no, choosing from a list of audio tracks is not obvious. How is it obvious? What would make it obvious?. The invention of the audio player?. If the audio player was not invented, would it still be obvious?. Of course not. Example, you could choose to play your music randomly, not from a list.. what if in the next 20 years, speech technology is so advanced, you can ask your player to play a song instead of selecting it from a list.. would that be obvious too?. What if in the next 100 years, you have a neural interface to a music player and it plays the song you want.. would that be obvious?. You assume that choosing music from a list was the only way to go.. it was not. It is also not obvious.. it's ubiquitous. Don't confuse ubiquity with obviousness.
What is it, though, makes things fundamentally different when we're talking about selectively playing back voice mail messages from a list, versus playing back any other arbitrary type of audio file?
The ability to pick an arbitrary audio file out of a list has been around at least since the Jukebox program that came with my old AdLib audio card back in 1990, which predates this patent application.
(Heck, people have been using a system which involved selecting a song title file from a list of tracks on the back of an LP cover, and an algorithm of counting track grooves on the album itself, to randomly access audio files from a list for the better part of a century now.)
Why should voice mail messages get special protection?
It was obvious to me and probably a hundred million other people.
The hard part was actually putting it in a product at a low enough price.
How smart of you.. i don't know ho old you are but apparently picking music from a list was obvious to you before it was first implemented.. you have any more obvious ideas yet that haven't been implemented?. i suggest you implement immediately!!!..
what are you talking about?. choosing music from a list was not obvious to millions of people.. it's obvious now becuase it has been implemented but not before. I smell Bullshit, i wonder what else was obvious to you
what are you talking about?. choosing music from a list was not obvious to millions of people.
You've never heard of a JukeBox? Or how about the label on an album? Also, plenty of digital production suites predate this patent application. All of them had the ability to choose from a list of audio tracks.
Choosing from a list of audio tracks is a fundamentally obvious concept. Applying it to voicemail is equally obvious. It just wasn't easy to put into an affordable product.
DTMF is used extensively in Klausner's patent applications to describe the "first signals."
The claims are the meat of the patent. And there's a reason they say "first signals" instead of "DTMF". You want to be as vague as humanly possible in the claims. Otherwise, your patent becomes restrictive and easily circumventable. By way of the claims, *any* signal that is used to achieve this process would still infringe.
It's like, let's say i invented the ladder.
If I claimed, "a device with two long parallel beams connected by seven smaller bars perpendicular to said two parallel beams", then anyone could get around my patent by adding an additional bar. It's useful as it would allow the ladder to get to higher places. bla bla bla.
To make it better, I would claims "two long parallel beams connected by a number of smaller pependicular bars", then that means any ladder, whether it goes up one story or up to the moon infringe.
The claims are the meat of the patent. And there's a reason they say "first signals" instead of "DTMF". You want to be as vague as humanly possible in the claims. Otherwise, your patent becomes restrictive and easily circumventable.
That is true, and I wrote that early on in the thread, but it is still essential for the patent applicant to be careful how the technology is described and terminology is defined. I expect Klausner's definition of first signals will form one center of contention.
Quote:
By way of the claims, *any* signal that is used to achieve this process would still infringe.
That's what Klausner would like everyone to believe in 2007, but that doesn't make it so. As I described in a previous posting, I don't believe Klausner shows expertise in the relevant technology at the time of filing, because he doesn't even mention the 15-year old Caller ID technology. IIRC, his examples of first signals are all about manual methods, such as touch-tone dialing, whereas the older Caller ID technology is automatic. It might also be material to the defense that Klausner's "first signals" are sent after the phone call is established, whereas Caller ID information is available after just 2 rings, even before--and in lieu of--any call actually being established.
I hate lawyers who pick these cases, purely to make themselves rich. Maybe in the future, they'll pick cases that help the larger sum of the people in this world. Also intellectual property rights and control stunts the natural progression of human evolution.
Everyone has seemingly missed the important info in both patents. They both require the caller entering DTMF (Dual Tone Multi-Frequency) signals into the telephone which are recognized, recorded and processed by the TAD (Telephone Answering Device). At no time during a call that ends up in AT&T's visual voicemail does a caller have to enter DTMF information. Any patent infringement claims have to match the patent verbatim or else it cannot qualify as an infringement. If this patent was filed in 1992 then the patent holder should have updated or applied for a new one to include the capabilities of current technology. Close but no cigar.
