[quote author=“sleepygeek”]Yes, Lang was a pioneer of digital and network transmission of media. But being a pioneer, and having had a harder task than those who followed, does not mean that you employed novel and un-obvious techniques, whether you’re transmitting video digitally, or climbing Mount Everest.

I suspect Burst were not going to win, and knew it. Apple simply didn’t need to fight it to the end, and in fact, just like Microsoft, are better off leaving the obstacle in place for those who follow.

Unfortunately, what Burst, Microsoft or Apple deserve is not relevant in law or business.

I suspect the issue was actual $$$ after expenses (lawyer fees).  Some reports say that Burst only received $4.6 million after expenses. A few more years and it could be close to $0.  Something is better than nothing.

[quote author=“mtdoc”]FWIW -  BRST vs AAPL The Real Story:

Of course - thankfully,  IMO AAPL dodged a big bullet

Does the settlement include rights to things like 7,272,298, in addition to
bogus items like the ‘995 patent:

http://www.google.com/patents?vid=USPAT4963995

and ‘298:

http://www.google.com/patents?id=ye6BAAAAEBAJ&dq=inassignee:burst&as_drrb_ap=q&as_minm_ap=1&as_miny_ap=2007&as_maxm_ap=1&as_maxy_ap=2007&as_drrb_is=q&as_minm_is=1&as_miny_is=2007&as_maxm_is=1&as_maxy_is=2007

Although dodging the bullet of having a jury possibly interpret
the dual-deck VCR pictured in ‘995 as road-blocking AppleTV, iPod, etc.,
I’m wondering if this troll business is really finished.

I.e. the settlement wording:

“Apple agreed to pay Burst a one-time payment of $10 million cash in
exchange for a non-exclusive license to Burst’s patent portfolio, not
including one issued U.S. patent and 3 pending U.S. patent applications
related to new DVR technology. Burst agreed not to sue Apple for any
future infringement of the DVR patent and any patents that might issue
from the pending DVR-related applications.”

initially appears to *not* cover ‘298 (“not including one issued patent”),
but then appears to protect Apple where it counts (“agrees not to sue for
any future infringement”).

Why would Apple take a license with this kind of caveat—are they open
to “past infringement” (say dating from the Sept. 18 issue date until now)
which might require a separate negotiation for payment, but not lawsuit?

[quote author=“retiarius”]Although dodging the bullet of having a jury possibly interpret
the dual-deck VCR pictured in ‘995 as road-blocking AppleTV, iPod, etc.,
I’m wondering if this troll business is really finished.

The statement above shows a lack of understanding of the 995 patent (not to mention the others) and suggests that you’ve not taken the time to research the technological issues involved (I apologize if I’m wrong on this - just my take from your post).

I sense you’ve no real interest in an objective evaluation but if by chance you do have a real interest in the subject, I suggest you start HERE

Once you’re read through these (as I have) - PM me if interested in discussing the issues.

[quote author=“retiarius”]
“Apple agreed to pay Burst a one-time payment of $10 million cash in
exchange for a non-exclusive license to Burst’s patent portfolio, not
including one issued U.S. patent and 3 pending U.S. patent applications
related to new DVR technology. Burst agreed not to sue Apple for any
future infringement of the DVR patent and any patents that might issue
from the pending DVR-related applications.”

initially appears to *not* cover ‘298 (“not including one issued patent”),
but then appears to protect Apple where it counts (“agrees not to sue for
any future infringement”).

Why would Apple take a license with this kind of caveat—are they open
to “past infringement” (say dating from the Sept. 18 issue date until now)
which might require a separate negotiation for payment, but not lawsuit?

This is a good question.

Interestingly,  the intial press release was pulled from the Burst website today.

This whole story has had so many twists and turns - quite a soap opera really -and it’s been quite entertaining for those that follow it.

I suspect it will all evaporate quickly though - I’ll have to be satisfied by my entertaining AAPL profits.

[quote author=“retiarius”]
“Apple agreed to pay Burst a one-time payment of $10 million cash in
exchange for a non-exclusive license to Burst’s patent portfolio, not
including one issued U.S. patent and 3 pending U.S. patent applications
related to new DVR technology. Burst agreed not to sue Apple for any
future infringement of the DVR patent and any patents that might issue
from the pending DVR-related applications.”

So I guess this is why lawyers get the big bucks.

Apple doesn’t get the license to the 4 DVR technology patents, but Burst agrees nevertheless not to sue for any future infringement of those patents.

I guess they could look at that as a moral victory.

You have my sympathy, mtdoc. My first stock purchase was Rodime (formed by ex Burroughs people to build the first 3.5” hard disk), who had a patent without which it was virtually impossible to make a 3.5” hard disk drive. Like Burst, their own product became uncompetitive, and they became a pure IP licensing company. Like Burst, they solved certain non-trivial problems to make 3.5” drives work. IBM and others settled, but Seagate finally managed to get the patent squashed after several years, and I lost half of my investment/gamble.

The end of the story was that Rodime’s extensive tax losses were used to offset the gains of a family gambling business (Littlewoods Pools) at the same time as gaining a stock market listing for it, creating Sportech PLC . ( SPO.L ).

