Well then, Mr. Genius, why don't you educate all of us on the finer points of the patent. What keeps it from being either a trivial exercise in caching, or a dual-head HD?
They can throw in a bunch of buzz words, like every patent in the late nineties said "... over a digital network", but the plain fact is that doing two things at once, to two files, is pretty simple. I remember reading files as I was downloading them, in the early 80s. How is this anything other than a video application of the same principle?
Nowhere in there is a single bit of proof given which would have a remote chance of standing up in court. In order for a patent to be deemed obvious, there must be some kind of proof given.
The problem is that the patent statutes and case law do not allow a patent examiner to simply say something is obvious without dated proof to backup that statement. Without proof, it is incredibly difficult to maintain an obviousness rejected (35 USC 103) in the courts.
And when, in the last ten years, has a US patent examiner actually investigated patents? The system is a joke. You can patent anything and it's up to the courts to straighten it out - to determine if your patent is worth anything.
Every patent that comes through the patent office is examined as best it can be in the time the examiner is allowed. Unfortunately this time is incredibly short (probably about 10-30 hours total for this patent depending on what level the examiner was at). If congress would stop stealing the funds generated by the PTO for other matters, then the patent office would be able to grant more time for each patent, but that has not happened yet.
What proof does Tivo offer that their patent isn't trivial? What claim goes beyond "write to one file, read from another (possible the same) file. Let the OS handle buffering."
TiVo does not have to offer any proof that their patent is nontrivial other than the patent application. The way the system is setup, every patent is assumed to be valid unless it can be proven to be obvious or already publicly known. Show me some dated proof prior to April/July of 1998 of a video system which performs any of the actions of the independent claims of either patent. Just stating that you have seen something like it or stating that you think it is obvious is not enough to prove that a patent is obvious.
In order to show that a patent is trivial or obvious you must find dated (prior to the effective filing date) proof, either in the form of previous products availible for public sale, or in public published documents (newspapers, magazines, journals, etc..) that would show that the invention has either already been invented (35 USC 102) or would have been obvious (35 USC 103).
It does not matter if TiVo was first to market or not if they filed their patent before who ever was first to market released their product. Was the DishPlayer out before April/July 1998? If not, it doesn't matter when it was released in relation to the TiVo boxes.
The patent is for a specific implementation of fast forwarding/pausing/rewinding live tv, and is not simply for the idea of do so. If you can think of another way to do it, you are perfectly free to do so, as long as that way does not fall under the claims of the TiVo patents.
Patents are for implementations of ideas, not ideas themselves.
What keeps it from being trivial is that patents are assumed to be allowable unless they can be proven to be otherwise. The examiner did not find any evidence that this patent was nontrivial/nonobvious, and therefore it was allowed. Now, I ask you: Prove that this patent is trivial/obvious, keeping in mind that all references used must be dated prior to filing dates of the patents.
Reading the claims (Timewarp Patent), it is pretty easy to see that a VCR does not record the signal to an encoded format, and then decode the signal back into a NTSC/PAL signal before sending it to the tv. As far as I know the video out of the VCR basically works like a coaxial splitter when the VCR is recording a channel.
Unfortunately the patent statutes (35 USC 101, 102, 103 and 112) and all of the case law surrounding them do not allow a patent examiner to look at something that say, "Damn, that sure looks obvious after reading it, rejected!". In order for a claim to be rejected as being obvious the examiner must be able to point to specific material (with a provable date prior to the effective filing date of the patent application, July 30, 1998 in this case) which gives motivation or teachings that show how to alter the state of the art at that time (in 1998 that would probably be VCRs, Laserdiscs and possibly DVD) to perform the actions or to include the system which is claimed in the patent.
Whether this patent is obvious (using the definition of obviousness established by US law and US case law, not slashdots definitions of "I could have done that"), I really can't say.
The reason that Tivo is sueing is they feel that the implementation of the competing design is close enough to be covered under the scope of the claims in the patent. Infringement only requires that the actions/system of the infringing design be covered by the claims as written. The claims can be interpretated in different ways so that the design itself does not have to be exactly identical. For example, if the claim was written as: "storing the video on a digital storage device", and TiVo uses a magnetic hard drive while a competing design uses solid state media such as CF cards, the competing design would still be infringing because they are both digital storage devices. However, if it was claimed to be stored on a "magnetic media", storing the video on a DVD (optical media) would not instantly be infringing. (It should be noted that the courts could still decide that the change to optical media would still be infringment because it is an obvious variant, but then you are getting into case law which states all sorts of crazy things).
I'm not to sure how often this would actually come about. Even if such a law were put into place corporations could easily setup dummy corporations as holders for their intellectual property that would exclusively license the patents back to themselves. Then, the few workers at the dummy corp. could sit locked in a closet all day until they decide to sue someone and they could then go "find" the violation and file the lawsuit well within the time frame of first "learning" about it.
Basically this is too hard to prove and too easy to get around for anyone to take the time to pass it into law.
How do you propose to prove that they know that their patent is being violated? This is a good deal harder than you may think to prove in a court of law, which is why the system is setup the way it is.
