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You seem to imply you've read the patent. Could you find the specific claims and then show us some prior art for them? Many things become "obvious" after they

by nirvana 14y ago

You seem to imply you've read the patent. Could you find the specific claims and then show us some prior art for them? Many things become "obvious" after they have entered commercial production, but are not obvious at the time they are invented. The car is obvious now, for instance. Your comment about the jury assumes there were touch interfaces 20 years ago (of a type relevant to this case.) Apple started in the 1990s, but even Jeff Han is using a completely different method. This seems to imply that you're confusing patents for a "right to sell a feature". On this site I've seen many claims that Apple's patents are covered by "prior art" but the "art" cited is generally nonsensical (eg: 2001: a space odessy having square tablets) and indicate that people think patents cover ideas or features, rather than inventions used to bring them to life. Just because the TiVo exists, does not mean that I can't, today, invent a novel method of solving similar problems to the TiVo that is legitimately patentable. TiVo's existence doesn't make patentable inventions in the same space impossible. The rotary engine was patentable even though other internal combustion engines were already on the market.

TazeTSchnitzel 14y ago
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PTXT&s1=7,352,953&OS=7,352,953&RS=7,352,953 http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sec...
- ojiikun 14y ago
  Perused the patent. As far as I can tell, this guy is a patent troll, plain and simple. The patent basically describes every DVR that geeks were building 10 years before it was filed. True, it's fancied up in exactly the sort of language that would make it sound novel to a clerk, but I can't find any particular provisions that aren't normal software/hardware operation. I have renewed hope that this could force an end result where the whole software patent system is torn apart.
georgemcbay 14y ago
> Many things become "obvious" after they have entered commercial production, but are not obvious at the time they are invented. I totally disagree. Most things are obvious to many practitioners in a field at the time they were invented and if they weren't invented by one person would be invented by another within a very short time period. This is a natural consequence of the progression of technology and "standing on the shoulders of giants". History is absolutely littered with simultanous invention of ideas by multiple people simply as a consequence of the state of knowledge when they were actively working, with things like the calculus being obvious examples. Of course, there are VERY rarely inventions where the leap made was well further than average, but those are very rare and certainly not the realm of patents like "bounce scrolling" which is obvious once you have a highly responsive touchscreen. > The car is obvious now, for instance. Who "invented" the car? Cugnot? Anderson? Benz? Daimler? Maybach? Marcus? Selden? Duryea? Basically all of the above and around the same time (at least relative to the day when the Internet didn't broadcast news instantly around the globe), because the invention of various motors small enough to be mobile made a powered transportation vehicle an obvious goal. That doesn't mean there wasn't technical invention in everyone's different methods, but "the car" was totally obvious, just like "bounce scrolling" is, except "bounce scrolling" is a worse thing to allow to be patented because there are a very limited number of mathematical ways in which you would want to model that and so now you're basically patenting a very obvious idea plus a tiny bit of math (which shouldn't be allowed).
deskamess 14y ago
From the patent number link: """ Method and apparatus for recording and storing video information April 1, 2008 A personal video recording/storage apparatus for downloading streaming video and data contents from a number of sources and storing the video files to an internal storage device, such as a disk drive. ... """ Would a video cassette recorder (VCR) fit the bill for prior art? The source in this case would be a television signal and the storage device a VHS tape. I believe the VCR predates April 1, 2008.
- msbarnett 14y ago
  You need to look at the Claims to figure out what the patent covers. The title and abstract have no legal force. And since the claims include such things as the compression algorithm being user-selectable, it's trivially obvious that a VCR is not covered.
  - deerparkwater 14y ago
    Are you trolling? A video compression algorithm being selected is not obvious? Has the patent office/this scumbag troll not heard of gnu video libs?
  - cromwellian 14y ago
    But VCRs did allow one to select SP, EP, and SLP modes, arguably a user selectable 'analog compression' setting to trade off quality for storage space. It's the idea that adding a drop down menu to select installed compression codecs constitutes the ability to differentiate something enough to make it patentable that really irritates people. Almost any modern operating system sports abstract interfaces or services which have a number of pluggable providers: compression codecs, cryptography algorithms, database drivers, input and output drivers. The idea that anytime there's more than one choice, if you simply add a user selectable feature as a claim, you can then obtain a new patent, is a very annoying feature of software patents. If every software patent currently not-expired on record was maximally enforced, the courts would meltdown, and everyone would go bankrupt from legal fees. The only way the industry has been able to avoid gridlock and continue innovation is by essentially ignoring 99.99% of all software patents. The fact that no one pays attention to them, until one is losing in the marketplace or attempting to blockade competitors indicates that the system is broken.
terminus 14y ago
> On this site I've seen many claims that Apple's patents are covered by "prior art" but the "art" cited is generally nonsensical (eg: 2001: a space odessy having square tablets) I'm curious, why is the Space Odyssey tablet "obviously nonsensical"? See for instance the Waterbed patent denied because of Henlein's writings: http://www.techrepublic.com/article/geek-trivia-strange-waterbedfellows/6098825 http://www.techrepublic.com/article/geek-trivia-strange-wate...

