Oops. That DVD should have caused the toilet to flush. (ZDNet) [LWN.net]

ZDNet blogger David Berlind has found another silly patent: "InterVideo, located in Fremont, Calif., is asking the court to enjoin Dell from manufacturing, selling or importing products that infringe patents tied to its Linux-based InstantOn technology. The software allows a DVD to automatically start playing a movie when a user inserts a disc into a computer running an InterVideo program." The actual patent is relatively simple to read.

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Oops. That DVD should have caused the toilet to flush. (ZDNet)

Posted Aug 18, 2005 2:23 UTC (Thu) by omez (guest, #6904) [Link] (2 responses)

It would seem, judging by the patent referenced on my aging laptop, that Compaq beat them to it.

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&...

Oops. That DVD should have caused the toilet to flush. (ZDNet)

Posted Aug 18, 2005 20:09 UTC (Thu) by zabriska (guest, #29486) [Link]

Having looked at omez' patent reference, I agree that the InterVideo patent seems to cover only an enlarged scope compared to the one mentioned by omez. The basic idea seems to be the same.

Of course, IANAL (and IANAPL).

Oops. That DVD should have caused the toilet to flush. (ZDNet)

Posted Aug 19, 2005 1:30 UTC (Fri) by zblaxell (subscriber, #26385) [Link]

The Compaq patent claims "CD-ROMs", "CDs", and so forth. The InterVideo patent claims "electronic device mode" which presumably could be used to do anything.

These are completely different things when shown to a patent lawyer. One might not even be a superset of the other in practice. Compaq can create a legal quagmire for InterVideo if they ever want to actually use their patent in a CD playing application, and to get out of it Compaq could insist that InterVideo never use their own patent for devices that are only CD players. A third party who happens to build a CD player instead of a DVD player might have to pay both patent holders.

The neat thing about patents is that if you have one, you can block anyone else from using the patent--even people who own identical patents. ;-)

I'm not a patent lawyer (or a lawyer of any kind).

Oops. That DVD should have caused the toilet to flush. (ZDNet)

Posted Aug 21, 2005 15:34 UTC (Sun) by nchip (guest, #13292) [Link]

I think the blogger is very confused. The patent and instantON arent
about autoplay.

What instantON does, it allows you to insert a DVD into a computer that
is OFF, and then press "DVD" button and the computer starts playing DVD
without having to wait your OS to boot up.

Which is still a trivial thing to patent..