All patents are part of public record which can be viewed by anyone at anytime (on the USPTO website). There is no secrecy involved once a patent is issued.
Amazingly, during the "reading all that you can about it" you never read the actual patent. If you did you would see that the patent does not cover simply writing a "single packet" to a CD. I strongly suggest that you up your reading tolerances and get past the title next time.
If you want to argue symantics thats fine, but I still don't see how this justifies copyright infringement.
To the best of my knowledge there is nothing in the constitution, bill of rights or US law (or the laws/founding documents of any other country) that guarantees the rights of the general public to take/use/have access to the intellectual property of others.
The arguement of the parent seems to be something along the line of:
1) CDs are expensive
2) Record make profits selling CDs 3) I don't like paying money for CDs or giving profits to the record companies 4) By downloading 1/2 of the music I listen to I am happy and the record companies still make profits from the 1/2 of the CDs that I do buy 5) Since the world does not end by the actions of (4), downloading 1/2 of the music I listent to is justified
I don't see anything in this line of "reasoning" that justifies the stealing/copyright infringement of the first 1/2 of music listened to. This line of reasoning is almost along the lines of a "Two Wrongs Make a Right" fallacy. The arguement above can be written in that form, ie: Since the record companies steal from me in the form of high profit margins, it is ok to download their music instead of buying it. The parent poster just decided to add the bit about the world not ending to try to strengthen his/her already unfounded arguement.
A) You are leaving out the cost of production, marketing and shipping, all of which must be paid for by the sales of the CDs. Not to mention labor costs for all the various support staff that make the whole thing run. CDs don't just magically appear at the cost of materials alone.
B) $19-21?? (assuming typo in parent post) I don't think ive paid more than $12.99 (with most closer to the $10-11 range) for a CD ever. I suppose if you have to have your new Nelly CD along with a CD for every other song on the top 10, you might be paying that on average, but there is fairly small percentage of music which averages in the $19-21 per CD range.
C) How does any of this justify stealing? Why not steal half of the gas you use, half of the groceries you eat, half of [insert item here]??
The part that I haven't seen is (b)(iv) which states:
allowing the HTML application file to read from a local computer and write to a local computer when said HTML application file is executed on a local computer.
I don't really follow html or any other primarily webbased "languages" so this may have been done prior to the filing date, but I haven't seen anything that would prove it.
It is important to note that just one small part of the claim has to be new in order for the claim to be allowed. It should also be noted that you completely ignored this part in your analysis.
The date that determines prior art in this case is October 30, 1997. It does not matter what order driver 1 and crazy taxi were released assuming that both were released after this date. I honestly have no idea when driver 1 and GTA 1 were released, but if it is after this date then they do not qualify as prior art.
In the infinite universe theory there would be a universe in which fox created road rage and sega didn't create crazy taxi. Given an infinite number of chances, any event will happen assuming that it does not have a probability of zero. It would just depend on what universe you decided to look at.
If you read a little further down in the patent below the filing date, you will see that the patent was a continuation of application number 41,497 which was filed on April 1, 1993.
Therefore, it would have had to be out in the open before April 1, 1992 which is well before it was availible to ISV's as far as I know.
Slashdot Mirror
Nowhere in there is a single bit of proof given which would have a remote chance of standing up in court. In order for a patent to be deemed obvious, there must be some kind of proof given.
The problem is that the patent statutes and case law do not allow a patent examiner to simply say something is obvious without dated proof to backup that statement. Without proof, it is incredibly difficult to maintain an obviousness rejected (35 USC 103) in the courts.
TiVo does not have to offer any proof that their patent is nontrivial other than the patent application. The way the system is setup, every patent is assumed to be valid unless it can be proven to be obvious or already publicly known. Show me some dated proof prior to April/July of 1998 of a video system which performs any of the actions of the independent claims of either patent. Just stating that you have seen something like it or stating that you think it is obvious is not enough to prove that a patent is obvious.
In order to show that a patent is trivial or obvious you must find dated (prior to the effective filing date) proof, either in the form of previous products availible for public sale, or in public published documents (newspapers, magazines, journals, etc..) that would show that the invention has either already been invented (35 USC 102) or would have been obvious (35 USC 103).
It does not matter if TiVo was first to market or not if they filed their patent before who ever was first to market released their product. Was the DishPlayer out before April/July 1998? If not, it doesn't matter when it was released in relation to the TiVo boxes.
The patent is for a specific implementation of fast forwarding/pausing/rewinding live tv, and is not simply for the idea of do so. If you can think of another way to do it, you are perfectly free to do so, as long as that way does not fall under the claims of the TiVo patents.
Patents are for implementations of ideas, not ideas themselves.
What keeps it from being trivial is that patents are assumed to be allowable unless they can be proven to be otherwise. The examiner did not find any evidence that this patent was nontrivial/nonobvious, and therefore it was allowed. Now, I ask you: Prove that this patent is trivial/obvious, keeping in mind that all references used must be dated prior to filing dates of the patents.
Reading the claims (Timewarp Patent), it is pretty easy to see that a VCR does not record the signal to an encoded format, and then decode the signal back into a NTSC/PAL signal before sending it to the tv. As far as I know the video out of the VCR basically works like a coaxial splitter when the VCR is recording a channel.
