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Streaming Patent Buoys RealNetworks 133

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the duct-tape-and-baling-wire dept.
rishimathew writes writes to tell us The New York Times is reporting that RealNetworks recently received a patent for a specific way to stream multimedia content over the internet. From the article: "The patent, which is described as being for a 'multimedia communications system and method for providing audio on demand to subscribers' (No. 6,985,932), describes the idea of permitting a PC user to play back audio, video and other information on a PC. RealNetworks executives said the technology was distinguished from other similar systems by the fact that it permitted "intelligent" streaming of data in potentially congested networks."
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Streaming Patent Buoys RealNetworks More

Streaming Patent Buoys RealNetworks

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  • Vague? (Score:3, Funny)

    by pembo13 ( 770295 ) on Monday April 24, 2006 @06:07PM (#15193198) Homepage
    Are such vague terms as 'intelligent' really allowed in Patent Lawyer speak?
    • The intelligent refers to the "Buffering" statement.

    • Re:Vague? Only at NYT (Score:5, Informative)

      by xiando ( 770382 ) on Monday April 24, 2006 @06:30PM (#15193318) Homepage Journal
      "Abstract

      An audio-on-demand communication system provides real-time playback of audio data transferred via telephone lines or other communication links. One or more audio servers include memory banks which store compressed audio data. At the request of a user at a subscriber PC, an audio server transmits the compressed audio data over the communication link to the subscriber PC. The subscriber PC receives and decompresses the transmitted audio data in less than real-time using only the processing power of the CPU within the subscriber PC. According to one aspect of the present invention, high quality audio data compressed according to lossless compression techniques is transmitted together with normal quality audio data. According to another aspect of the present invention, metadata, or extra data, such as text, captions, still images, etc., is transmitted with audio data and is simultaneously displayed with corresponding audio data. The audio-on-demand system also provides a table of contents indicating significant divisions in the audio clip to be played and allows the user immediate access to audio data at the listed divisions. According to a further aspect of the present invention, servers and subscriber PCs are dynamically allocated based upon geographic location to provide the highest possible quality in the communication link." http://patft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=P TO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch- bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PTXT&s1=6985932&O S=6985932&RS=6985932 [uspto.gov] The term 'intelligent' is no where to be found in the text of the actual patent, that's just the term RealNetworks used to explain how the program which apparently does little but show the fancy text message "Buffering" works.
      • I no longer work in that area but I remember seing some very similar stuff back around 1998 (multiple data qualities in the same stream, although it was for adio *and* video at the time)... I didn't see anything new in what's described above.

        Without any extra details, I'll assume that as usual the patent was awarded without any consideration for prior art.
    • They do, but you actually have to read the patent and the claim to figure out what they are talking about instead of relying on a short summary from slashdot.

    • Re:Vague? (Score:4, Funny)

      by NitsujTPU ( 19263 ) on Monday April 24, 2006 @06:54PM (#15193445)
      Intelligent actually means something, the problem is, it's overused.

      IE, your clock radio syncing up to GMT is not "intelligent," your clock radio figuring out where your hand will be when you try to hit the snooze alarm, and walking out of the way so you don't hit it, is intelligent.
      • I guess an alarm clock that runs away from you while beeping will be certain to wake you up precisely when you set the alarm. Or you could be like my old roommate and just sleep through the beeps too. :(
        • Maybe you could make it unintelligent enough that it still runs into a wall eventually, shattering itself.

          Also, make it very expensive, so the owner feels compelled to catch it before it self destructs.

  • Patents stink (Score:5, Informative)

    by LiquidCoooled ( 634315 ) on Monday April 24, 2006 @06:07PM (#15193200) Homepage Journal
    How the hell can the patent office survive for so much longer?

    This Real patent is just stupid "Click to stream", I'm actually wondering whether its announcement comes on the back of the changes Microsoft made to force people to click to activate?

    They should be bouyed up by the yellow stream coming out of every web developers *censored* as they piss all over them with newer improved methods for getting the data across.