Rodime were also the first company to seriously piss off SJ. They made the HD20 and HD20SC for Apple, and went into competition with a similar own-brand product.

Thanks SG - I appreciate it.

It’s really no big deal though - I always just assumed my BRST shares would be a bust even though I hoped for the best (a big BRST settlement and no significant effect on the price of AAPL).

Once in a while you’ve got to take a shot.

Here’s Cringley’s take on the latest developments

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

[ if by chance you do have a real interest in the subject, I suggest you start HERE

Yes, I’ve read ‘995 nearly claim-by-claim, and have no problem
(as did Apple) with the Wicker declaration at:

http://burstingsquidoo.com/show_case_doc126.pdf

Although I’ve commented on this elsewhere (http://www.investorvillage.com
within BRST), having done early work in audio compression (mid-1970s)
I fit well the category of a “person of ordinary skill in the art”.
Both Lang’s and Apple’s QuickTime work were largely anticipated
years prior, by mere grad students such as myself.
Some folks believe in patenting the obvious (or at least
“obvious-to-try”, an ancient doctrine), and some don’t.

retiarius, four posts in over six years. Please come by the AFB more often.

[quote author=“retiarius”]Yes, I’ve read ‘995 nearly claim-by-claim, and have no problem
(as did Apple) with the Wicker declaration at:

http://burstingsquidoo.com/show_case_doc126.pdf

Although I’ve commented on this elsewhere (http://www.investorvillage.com
within BRST), having done early work in audio compression (mid-1970s)
I fit well the category of a “person of ordinary skill in the art”.
Both Lang’s and Apple’s QuickTime work were largely anticipated
years prior, by mere grad students such as myself.
Some folks believe in patenting the obvious (or at least
“obvious-to-try”, an ancient doctrine), and some don’t.

I see. Sorry to doubt your technical expertise.

I’m curious though.  Given your technical expertise, why would you refer to ‘995 as a “dual deck VCR” patent then since clearly it is not and only even mentions “dual deck VCRs” as an example of prior art?  I guess I’m suspect of anyone who misrepresents facts like that. 

And why would you refer to Burst as a patent troll unless you have some agenda?

I’m not trying to raise a ruckus here -just pointing out why your original post led me to think you might not have an educated, objective take on the topic.

Yes,  the Wicker declaration is fine -  but did little to address the BRST inventions. BRST never claimed to invent or patent compression, storage or transmissoin of digital data. The Wicker declaration was relied on little by AAPL, was hardly contested by BRST and really added little to the case.

If BRSTs technology was so obvious, why did it take MSFT, REAL and AAPL 10 yrs to adopt it? Why was streaming media so spotty all throughout the 90s - (irregardless of bandwidth issues) ? 

Just because one can anticipate, based on current technolgy that something can and will be done - does not mean one can actually make it happen and is not the legal standard even in the current post - KSR climate. If it was there would be little left to patent and most IP would be worthless (goodbye iPhone patents).

BTW as a grad student in Neurobiology in the 80s, my friends and I anticipated many of the neuro-drugs that were later produced.  That doesn’t mean I doubt the work, creativity, or invention needed to actually produce and patent such drugs.  It’s the difference between understanding the building blocks and being diligent and creative enough to combine them into an actual product.

In any case -no point in us trying to rehash the many issues - that teams of lawyers, expert testimony, and a federal judge have already addressed.

Bottom line is despite AAPLs resources and team of the best IP lawyers available throwing everything they had at it, and even in a post KSR environment, only a portion of BRSTs patents were found to be anticipated and “obvious”  while many others were not (including parts of 995).

As SleepyGeek so astutely pointed out what is right, just or deserved often has little place in Law or Business.

Your point on the DVR portion of the settlement statement is an interesting one.  It raises many questions as do some other parts of the press release and the fact that it was later pulled from the Burst web site.

As pointed out by Cringley - the events of the last few days have been very odd and illogical in the context of what had transpired over the past 2 yrs.  There is definitely something fishy going on behind the scenes.  It may well have something to do with the DVR patents and perhaps Apple TV. It will likely be a while before we know what.

I have no illusions of making money from BRST but the drama continues to unfold and it continues to be fun to watch.

Crappy article from Cringley (How many times can someone use the word “Guess”???!) but interesting comments from readers, esp. rob13572468

LINK

Really looking forward to MacWorld now!
Mac

>I’m curious though.  Given your technical expertise, why would you refer to ‘995 as a “dual deck VCR” patent then since clearly it is not and only even mentions “dual deck VCRs” as an example of prior art? 

My mistake, the VCR pictured on page 1 is not dual-deck, and I
conflated this with Lang’s dual-deck efforts for Go-Video.

Since patents reduce something to practice, and webpages didn’t
exist, the invention was directly VCR-related, with the later hope
that the general independent claims could be used to block
something a bit more modern (Quicktime 2.0 or later, iPod, AppleTV)

>And why would you refer to Burst as a patent troll unless you have some agenda?