Unfortunately the patent statutes (35 USC 101, 102, 103 and 112) and all of the case law surrounding them do not allow a patent examiner to look at something that say, "Damn, that sure looks obvious after reading it, rejected!". In order for a claim to be rejected as being obvious the examiner must be able to point to specific material (with a provable date prior to the effective filing date of the patent application, July 30, 1998 in this case) which gives motivation or teachings that show how to alter the state of the art at that time (in 1998 that would probably be VCRs, Laserdiscs and possibly DVD) to perform the actions or to include the system which is claimed in the patent.
Whether this patent is obvious (using the definition of obviousness established by US law and US case law, not slashdots definitions of "I could have done that"), I really can't say.
The reason that Tivo is sueing is they feel that the implementation of the competing design is close enough to be covered under the scope of the claims in the patent. Infringement only requires that the actions/system of the infringing design be covered by the claims as written. The claims can be interpretated in different ways so that the design itself does not have to be exactly identical. For example, if the claim was written as: "storing the video on a digital storage device", and TiVo uses a magnetic hard drive while a competing design uses solid state media such as CF cards, the competing design would still be infringing because they are both digital storage devices. However, if it was claimed to be stored on a "magnetic media", storing the video on a DVD (optical media) would not instantly be infringing. (It should be noted that the courts could still decide that the change to optical media would still be infringment because it is an obvious variant, but then you are getting into case law which states all sorts of crazy things).
State Street Bank & Trust Co. v. Signature Financial Group, 149 F.3d 1368 (Fed. Cir. Jul. 23, 1998) is a big one concerning the patenting of business methods. I think it also has some relevance to the world of software patents as well.
Buy Vinyl
I'm not to sure how often this would actually come about. Even if such a law were put into place corporations could easily setup dummy corporations as holders for their intellectual property that would exclusively license the patents back to themselves. Then, the few workers at the dummy corp. could sit locked in a closet all day until they decide to sue someone and they could then go "find" the violation and file the lawsuit well within the time frame of first "learning" about it.
Basically this is too hard to prove and too easy to get around for anyone to take the time to pass it into law.
How do you propose to legally prove the date that the patent holder first learned of the violation?
How do you propose to prove that they know that their patent is being violated? This is a good deal harder than you may think to prove in a court of law, which is why the system is setup the way it is.
All patents are part of public record which can be viewed by anyone at anytime (on the USPTO website). There is no secrecy involved once a patent is issued.
Amazingly, during the "reading all that you can about it" you never read the actual patent. If you did you would see that the patent does not cover simply writing a "single packet" to a CD. I strongly suggest that you up your reading tolerances and get past the title next time.
You are thinking of trademark law. Patent law has no requirements for enforcement of patents.
To the best of my knowledge there is nothing in the constitution, bill of rights or US law (or the laws/founding documents of any other country) that guarantees the rights of the general public to take/use/have access to the intellectual property of others.
The arguement of the parent seems to be something along the line of: I don't see anything in this line of "reasoning" that justifies the stealing/copyright infringement of the first 1/2 of music listened to. This line of reasoning is almost along the lines of a "Two Wrongs Make a Right" fallacy. The arguement above can be written in that form, ie: Since the record companies steal from me in the form of high profit margins, it is ok to download their music instead of buying it. The parent poster just decided to add the bit about the world not ending to try to strengthen his/her already unfounded arguement.
A) You are leaving out the cost of production, marketing and shipping, all of which must be paid for by the sales of the CDs. Not to mention labor costs for all the various support staff that make the whole thing run. CDs don't just magically appear at the cost of materials alone.
B) $19-21?? (assuming typo in parent post) I don't think ive paid more than $12.99 (with most closer to the $10-11 range) for a CD ever. I suppose if you have to have your new Nelly CD along with a CD for every other song on the top 10, you might be paying that on average, but there is fairly small percentage of music which averages in the $19-21 per CD range.
C) How does any of this justify stealing? Why not steal half of the gas you use, half of the groceries you eat, half of [insert item here]??
In that case it would be the web server that is reading/writing to the local file system and not the HTML application as stated in the claim.
It is important to note that just one small part of the claim has to be new in order for the claim to be allowed. It should also be noted that you completely ignored this part in your analysis.
The date that determines prior art in this case is October 30, 1997. It does not matter what order driver 1 and crazy taxi were released assuming that both were released after this date. I honestly have no idea when driver 1 and GTA 1 were released, but if it is after this date then they do not qualify as prior art.
In the infinite universe theory there would be a universe in which fox created road rage and sega didn't create crazy taxi. Given an infinite number of chances, any event will happen assuming that it does not have a probability of zero. It would just depend on what universe you decided to look at.
ext2/3 has already been in public use for greater than one year, so by statute (35 USC 102(b)), no patent can be granted for it.
If you read a little further down in the patent below the filing date, you will see that the patent was a continuation of application number 41,497 which was filed on April 1, 1993.
Therefore, it would have had to be out in the open before April 1, 1992 which is well before it was availible to ISV's as far as I know.