    On that score, does anyone know which sites use Helix so I can blacklist them? (hosts format would be nice ;))

    The article also mentions that Real shouldn't even have it anyway:

    The new patent is known as a continuation patent, with additional claims based on an original filing in November 1994. One of the challenges that will confront RealNetworks in enforcing the patent is an earlier one owned by Apple Computer. Apple applied for a patent related to its QuickTime technology for streaming media in May 1994, before RealNetworks' first filing. The Apple patent, No. 5,561,670, for "method and apparatus for operating a multicast system on an unreliable network," was issued in October 1996. It appears the patent office examiners did not consider it in their evaluation of the RealNetworks patent.

    grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

    • Re:Patents stink (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Actually, RealNetworks has given a lot to the industry and have used their streaming technol

      Buffering...

    • Re:Patents stink (Score:3, Informative)

      by Psykosys ( 667390 )
      The article's point wasn't that the patent shouldn't necessarily have been granted, just that the Patent Office should have considered prior art as a factor in its decision. Real's actual patent application seems to be fairly specific, pointing to the format's inclusion of metadata, and, more importantly, lossless audio sent out simultaneously to the lossy, to be used only when enough has been buffered. I don't think Quicktime adopted the same solution.
      • So you're saying that not stripping the ID3 tags makes it different?
        • Umm:
          and, more importantly, lossless audio sent out simultaneously to the lossy, to be used only when enough has been buffered. I don't think Quicktime adopted the same solution.

      • Re:Patents stink (Score:4, Informative)

        by mpe ( 36238 ) on Tuesday April 25, 2006 @08:25AM (#15195742)
        The article's point wasn't that the patent shouldn't necessarily have been granted, just that the Patent Office should have considered prior art as a factor in its decision.

        The US Patent Office appears to have a specific method for finding "prior art". Which whilst it often results in false negatives, AFAIK, never results in false positives.
    • This Real patent is just stupid "Click to stream", I'm actually wondering whether its announcement comes on the back of the changes Microsoft made to force people to click to activate?

      Don't worry if Real comes after Microsoft, they can just make IE "double click to stream".

    • It appears the patent office examiners did not consider it in their evaluation of the RealNetworks patent.

      That's because they can't, and they shouldn't. We don't do first-to-file here, we do first-to-invent. It's not a Patent Office examiner's job to work out who first reduced an invention to practice, who conceived it first, or who was dillegent in working on it, nor should it be. That takes a jury.

      I just don't think it's reasonable to have expected the Patent Office (in 1994) to be able to even full

  • OOH OOH! (Score:2, Interesting)

    by TheJediGeek ( 903350 )
    Does this mean that I can patent other common internet technologies by saying that mine does it "intelligently"?

    I think I'll patent instant messaging by saying that my technology "intelligently" transfers text back and forth...

  • Yet More Patent Abuse. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by TooMuchEspressoGuy ( 763203 ) on Monday April 24, 2006 @06:09PM (#15193210)
    "The patent, which is described as being for a 'multimedia communications system and method for providing audio on demand to subscribers' (No. 6,985,932), describes the idea of permitting a PC user to play back audio, video and other information on a PC. RealNetworks executives said the technology was distinguished from other similar systems by the fact that it permitted "intelligent" streaming of data in potentially congested networks."

    What do you want to bet that RealNetworks is going to use this patent to sue anyone else who develops an "intelligent" method of streaming data?

    • They can of course use it against Microsoft windows media division. A division invented NOTHING (yes, everything you see are licensed/acquired) and tried to drive the real inventors like real networks/apple quicktime out of business using Windows monopoly.

      These are my words with bad grammar but they are based on facts found by EU court.

      I hope the real reason behind this patent is that. Against "windows media 11 with intellisense technology". "The great invention you can download with 1 click in Vista".

      Real
    • What do you want to bet that RealNetworks is going to use this patent to sue anyone else who develops an "intelligent" method of streaming data?