by nirvana 14y ago

TazeTSchnitzel 14y ago

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PTXT&s1=7,352,953&OS=7,352,953&RS=7,352,953 http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sec...

ojiikun 14y ago
Perused the patent. As far as I can tell, this guy is a patent troll, plain and simple. The patent basically describes every DVR that geeks were building 10 years before it was filed. True, it's fancied up in exactly the sort of language that would make it sound novel to a clerk, but I can't find any particular provisions that aren't normal software/hardware operation. I have renewed hope that this could force an end result where the whole software patent system is torn apart.

georgemcbay 14y ago

> Many things become "obvious" after they have entered commercial production, but are not obvious at the time they are invented. I totally disagree. Most things are obvious to many practitioners in a field at the time they were invented and if they weren't invented by one person would be invented by another within a very short time period. This is a natural consequence of the progression of technology and "standing on the shoulders of giants". History is absolutely littered with simultanous invention of ideas by multiple people simply as a consequence of the state of knowledge when they were actively working, with things like the calculus being obvious examples. Of course, there are VERY rarely inventions where the leap made was well further than average, but those are very rare and certainly not the realm of patents like "bounce scrolling" which is obvious once you have a highly responsive touchscreen. > The car is obvious now, for instance. Who "invented" the car? Cugnot? Anderson? Benz? Daimler? Maybach? Marcus? Selden? Duryea? Basically all of the above and around the same time (at least relative to the day when the Internet didn't broadcast news instantly around the globe), because the invention of various motors small enough to be mobile made a powered transportation vehicle an obvious goal. That doesn't mean there wasn't technical invention in everyone's different methods, but "the car" was totally obvious, just like "bounce scrolling" is, except "bounce scrolling" is a worse thing to allow to be patented because there are a very limited number of mathematical ways in which you would want to model that and so now you're basically patenting a very obvious idea plus a tiny bit of math (which shouldn't be allowed).

deskamess 14y ago

From the patent number link: """ Method and apparatus for recording and storing video information April 1, 2008 A personal video recording/storage apparatus for downloading streaming video and data contents from a number of sources and storing the video files to an internal storage device, such as a disk drive. ... """ Would a video cassette recorder (VCR) fit the bill for prior art? The source in this case would be a television signal and the storage device a VHS tape. I believe the VCR predates April 1, 2008.

msbarnett 14y ago
You need to look at the Claims to figure out what the patent covers. The title and abstract have no legal force. And since the claims include such things as the compression algorithm being user-selectable, it's trivially obvious that a VCR is not covered.
- deerparkwater 14y ago
  Are you trolling? A video compression algorithm being selected is not obvious? Has the patent office/this scumbag troll not heard of gnu video libs?
- cromwellian 14y ago
  But VCRs did allow one to select SP, EP, and SLP modes, arguably a user selectable 'analog compression' setting to trade off quality for storage space. It's the idea that adding a drop down menu to select installed compression codecs constitutes the ability to differentiate something enough to make it patentable that really irritates people. Almost any modern operating system sports abstract interfaces or services which have a number of pluggable providers: compression codecs, cryptography algorithms, database drivers, input and output drivers. The idea that anytime there's more than one choice, if you simply add a user selectable feature as a claim, you can then obtain a new patent, is a very annoying feature of software patents. If every software patent currently not-expired on record was maximally enforced, the courts would meltdown, and everyone would go bankrupt from legal fees. The only way the industry has been able to avoid gridlock and continue innovation is by essentially ignoring 99.99% of all software patents. The fact that no one pays attention to them, until one is losing in the marketplace or attempting to blockade competitors indicates that the system is broken.

terminus 14y ago

> On this site I've seen many claims that Apple's patents are covered by "prior art" but the "art" cited is generally nonsensical (eg: 2001: a space odessy having square tablets) I'm curious, why is the Space Odyssey tablet "obviously nonsensical"? See for instance the Waterbed patent denied because of Henlein's writings: http://www.techrepublic.com/article/geek-trivia-strange-waterbedfellows/6098825 http://www.techrepublic.com/article/geek-trivia-strange-wate...