Movies" are hardly interactive. I certainly wouldn't say "Phantasmagoria" or other likewise count at a "choose your own adventure" game. Disney has incorporated some "choose your destination" stuff in a few of their rides at EPCOT, but those also are not choose your own adventure movies. Truthfully, I haven't seen one.
Well, somebody has got to check this out and tell me what you think. http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=6&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PG01&s1=millstein.IN.&OS=IN/millstein&RS=IN/millstein About 4 years ago I came up with a site (socialsaga.com) that was a lot like choose your own adventure. So, being young and stupid, when somebody told me I should try and patent the idea, I tried. Bunch of time and some money later I get a final rejection from the USPTO. Then I see this shit and can't believe my eyes. The one thing that I thought was good about Patents (that it gives small guys the chance to hold on to an idea that a huge company can steal easily) is now dead in my eyes. That sounded a little overly dramatic, but man I put a lot of work into trying to get this patented.
Are the choices made in part due to a weighting factor based on ticket price? I assume you don't have a pluarilty of viewers who paid you money and you took that into consideration when making each "choice" in the movie?
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
The part of what the outcome of the movie is determined by the highest paying costumer is more of a business decision than a invention. Adding a computer program to determine the vote makes this a pure software patent, something that is not a good thing.
So, just so we've got all that straight now... What they've has done is revolutionary. They have changed the game. The patent game that is... Instead of patenting "blah blah blah" ON THE INTERNET, they've gone and patented "blah blah blah" AT THE MOVIES.
So now we need to start the gold-rush of "simple business concept" AT THE MOVIES. Now that "choose your own adventure" will happen in a theater, who will be the first to patent "One-click" AT THE MOVIES?
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
I don't see anything in the patent that describes how to 'implement' it beyond stuff like 'You'll need to give everyone a keypad or a phone or maybe let them vote in a booth'. (The Futurama story had a keypad, and obviously phones have been used for mass voting on plots forever. I don't think the idea of 'voting in a booth' needs to dignified with a response.)
Or insanely obvious stuff like 'You'll have to hook a computer to the playback device to tally the votes, a computer which people can contact using (insert list of half a dozen ways that people already contact computers)'.
There is no actual engineering in the patent at all. Most of it appears to be describing how votes could be tallied.
Wait, they don't fully describe everything sufficient to enable someone skilled in the art to build those things?
No, but considering that this patent doesn't either, and that people skilled in the art have built exactly this system repeatedly, that's sorta a moot point.
You clearly haven't read the patent. It's essentially 'Hook a computer to a projector, and here's a big list of ways that the computer could decide what to show next. For example, if not enough people vote in time, it could use a regional default.'. No explanation at all on how to do any of this.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
As a kid I went to Expo '67. I think that it was the Czechoslovakian pavilion featured an auditorium where the seats all had voting buttons, and a movie where the audience got to decide what happened next. We had a blast choosing our way through the interesting scenario. IMHO, IBM should have never been able to get this patent.
"Can there be a Klein bottle that is an efficient and effective beer pitcher?"
Someone should just patent the idea of patents, and then license it back to the US Government. Maybe then they'll see that there's a problem.
I don't see anything in the patent that describes how to 'implement' it beyond stuff like 'You'll need to give everyone a keypad or a phone or maybe let them vote in a booth'...No explanation at all on how to do any of this.
Ah, but that's a different rejection. That's under 35 USC 112, which requires a patent application to have sufficient written description. A failure there doesn't mean that the application is anticipated by prior art, though.
Absent patent protection, would this be a secret? After all, that was the reason for patents: stopping things becoming secret and dying with the inventor.
And the answer is: No, this could NOT be kept secret (except the weighting algorithm and wiring etc, but these aren't in this patent either), therefore the public are getting NOTHING by granting the patent except monopoly rents and government interference in the market.
that is what happened. nothing else. all the 'but but but but ...'s are bullshit derivatives and excuses and 'but maybe we can' kind of self-fooling.
Read radical news here
You fail to say why though.
"A method for selecting a logical branch in a storyline among a plurality of available storyline branches"
Check.
"on a computing device"
Check.
"based on voters' votes"
Check.
"comprising: obtaining and accumulating, the votes from the voters on a computing device for at least one of the plurality of available storyline branches, during the presentation of the storyline"
Check.
"multiplying, using the computing device, at least one received vote by a weight factor based on voter characteristics, "
Check, though the weighting is "1.0", it's still a weighting. And is, anyway, an obvious step.
"and determining, using the computing device, a winning tally that corresponds to one of the plurality of available storyline branches; selecting and presenting, using the computing device"
Check.
"selecting and presenting, using the computing device, at least one of the available storyline branches"
How would you show two branches when one was the winner and all the others lost the vote? But check anyway.
"and generating, using the computing device, a media version matrix specifying a selected storyline having a particular set of logical branches"
Check. After all, if you killed the frog, the frog can't come along and give you a clue later.
"selected by the voting for later use and retrieval, by recording each selected corresponding storyline branch of the plurality of available storyline branches on the computing device"
Check.
Or, your abstract in plain english:
Store multiple branches of storylines on a storage system in a device that can display the story line and that can, when there is a possible change in the story arc, take votes on the available options given in the recording, works out the winning option and shows the result of that vote, and discards from future branches any story line arcs that do not follow on from the choice(s) made.
This is what Dragons Lair did. It's also what Baldur's Gate 2 did (if you attacked Drizzt or had his kit in BG1, he was hostile in BG2). Certain matrices of options became available or unavailable depending on what dialogue choices you made earlier.
Ah yes. I should have realized that Futurama would parody early sci-fi. That episode even has a black and white newsreel at the start of the movie!
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Well you know it is going to happen.
Personally, this will be the best one!
The "choices" I am waiting for are:
"Shoot Greedo" or "Don't shoot Greedo"
and
"Force Choke Jar-Jar" or "Space Jar-Jar out an airlock"
That and anything to do with either Leia or Natalie Portman in the "Unrated Version".
and just for Slashdot (even thought I don't really get the meme)
"Grits" or "no grits"
I believe it was called "Survive the Outbreak." Original site is down, but youtube has a copy. It is also one of the only two legitimate, non-obnoxious uses of youtube annotations I have seen.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
non enabling prior art is called
blocking access to the market place by the use of government intervention..
copyrights and patents are monopolies. and the ownership of government issued copyright and patents is politics.. the winner in any game of politics is the SENMACE.com
"Movie" have made smooth and seamless transitions for a long time. Three or more projectors permits a branched presentation based on whatever.... TV news has been doing this for a while. A sequence of still photos counts because it is the degenerate case of a movie. Polarized projection establishes one method for a user to select A or B as a point of view... Deep down in the "method" they might have a hook but one or more clean room methods could trample the novel, and not obvious bits.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.