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Signs point to dispute over Xbox 360 video technologies

French telecommunications company Alcatel has filed a lawsuit against Microsoft for patent infringement. Seven patents are at issue in the complaint, which are listed below:

  • 6,339,830 and 6,874,090, "Deterministic User Authentication Service for Communication Network"
  • 6,661,799, "Method And Apparatus for Facilitating Peer-to-Peer Application Communication"
  • 6,823,390, "Method Of Setting Up Data Communication With A Communication Means And Furthermore Program Modules And Means Therefor"
  • 6,112,226, "Method And Apparatus For Concurrently Encoding And Tagging Digital Information For Allowing Non-Sequential Access During Playback"
  • 5,864,682 and 5,659,539, "Method and Apparatus for Frame Accurate Access of Digital Audio-Visual Information."

The patents outline methods in processing digital video, communications software and online authentication – all of which seem quite relevant to the just launched Xbox Live Video Marketplace.

This legal quibble may also stem from a Lucent and Microsoft patent war that started in 2003, and was recently revitalized over Xbox 360 video encoding, which Microsoft eventually won. Alcatel acquired Lucent earlier this year, absorbing its entire patent portfolio with it.

"Alcatel's recent filing appears related to longstanding patent litigation between Lucent and Microsoft in U.S. District Court in San Diego, which Alcatel is inheriting as part of its merger with Lucent," said Guy Esnouf, Microsoft spokesperson, in an e-mail statement. "Alcatel filed its claims this past Friday -- the same day that its merger with Lucent was approved by the U.S. government."

An attorney representing Alcatel responded, "All I will say to you is, that's a Microsoft statement, not ours," he told Light Reading. "That's their perspective."

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I wish
By creathir on 11/23/2006 10:16:18 AM , Rating: 2
I had the money to buy the patent on every little idea that I ever had... Then maybe I too could sue someone someday...

'Tis the season for lawsuits!

- Creathir




RE: I wish
By Live on 11/23/2006 10:51:34 AM , Rating: 3
Or you could do it the Microsoft way and pay someone else to sue in your place. SCO anyone? Software patents are a bad idea and without them we could actually see these companies trying to compete with innovation instead of lawsuits.


RE: I wish
By TomZ on 11/24/2006 1:50:48 PM , Rating: 1
Software patents, while they can be abused, also afford an individual or company a reasonable level of protection for genuine inventions. If you simply eliminate software patents without putting any other system in place, the net result will be less innovation, not more.

After all, without the ability to protect their innovations, why would any individual or company choose to invest R&D to create the innovation in the first place, and second, why would they release them into the market since they know the second they do, all their competitors will simply duplicate their work. The system that exists today enables companies to create innovative work and boldly release that into the market without fear of theft and duplication of their ideas by others.

And how exactly does the existing software patent system stifle innovation? People can create whatever they want - it's just that there is a basic requirement that I can't "invent" something that someone else already has invented. What is unreasonable about that exactly? If anything, that restriction would challenge me further to work to develop an even better approach that is unique.


RE: I wish
By mindless1 on 11/25/2006 10:38:58 PM , Rating: 2
Quite untrue. Innovation is doing more, going beyond what is already done. To do that, you have to be able to build upon the past, not spending so much development time and cost essentially reinventing the wheel and do so on a common platform.

The only reason there is such extreme cost to recoup is BECAUSE of the limitations of the patents. If "all their competitors simply duplicate their work, THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT WE WANT! By doing this, FURTHER innovation occurs beyond that duplication in an effort differentiate the product. If the next product cycle allows the competition to catch up, what happens then? They innovate even more to again distinguish the product.

Software has terribly stagnated because of patents.


RE: I wish
By andrep74 on 11/24/2006 2:03:59 PM , Rating: 2
Saying that "[all] software patents are a bad idea" is a pretty bad blanket statement. When a company spends money on actual implementation or research, that money ought to be protected by people who wish to copy the results of that research. For example, MP3 encoding used to be the domain of the Fraunhofer Institute, who spent much money empirically developing the data for their filters so that the end result was that their encoding sounded "better" (to the majority of a sample population) at lower bitrates, therefore making their codec more viable marketwise.

If other companies happen to do similar research and come up with similar results (without being artificially "influenced" by a patented work to help things along) then that is what free enterprise is all about, and ought to be allowed, imho. The difficulty in this statement, however, is in proving that the patent wasn't an influence in the development of the independent work. Sometimes it's just the idea itself that greatly influences the direction of any new development. Unfortunately for consumers, the majority of trivial patents are protected by a carte-blanche attitude from the USTPO that any misrepresentation of originality by a patent applicant be decided in court, and that triviality of idea can be somehow shown by prior art (including writings).


Infringement fringe
By codeThug on 11/24/2006 9:23:11 AM , Rating: 3
"Method Of Setting Up Data Communication With A Communication Means And Furthermore Program Modules And Means Therefor"

I was thinking...

"A Method and Apparatus of Doing Some Sh*T with a Computer to Make Some Other Sh*T Happen, So's I can Sue Some D*ckheads and Make a Bunch of Money"




...
By shabby on 11/23/2006 8:29:16 PM , Rating: 2
Buy'em out boys!




Lawyer actually spoke the truth?
By lennylim on 11/24/2006 4:15:25 AM , Rating: 2
quote:
An attorney representing Alcatel responded, "All I will say to you is, that's a Microsoft statement, not ours," he told Light Reading. "That's their perspective."

Amazing. I tried different way of parsing it, and it is actually true.

Granted, not terribly informative. But true.

Next news item : hell freezes over.




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