      It won't bother me, because my patent I'm about to file is about a brilliant method of streaming data. :-)

      Cheers,
      Scott
    • No worries, we can just name our method differently like "bonehead data streaming" or "dumbass multimedia packet routing"
    • They'll drive more people to podcasting. Yay!

      They'll also try to squeeze the telcos who are trying to keep us on their 'sit the fuck down spot on seven and watch what ever crap we can scare up cheap to feed you' schedule.

      Podcasting, RSS and podcatching are like TiVO on steroids with some feed back ability to boot.

      They say 'screw you' to the telcos who are trying to get everybody to pay extra for what is now 'dark fiber' buried under the ground.

      Remember GlobalCrossing?

      What happened to all the fibre they laid
    • we will just have to label all our new stuff dumb streaming.. so that it multi casts the packets to the client and to real's servers

      if everyone did this they might stop this crap as it eats their servers to peices

  • I think (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 24, 2006 @06:11PM (#15193223)
    I think they patented the "fallback" scheme of streaming server/client.

    When your network goes havoc the 128kbit realaudio/video falls down to 96kbit first, than 64kbit etc. The trick is it also somehow "senses" the network lag has been fixed and it goes back to the normal level.

    That is half of the reason why on movie trailer sites you see multiple stream rates for windows media and one stream link (unified) for real media. The other reason is the "layered" way of doing things in realmedia. A single file can have multiple bitrates.

    These are things they invented or not, I don't really care. I don't also like the "patenting" of such things. There should be a way to make it free for opensource community implementing and not to Microsoft.

    Helix open source leg can do it?

    As I got my lesson from last time, posting as AC. Sorry :)

    • Re:I think (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ScrewMaster ( 602015 ) on Monday April 24, 2006 @06:21PM (#15193276)
      This is ridiculous. Modems have have had fall back and fall forward for years, by "intelligently" sensing line conditions and adjusting automatically for maximum throughput. This is hardly "novel". Has anyone actually seen a truly novel patent recently? I'd just like to know that people are still filing them.
      • But for modems, once you are connected at 9600bps, you stay connected at 9600bps - the modem doesn't realise that it can reconnect at 28.8K and drop your active connection. THAT would be very very annoying.
        • Modems have the capability to retrain [modemhelp.net], which lets them renegotiate the line speed mid-connection in response to line conditions. It doesn't drop carrier, but it does cause a few second pause in traffic.
        • No, later generation modems have fall-forward, it will bump the speed up if line conditions improve. That's been the case for a long time, actually.
      • Has anyone actually seen a truly novel patent recently? I'd just like to know that people are still filing them.

        My patent for cold fusion is novel... but that was before the oil companies paid me to supress it.

      • Re:I think (Score:3, Funny)

        by Aceticon ( 140883 )
        Aceticon's formula to come up with a patent that gets accepted by the USPTO:
        1) Choose one or more data transport related verb: "sending", "receiving", "delivering", "reading", "transmiting"
        2) Add a generic data format name (eg, "video", "audio", "text") or if all are taken a more specific one (eg "stock quotes", "tv clips")
        3) Add a data transport type name (eg "wireless", "internet")
        4) Optionally add a transport timing name (eg "asynchronous", "on request", "real-time")
        5) Mix it all up with some patentish w
    • free for opensource community implementing and not to Microsoft.

      GPL v4: Free for Operating Systems that have the source code made publically available to all.

      Moglen, Stallman, you listening? I'm available for consulting work. 2000 of your "US dollars" per day. Oh, and a day is 5 of your so-called "Earth hours". And you buy lunch.

    • These are things they invented or not, I don't really care. I don't also like the "patenting" of such things. There should be a way to make it free for opensource community implementing and not to Microsoft.

      Patent it yourself and allow it to the OSS folks but not to Microsoft?
      Release it under your own license that says it can only be used for non-commercial activities?

      Of course these require you to come up with the idea before someone beats you to it.

