[8470] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: Multimedia has been patented
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Tansin A. Darcos & Company)
Sat Nov 20 03:33:54 1993
Date: Sat, 20 Nov 1993 03:32:16 -0500 (EST)
From: "Tansin A. Darcos & Company" <0005066432@mcimail.com>
Reply-To: "Tansin A. Darcos & Company" <0005066432@mcimail.com>
To: Barry Shein <bzs@world.std.com>,
>From: Paul Robinson <TDARCOS@MCIMAIL.COM>
Organization: Tansin A. Darcos & Company, Silver Spring, MD USA
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> I've been following this a little. It's hard to believe what they seem
> to be claiming their patent covers but everything I've seen keeps
> pointing to "believe it".
>
> I sincerely hope, if this is as it seems, that this causes Compton's
> speedy demise as a business, and causes several people at the US
> Patent Office to be fired on the spot.
In case you have forgot, this is the business of the Patent Office
technical people and Patent Lawyers: to review the applications and
if valid, to issue them.
There are grounds to argue the patent should not be issued, such as
(1) the inventor claiming it isn't the first inventor; (2) the invention
is obvious; (3) the invention is not new; (4) the invention is more than
one year after prior publication; (5) the invention involves nuclear
weapons technology.
The fact that a patent may be very broad is a problem that used to have
to be lived with. This is one of the reasons people need to publish what
they are doing and get it on record, especially if they do not plan to
patent their development or want to prevent it from being patented.
> This is government (almost) at its worst, irresponsibly assigning
> (and intending to enforce) broad and destructive monopolies.
>
> If this doesn't make the US patent system the laughingstock of the
> world I can't imagine what would. It could be the beginning of the end
> of any respect for the US patent system, both in the US and elsewhere.
The world has two forms of patent protection; weak and strong. In Japan,
everything is published in the open, a patent can take 15 or more years,
and protection is limited. Theirs is weak protection. In the U.S.,
everything is done secretly, a patent is usually issued in 18 months to 3
years, and once issued, it covers all of the claims in the patent as issued.
Do you think your complaints about the patent system are new? Do you
know why the motion picture industry is in Los Angeles? Because the four
holders of the patents needed to make motion pictures - Edison, Daguerro,
and the other two, formed the 'Motion Picture Patents Company' to enforce
strict licensing terms. The industry that wanted to make films began
setting up shop in Los Angeles because they used bootleg equipment and
Los Angeles was a good place to do filming and is only 100 miles from the
Mexican border if a producer got caught and had to run.
Complaints over patenting of technology being a stranglehold on an
industry are not new.
The Patent number in question is 5,241,671. Has anyone on this list read
the actual text of the patent? Do any of you know how patents work? I
think that's worth a separate message.
> >According to the company, anyone selling information in a multimedia
> >format will need to pay license fees to Compton's no matter what the
> >device used to distribute multimedia. Company officials say interactive
> >television services like those announced by Time Warner and GTE,
> >graphical on-line services such as America Online and Prodigy, and
> >compact disc read-only memory (CD-ROM) title developers will all be
> >obligated to pay or face legal action.
What the company _claims_ and what the patent covers can be two different
things.
Hayes owns the '402 (that's the last 3 digits of the patent number)
Heatherington Patent covering the guard time before and after the three
character sequence is used to trigger a modem to trip to command mode.
Hayes requires modem manufacturers to submit to very serious licensing
requirements which include a stiff ($5,000) fee, a 3% license on all
product sales, AND, a royalty-free license to Hayes of ANY AND ALL PATENTS
that company may obtain. Not just communications, but ALL PATENTS
If a Pharmaceutical division of company develops a patent on a new type of
drug, and another division licenses Hayes '402 Patent on the escape time,
Hayes would have the right to use their patent and manufacture the same drug
without paying royalties.
---
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Paul Robinson - TDARCOS@MCIMAIL.COM
Voted "Largest Polluter of the (IETF) list" by Randy Bush <randy@psg.com>
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