Now It Turns Out That Burning CDs Is Patented As Well
from the how-is-that-not-obvious? dept
Because the day just isn't complete unless another silly patent lawsuit is filed, Optima Technology now believes that they own a patent on CD-burning and are suing Roxio for refusing to license their patent. This fits in with plenty of other patent lawsuits that have been showing up recently which clearly demonstrate just how off-course our patent system has become. The purpose of a patent is to protect and encourage innovation. The idea behind CD-burning is not innovative, and Roxio didn't come along and steal the idea from Optima. There are simply too many cases these days of some company sitting on a patent until someone else discovers the same thing and then suing them. How that "encourages" innovation is beyond me. Meanwhile, Optima says they basically plan to sue anyone who has anything to do with CD burning unless they all come running to license the patent.
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The patent is in the structure, not the medium
It doesn't appear that this patent covers CDROM recording/encoding standards such as ISO-9660 so recording in those standard formats ONLY should be safe from the patent.
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Re: The patent is in the structure, not the medium
From what I can tell, the OSTA released the specs for fixed-length packet UDF, and Ricoh claims to have made the first CD-RW drive, both in February of 1997. This patent was filed in April 1995.
There also seems to be more here than meets the eye. The patent lists the inventor as Raymond Martin, with the patent assigned to Optima. Martin left Optima, apparently to go to EZ-Data, and Optima sued Martin and EZ-Data (and apparently won) for patent and trademark violations. That suit seems to have also involved another former employee, Michael Decorte, who subsequently hijacked Optima's domain name.
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Re: The patent is in the structure, not the medium
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Re: The patent is in the structure, not the medium
Good, since the article gives the impression that ISO-9660 is what they are talking about, not UDF. However, The Register does a much better job, though it is still confusing as to what activity the patent really covers.
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Re: The patent is in the structure, not the medium
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