    • Re:I think (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Alkrun ( 960306 )
      "There should be a way to make it free for opensource community implementing and not to Microsoft."

      There is a way. If the patent holder decides to license their technology for free to OSS then there you go. But it sounds like you're saying "I didn't invent this (I think it'll be argued that neither did Real Networks), but I like Open-Source software so there should be some form of exemption for OSS to ignore patents." Replace OSS with "huge corporate monopolies" and you could be a flack for Microsoft. I

    • Ogg Vorbis Bitrate Peeling (Score:5, Informative)

      by fossa ( 212602 ) <pat7.gmx@net> on Monday April 24, 2006 @06:52PM (#15193425) Journal

      Ogg Vorbis supports bitrate peeling [wikipedia.org], but it is not currently implemented. Apparently RealNetwork's SureStream encodes a given file at multiple bitrates resulting in a fat file, while bitrate peeling only needs a single encoding. Real's patent appears to be on the streaming logic to actually switch bitrate though, not the storage of bits in a file.

    • When your network goes havoc the 128kbit realaudio/video falls down to 96kbit first, than 64kbit etc. The trick is it also somehow "senses" the network lag has been fixed and it goes back to the normal level.

      Anyone familiar with both TCP and media codecs knows that this is trivial.

    • No. (Score:1)

      by ickypoo ( 568859 )
      Wrong. RealMedia encoding allows for multiple targetted audiences/bitrates in the same file. Loading up the RTSP stream informs the streaming server what your "ideal" bitrate is, and the server delivers the appropriate content to you. That's it. There is no dynamic recompression, no dynamic lag compensation, nothing. In fact, the "ideal bitrate" that the streaming server 'determines' is actually just something the user sets in the client preferences.

      Don't think of Real's streaming model as anything mor

  • Oh, boy. (Score:4, Funny)

    by phillymjs ( 234426 ) <slashdot@stanTWAINgo.org minus author> on Monday April 24, 2006 @06:13PM (#15193241) Homepage Journal
    Cue an avalanche of "Buffering..." jokes in 3... 2... 1...

    ~Philly

  • Real or Relevant? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Eberlin ( 570874 ) on Monday April 24, 2006 @06:14PM (#15193247) Homepage
    By Intelligent streaming, they mean it'll take over your machine and feed you adware AFTER getting the run-around on how to download the free version and signing away your firstborn, that is.

    Am I bitter? Yeah. Real was fairly innovative in the day and though Media Player had its part in shrinking the marketshare, it wasn't like Real didn't get pushy and lamer after a while. How's that OSS deal they had (was it helixcode?) going nowadays anyway?

    In other news, I wouldn't be surprised if the patent actually pertains to a streaming download occasionally interrupted by the word "Buffering" followed by 3 ellipses.
    • Surely you mean one ellipsis.........
    • I think it is time to stop bashing a company for mistakes it has made a while ago. They are trying to correct their mistakes. The free version of their player is easily available from their home page now. If you want more information about Real's Helix efforts, go here [helixcommunity.org]

      . The fact that you continue to be bitter about something that no longer possibly is true is sad. You may go ahead and flame me now.

  • WTF is streaming exactly? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    There was me thinking TCP/IP already had flow control and packet prioritization. Let's call a spade a spade here, digital media is just data and traffic shaping has been around for years. What do Real think they have a patent on exactly and can I interest them in a bridge?

    • What do Real think they have a patent on exactly [ ... ]

      If you really want to know, why don't you read the patent?

      If you do so, you'll have the rare privilege of finding that (for example) the claims that this is about fallback and/or buffering, and complete nonsense! The statements about buffering at least have a minimal defense -- as you'd expect in describing a streaming system, the patent claims do mention the client system having buffers -- though even there it's a bit more restrictive than wou

    • Offer your bridge to the patent office, not Real. They'll buy anything!