Troll is a loaded word—I won’t use it here again, but it commonly
applies to companies/inventors who do not manufacture anything
of the sort that the target companies do…  Agenda?  Disclaimer:
I’ve owned AAPL long (for years) and have traded BRST long, as a
cynical stock play during the lawsuit.  I don’t do options or shorting.
Oh, and since I’ve done public domain/BSD/GNU software, I’m
a software patent non-believer.

>Yes,  the Wicker declaration is fine -  but did little to address the BRST inventions. BRST never claimed to invent or patent compression, storage or transmissoin of digital data. The Wicker declaration was relied on little by AAPL, was hardly contested by BRST and really added little to the case.

Granted, but it shows that not only compression, storage, etc.
are obvious, but many combinations are easily anticipated.
Lang’s patent was shown to be very narrow—the metes and bounds
of the claims surely covered a fancy VCR!

>If BRSTs technology was so obvious, why did it take MSFT, REAL and AAPL 10 yrs to adopt it? Why was streaming media so spotty all throughout the 90s - (irregardless of bandwidth issues) ? 

Haven’t studied this, but since streaming over WWW (although
plenty of streaming over LAN internets) didn’t exist at
the time of ‘995, it was a stretch to say that Lang invented this as
part of ‘995…

> [....] goodbye iPhone patents [....]

Agreed.  Many of Apple’s patents represent workman-like engineering efforts
for products with totally sweet system integration.  Apple, like most
big companies, (now) uses patents defensively or for cross-licensing.

[... more nice and useful commentary]

>As pointed out by Cringley - the events of the last few days have been very odd and illogical in the context of what had transpired over the past 2 yrs.  There is definitely something fishy going on behind the scenes. 

Also agree.  This reminds me of the DRM company Intertrust with
patents that Microsoft/Philips/Sony and others wanted—they
were privatized before existing investors could make a dime…

retiarius-

Thanks for a nice post.

[quote author=“retiarius”]Since patents reduce something to practice, and webpages didn’t exist, the invention was directly VCR-related, with the later hope
that the general independent claims could be used to block
something a bit more modern (Quicktime 2.0 or later, iPod, AppleTV)

My take is a bit different.  Since video tapes where the dominant storage media in 1988 - Lang simply used them as a practical example of a video storage device from which to his real invention sprang- the means to transmit, recieve and subsequently simultaneously playback and/or edit “time compressed representations” of video/audio faster than previous methods allowed.

In any case it’s the ‘839 patent and not the ‘995 patent that really gets to this and ‘839 is all about the means and not the device.

Troll is a loaded word—I won’t use it here again, but it commonly
applies to companies/inventors who do not manufacture anything
of the sort that the target companies do…

I agree-  but to expand,  my definition of a patent troll is a company who buys up others unenforced patents and then builds a business out of going after infringers of these patents.

Burst clearly meets neither of our definitions since it began as a company building and selling real products - employing over a hundred people including many engineers - before it’s IP was stolen and used by others without lisence.  Only then was it forced to spend it’s limited resources trying to enforce its patents and recoup it’s engineering and monetary investments.

When I purchase a song or video from the iTunes music store and begin to listen or watch it on my Mac while it is still downloading, I am doing exactly what the Lang patents describe and using technology Burst built and sold in the late 1990s.

Haven’t studied this, but since streaming over WWW (although
plenty of streaming over LAN internets) didn’t exist at
the time of ‘995, it was a stretch to say that Lang invented this as
part of ‘995…

Yes but Lang’s inventions have nothing to do with whether the network is a LAN or WWW or internet based. 

In the early through mid 90’s I ran an undergraduate neurobiology lab course and oversaw a Mac based multimedia biology teaching lab at UC Berkeley.  At that point we could not smoothly stream video larger than a postage stamp over a 10baseT LAN using the then availiable Apple hardware and Quicktime.  Yet Lang demonstrated the ability to do this at the 1991 CES with the device built by his engineers and based on the ‘995 patent . Why did it take Apple and others so long to implement these “obvious” solutions - and why did they do so only after Bursts methods became widely known?

Software patents aside, what concerns me is that the way things are evolving - it will be only large companies like Apple, Google,  etc who will have any incentive to do any innovation.  Small independent inventors and businesses will have no incentive to invest any time, energy or money into creating anything if at any hint of success their IP is stolen by the big players.

Imagine if Jobs and Woz had stumbled out of Steves parents garage in 1976 with the Apple 1 only to see IBM co-opt the concept and the design and build/sell the same device before Apple Computer had a chance to build up a company that could compete.  There would be no Apple now.  Times were different then…

> [....] goodbye iPhone patents [....]

Agreed.  Many of Apple’s patents represent workman-like engineering efforts
for products with totally sweet system integration.  Apple, like most
big companies, (now) uses patents defensively or for cross-licensing.

?? Not sure what you mean by this.  Clearly if MSFT built an iPhone copycat tomorrow, Apple would seek to enforce its patents.

Also agree.  This reminds me of the DRM company Intertrust with
patents that Microsoft/Philips/Sony and others wanted—they
were privatized before existing investors could make a dime…

Yes -sadly this could happen in this case as well.  I don’t think Lang would want this to happen but he may be forced into it by the BRST BOD.