Grex Agora47 Conference

Item 154: More Stupid Patent Tricks

Entered by gull on Wed Nov 5 16:05:29 2003:

SightSound is being allowed to go through with their lawsuit against
CDNow and N2K.  SightSound claims to hold a patent that covers the
delivery of for-pay audio and video content over the Internet.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/33782.html
12 responses total.
#1 of 12 by sj2 on Thu Nov 6 19:00:37 2003:

Eolas' patent is being challenged (thankfully) by the W3C.

#2 of 12 by goose on Mon Nov 10 15:19:54 2003:

And how does this replate to similar claims by Acacia?  (who have been sending
letters demading royalties to many small to mid sized colleges)

#3 of 12 by willcome on Thu Nov 27 08:30:13 2003:

whore.

#4 of 12 by gull on Fri Dec 5 14:48:28 2003:

Microsoft has "clarified" their licensing policy for two techologies:
Cleartype and the FAT filesystem. They're now asking for $0.25 per unit
up to $250,000 from people selling "solid state media" preformatted with
FAT, and $0.25 per unit up to $250,000 from people selling devices that
use such media.

Here's The Register's article:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/34348.html

And Microsoft's announcement:
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2003/dec03/12-03ExpandIPPR.asp

It's funny to me to see FAT being touted as some exciting and awesome thing:

"Through FAT file system technology, operating systems can identify
unused storage clusters and keep track of all file parts across the
storage medium. The result, for implementers of the technology, is rapid
identification and access to any part of a file while maximizing full
use of the storage medium."

#5 of 12 by aruba on Fri Dec 5 15:23:48 2003:

Vintage 1981 technology making a comeback.  I love it!

#6 of 12 by jp2 on Fri Dec 5 15:37:30 2003:

This response has been erased.


#7 of 12 by twenex on Fri Dec 5 16:23:04 2003:

"640K should be enough for anybody". Whatever
else you say about him, you can't fault Bill's
sense of humour, as #4 proves.

#8 of 12 by jp2 on Fri Dec 5 16:41:03 2003:

This response has been erased.


#9 of 12 by gull on Wed Dec 17 14:58:36 2003:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/63/34550.html

Optima has sued Roxio for violating a 1995 patent on a particular method
of CD burning:

'Optima's claim centres on a patent the company filed by the company in
1995 and granted two years later. The patent, number 5,666,531, details
a "recordable CD-ROM accessing system".

'Essentially, it describes the technique used by many CD burning apps
and utilities of creating an image of the disc in memory or on the hard
drive which appears to the user as a CD. The virtual CD's contents can
be updated at will, until the user is ready to burn the contents onto
the disc, at which point the information can no longer be changed.

'Software released by Optima in 1995 utilised this technique, which it
says ended the need to pre-plan how and where to burn data directly to
the CD.'

Optima's attorney is quoted as saying, "Optima believes most every
company in the CD burner industry may be infringing."

This is the classic "submarine patent" scheme -- you quietly patent
something, wait for others to make it popular and profitable, then sue
them all for royalties.

#10 of 12 by tod on Wed Dec 17 20:07:27 2003:

This response has been erased.


#11 of 12 by gull on Thu Dec 18 14:48:58 2003:

But is it ethical?

#12 of 12 by jmsaul on Thu Dec 18 23:42:53 2003:

No, and it isn't what patents were designed for.

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