  • They patented static text? (Score:3, Funny)

    by thallgren ( 122316 ) on Monday April 24, 2006 @06:19PM (#15193267)
    So basically they patented a GUI with static text saying "Buffering..."? :-)
  • Must be the cheer from all these tech firms. I know I'll get flamed by people working at the patent office, but quite frankly, if anyone works there and is not pissed off over what's going on and/or doesn't have any knowledge about whoever is obviously recieving kickbacks there they obviously qualify as idiots.

    Oh well, good thing prior art for this is fucking everywhere.
  • RealNetworks executives said the technology was distinguished from other similar systems by the fact that it permitted "intelligent" streaming of data in potentially congested networks."

    So, the way I read this, and company flacks have made statements that support it, is that as long as you're not using their exact method, which is "intelligent", you're OK.

    OSS Coders, Start working on super-ingenious streaming video methods!

  • Real Alternative & Media Player Classic (Score:4, Informative)

    by citking ( 551907 ) <jay.citking@net> on Monday April 24, 2006 @06:32PM (#15193331) Homepage
    Before I found Real Alternative [free-codecs.com] and its necessary companion Media Player Classic [sourceforge.net] I stayed far, far away from anything that used Real Player. I didn't want messages about Brittney Spears in my system tray, I didn't want to click 4 different links to bypass their premium player, and I certainly shied away from the massive load time.

    I found out about it only after Click and Clack [cartalk.com] switched back to Real Player's format [cartalk.com] after having temporarily using Windows Media Player. Their reasoning was similar to mine; many older folks were having trouble locating the free Real Player. Despite the fact that Tom and Rau were able to make nice with Real Networks, I was never able to. But, thanks to my friend Sean, I shall never have to go through 4 different option menus to disable a message center again.

    Besides, the Real Alternative codec seems better able to stream than Real's own player software. I assume the codec is just the "guts" of the player with no fluff...perhaps all of the extra system resources are being used by, oh, the message center checking on the latest dirt about TomKat or something.
    • Besides, the Real Alternative codec seems better able to stream than Real's own player software. I assume the codec is just the "guts" of the player with no fluff..

      You are getting confused. A CODEC is not a player. Your software is reading the same CODEC. obviously. The application may be better, but how can it change the CODEC used by sites that deploy Real media stuff?

      • Err, you nbeed to update your knowledge. CO-DEC. COder, DECoder. you need one at each end. As long as the data comes to you in a known formate (real) then you can feel free to use whatever codec you like at either end. The Real codec and the Real Alternative codec both DECode the same data when used in a player on a PC, but the Real Alternative is codec is not restricted to use within Real Player, so any media player can use it, like Windows Media Player, Media Player Classic, VLC, mplayer, whatever. It

  • Dammit.... (Score:4, Funny)

    by shr3k ( 451065 ) on Monday April 24, 2006 @07:02PM (#15193477) Homepage
    "RealNetworks executives said the technology was distinguished from other similar systems by the fact that it permitted 'intelligent' streaming of data in potentially congested networks."

    Dammit! I just got finished patenting all the stupid ways of doing it...
  • "The patent, which is described as being for a 'multimedia communications Buffering... Buffering... Buffering... system and method for providing audio on demand to subscribers' (No. 6,985,932), describes Buffering... Buffering...

    Streaming of patent description closed due to network congestion. Please try to file your patent again later.

  • Real gets streaming patent, includes with FOSS Lic (Score:4, Informative)

    by kforeman ( 596891 ) * on Monday April 24, 2006 @07:26PM (#15193581)
    Great news for Linux and open source developers. Today Real announced it has added a fundamental patent for certain streaming media technology to its portfolio of patented innovations in digital media AND is automatically licensing the patented technology via its OSI-certified open source license for Helix DNA software, as Real has done with its other digital media patents embodied within Helix DNA Software. The recently-issued "Click-to-Stream" patent (U.S. Patent No. 6,985,932) covers the core methods used when a user selects a link to stream audio-visual content. The patent covers Real's groundbreaking technology innovations dating back to November 1994, four months before the introduction of RealAudio, which forever changed the Web by bringing streaming audio to the Internet for the first time. Real is indeed serious about open source software.