Comments
no, choosing from a list of audio tracks is not obvious. How is it obvious? What would make it obvious?. The invention of the audio player?. If the audio player was not invented, would it still be obvious?. Of course not. Example, you could choose to play your music randomly, not from a list.. what if in the next 20 years, speech technology is so advanced, you can ask your player to play a song instead of selecting it from a list.. would that be obvious too?. What if in the next 100 years, you have a neural interface to a music player and it plays the song you want.. would that be obvious?. You assume that choosing music from a list was the only way to go.. it was not. It is also not obvious.. it's ubiquitous. Don't confuse ubiquity with obviousness.
What is it, though, makes things fundamentally different when we're talking about selectively playing back voice mail messages from a list, versus playing back any other arbitrary type of audio file?
The ability to pick an arbitrary audio file out of a list has been around at least since the Jukebox program that came with my old AdLib audio card back in 1990, which predates this patent application.
(Heck, people have been using a system which involved selecting a song title file from a list of tracks on the back of an LP cover, and an algorithm of counting track grooves on the album itself, to randomly access audio files from a list for the better part of a century now.)
Why should voice mail messages get special protection?
It was obvious to me and probably a hundred million other people.
The hard part was actually putting it in a product at a low enough price.
How smart of you.. i don't know ho old you are but apparently picking music from a list was obvious to you before it was first implemented.. you have any more obvious ideas yet that haven't been implemented?. i suggest you implement immediately!!!..
what are you talking about?. choosing music from a list was not obvious to millions of people.. it's obvious now becuase it has been implemented but not before. I smell Bullshit, i wonder what else was obvious to you
what are you talking about?. choosing music from a list was not obvious to millions of people.
You've never heard of a JukeBox? Or how about the label on an album? Also, plenty of digital production suites predate this patent application. All of them had the ability to choose from a list of audio tracks.
Choosing from a list of audio tracks is a fundamentally obvious concept. Applying it to voicemail is equally obvious. It just wasn't easy to put into an affordable product.
DTMF is used extensively in Klausner's patent applications to describe the "first signals."
The claims are the meat of the patent. And there's a reason they say "first signals" instead of "DTMF". You want to be as vague as humanly possible in the claims. Otherwise, your patent becomes restrictive and easily circumventable. By way of the claims, *any* signal that is used to achieve this process would still infringe.
It's like, let's say i invented the ladder.
If I claimed, "a device with two long parallel beams connected by seven smaller bars perpendicular to said two parallel beams", then anyone could get around my patent by adding an additional bar. It's useful as it would allow the ladder to get to higher places. bla bla bla.
To make it better, I would claims "two long parallel beams connected by a number of smaller pependicular bars", then that means any ladder, whether it goes up one story or up to the moon infringe.
The claims are the meat of the patent. And there's a reason they say "first signals" instead of "DTMF". You want to be as vague as humanly possible in the claims. Otherwise, your patent becomes restrictive and easily circumventable.
That is true, and I wrote that early on in the thread, but it is still essential for the patent applicant to be careful how the technology is described and terminology is defined. I expect Klausner's definition of first signals will form one center of contention.
By way of the claims, *any* signal that is used to achieve this process would still infringe.
That's what Klausner would like everyone to believe in 2007, but that doesn't make it so. As I described in a previous posting, I don't believe Klausner shows expertise in the relevant technology at the time of filing, because he doesn't even mention the 15-year old Caller ID technology. IIRC, his examples of first signals are all about manual methods, such as touch-tone dialing, whereas the older Caller ID technology is automatic. It might also be material to the defense that Klausner's "first signals" are sent after the phone call is established, whereas Caller ID information is available after just 2 rings, even before--and in lieu of--any call actually being established.
I'm all for patents but this is nonsense. It's about as close as patenting an idea as you can get and still get the certificate.
If you read the patent, it's like patenting the idea of writing: marks on paper that represent words.
Imagine if patent law had been around in the year 1000, and the Caliphate had patented Indo-Arabic numerals.
The west would have paid incalcuable royalties by now, or have been calculating them as MCMLXVII * XL.