    Click-to-Stream joins the portfolio of over 35 patents related to digital media, many that are available to Helix DNA Software licensees. As many of you know, over 50 commercial and open source companies, including Nokia, Linspire, Motorola, Novell, Real, Red Hat, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Sun Microsystems, Trolltech and Xandros, have licensed Helix DNA software and its patented technology to build media-enabled products.

    So what about the GPL license you ask? Yes, the Helix DNA Client (the FOSS media framework which supports any format and any operating system) is licensed under the GPL license. And what about patents under the GPL? As you may know, the proposed draft 3.0 of GPL contains an express patent license, whereas the current version of GPL being used by Real (version 2.0) does not contain a patent license. There is broad and public discussion about whether and to what extent an implicit patent license is or is not granted under the GPL, and if so, what the scope of such a license would be. Real's concerns regarding the uncertain nature of such an implied license has led Real to expressly disclaim any implied patent license under its GPL license grant, and to encourage Open Source developers who desire an express patent license from Real to take a license from Real under the RealNetworks Public Source License. For those who nevertheless prefer to use the code under the GPL, we assure you that Real has no plans to pursue any abiding GPL licensee of the Helix DNA Client software - We fully encourage open source software innovation and the collaboration among our licensees.

    Here is the actual announcement: http://www.realnetworks.com/company/press/releases [realnetworks.com]

    Here is the licensing FAQ https://helixcommunity.org/content/faq-licenses [helixcommunity.org]

    Kevin Foreman,
    GM, Real

    • Re:Real gets streaming patent, includes with FOSS (Score:5, Informative)

      by mikiN ( 75494 ) on Monday April 24, 2006 @09:22PM (#15194059)
      The patent covers Real's groundbreaking technology innovations dating back to November 1994, four months before the introduction of RealAudio, which forever changed the Web by bringing streaming audio to the Internet for the first time.

      Not to be rude, as you may fool some younger Slashdotters, but not me. Fact is, there were streaming audio solutions on the Internet well before 1994. How do I know? Well, I took part in the development of one of them, and helped with the porting effort of several others.

      I'll keep the list of examples short and sweet, others may add as they please.

      AudioFile [mit.edu]
      The Network Audio System (NAS) [radscan.com]

      Note: These systems, as were several others, were OSS right from the start.

      • Re:Real gets streaming patent, includes with FOSS (Score:4, Interesting)

        by hotdiggitydawg ( 881316 ) on Monday April 24, 2006 @09:44PM (#15194135)
        Good point. From the NAS Documentation:

        In a client/server architecture, network transfer delays can cometimes make the arrival of data less predictable than if it were coming from a physical device. This can result in underruns (data not arriving in time) or overruns (more data arriving than there is room for) if the delays are sufficiently large. If an underrun or overrun occurs, the affected element is "Paused" until more data or space becomes available. To avoid pauses, applications can control the amount of data that is kept for each input and output element and can request notices whenever an input begins to run out of data or an output has to buffer up too much data.

        How does that fail to qualify as prior art?

    • Red herring. The codecs are still restricted (Score:4, Informative)

      by Björn Stenberg ( 32494 ) on Tuesday April 25, 2006 @05:54AM (#15195336) Homepage
      So what about the GPL license you ask? Yes, the Helix DNA Client (the FOSS media framework which supports any format and any operating system) is licensed under the GPL license.

      Sure it is, but none of the codecs are. So it's 100% worthless.

      There are zillions of "frameworks" avalailable already. It's the codecs we need, and Real still requires their commercial license for those.

    • sounds good, but over 10 years of realnetworks has taught me to know you guys are bullshit. You have inferior products that define nagware and a malicious team of lawyers.

      Does anyone else remember the opt in list of crapware with real player where the list of checkbox options scrolls.. All of the options in view are unchecked, but if you scroll down the rest are all checked, so users just click next and "opt in" to install a ton of crapware. Everything they ever do reeks of stuff like this.

      Real will
    • For those who nevertheless prefer to use the code under the GPL, we assure you that Real has no plans to pursue any abiding GPL licensee of the Helix DNA Client software

      Why should the community trust the good intentions of Real?

      The point is that independent software developers should not be subject to the "goodwill" of predatory corporations.

      Do people really still not get this? Or are these bland assurances as deceitful as they appear?

      In case you're still not getting it...

      What happens when Real decides it d
  • This is great and all for them, but it doesn't change the fact that they still suck on quality. Windows Media Player may be produced by the Evil Empire, but it's still head and shoulders above Real.
    • Windows Media Player may be produced by the Evil Empire, but it's still head and shoulders above Real.

      The fact that you're about the zillionth person I've heard say this makes me finally break down and say "Wuhhh?"

      I've never had anything but terrible experiences with WMV. Skipping in a local file entails ~30 seconds of waiting for the video to catch back up while I look at a still frame of pr0n -- it's instant in Real. Skipping streaming video, as far as I can tell, isn't even possible with WMV. The cont
  • I need to patent a system whereby I collect money from people intelligently. If they have more money than I do, I'll intellegently collect it from them. They can even stream me money directly to my bank account!

    Big bucks here I come!
  • This patent is a streaming pile of crap.

  • Um... (Score:2, Funny)

    by alerante ( 781942 )
    Am I the only one that read "Streaming Patent Buys RealNetworks" and thought, Yeah, I think the patent system needs some serious reform?

  • possible prior art (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The vat/vic audio/video conferencing projects at Lawrence Berkeley Nat'l Labs during the 1990s led by Steve McCanne et. al., used adaptive compression schemes for real time conferencing over IP multicast networks (the MBone).

    Here's a 1996 paper [ucsd.edu].
  • When the public reaction to "entity X was awarded a patent" is "oh shit...", isn't it about time something is friggin done about it?

    We're sitting here discussing how bad it really is, but the politicians in charge of it do nothing... Something's really broken in the process isn't it.

  • F'ing great (Score:2, Informative)

    by dspisak ( 257340 )
    Now RealNetwork's owns a patent on the "Buffering...." nonsense. [dreamdawn.com]

    I can just imagine folks the world over will be beating on their door to license such wonderfully working software!

    Or people could just do MPEG-4 or Quicktime streaming and never have to deal with the unending stream of "BUffering...." seen in almost any Real Networks product.

    • Quicktime is the same thing - just like wmv3...
      • Yes but the buffering in Quicktime actually works! Whereas in any product from Real all too often you'd see that damn "Buffering..." message forever with no video starting up or worse it would start for a few seconds and then go right back to "Buffering"!
  • if hollywood didn't publish it's movie trailers in the quicktime and real formats then these formats were dead... but why do they do that? because they are just n00bs that have no clue how to save them in different formats on their mac?

    I don't think so...
    but why do they force people to use these properitary software players? (I just say "you want fullscreen? that costs 30$" thank you, apple) first of all this does NOT prevent the trailers from being downloaded, but I guess thats what they think...
    but w
    • I've usually been able to download any trailer, by following this method:

      Go to the site the trailer lives on, view source, and do a search on "mov". The filename usually won't be the first term (since it'll usually have the word "movie" on the site in several places).

      Then, once you've found the URL, go to a console window (either a shell in Linux or a cygwin shell in Windows), and type in "wget [URL]" - you can copy and paste the URL in to the text window (middle click on X, right click on cygwin).

      Once

  • the concept of 'intelligence' can not be bundled together with various other stuff and be grounds for a copyright. Real has to define clear methods that has never been used or copyrighted before. They are putting forward vague concepts to get a copyright to create an income from streaming. Another bad joke made to people of the net.
  • Control-Alt-Delete is mine! I patented it just yesterday. (Bless you, Patent Office.)

    Now, everyone who has ever used it, pay up! (Oh, and that would be a payment--10 cents US)--for each individual time it was used.)

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