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Legal Issues

by Mike Masnick

Fri, Oct 13th 2006 4:06pm





No One Ever Would Have Planned To Put Voice, Video And Data On A Single Network Without A Patent

from the who-would-have-thought-of-that? dept

Another day, another incredibly broad and obvious patent claim. Broadband Reports points us to a patent awarded to Cisco earlier this year for a System and method for providing integrated voice, video and data to customer premises over a single network. Yes, that sounds like the commonly accepted definition of the "triple play," which until now no one had suggested was such a unique and non-obvious concept that it deserved a patent. Now, you might say that they could be explaining a very specific and non-obvious way of accomplishing this, but as the folks at Light Reading point out, the actual patent seems broadly worded to cover just about all triple play deployments. Once again, this highlights the need for an "obviousness" test, rather than just a prior art test. It may be true that there were no triple play offerings available in 2000, when the patent was filed, but that doesn't mean people weren't thinking about it. In fact, the bottleneck wasn't that people didn't know how to offer voice, video and data over a single network, but that the bandwidth just wasn't available yet.

13 Comments | Leave a Comment..


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  1.  
    identicon
    John Duncan Yoyo, Oct 13th, 2006 @ 4:23pm

    What do they call it? FIOS

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  2.  

    ok new patent

    identicon
    itanshi, Oct 13th, 2006 @ 4:34pm

    quadruple play!

    voice, video, data, annnd my boot! over a network

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  3.  

    Worthless Patent

    identicon
    Mark, Oct 13th, 2006 @ 6:03pm

    It's all data.

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  4.  

    It all end here.

    identicon
    BigEd, Oct 13th, 2006 @ 7:21pm

    So, does that mean that if I use Skype to talk to someone, watch a video on MyTube and download some data from Microsoft that Cisco is gonna sue me for violating their patent. Next thing ya know will be Cisco opening a bank so we can all deposit our work checks straight into our account there so pay for out networking/internet use.

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  5.  

    Self Defense

    identicon
    BeanieBaby, Oct 13th, 2006 @ 7:43pm

    In the wild-wild-west of patent wars Cisco probably felt the need to patent the obvious just to keep anyone else from doing it and then sueing them.

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  6.  
    identicon
    Anonymous Coward, Oct 13th, 2006 @ 8:07pm

    Not exactly on point, but does it matter if someone was thinking about it? Not considering the alleged absurdity of this particular patent, I don't think it matters how much people were thinking about something, only if they actually accomplished it. I don't believe you can deny a patent because someone else thought of an idea they never put into action. I know, not the point of your rant about, again, patents, but I'm just saying...

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  7.  

    VVD

    identicon
    rushonbye, Oct 13th, 2006 @ 8:33pm

    Cable providers have been doing it for years.

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  8.  

    Re: Self Defense

    identicon
    Cleverboy, Oct 13th, 2006 @ 9:12pm

    "In the wild-wild-west of patent wars Cisco probably felt the need to patent the obvious just to keep anyone else from doing it and then sueing them."
    Well, here's hoping Cisco, like Microsoft did earlier with many of its Linux/OS related patents, will pledge not to sue offensively over these. Who knows. One can hope.

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  9.  

    Re: Obviousness

    identicon
    Anonymous Coward, Oct 13th, 2006 @ 10:13pm

    I don't believe you can deny a patent because someone else thought of an idea they never put into action.

    They sort of can -- That's what obviousness is all about. If everybody was thinking about it, it must have been obvious to all persons learned in the art, and thereby is not patentable.

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  10.  

    I'll be the first to claim prior art on this one..

    identicon
    ehrichweiss, Oct 14th, 2006 @ 7:37am

    10 years ago a friend and I discussed a venture involving teleconferencing where we did EXACTLY the idea involved and I know we weren't the first since someone had already created most of the software before us. And as someone else said "it's all data"...and that was our attitude about the thing as well so I call shenanigans.

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  11.  

    Yeah, Wright

    identicon
    Dan O, Oct 14th, 2006 @ 1:50pm

    I'm patenting a means for heavier-than-air powered flight. That seems like a really useful idea.

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  12.  

    Lunch Triple Play

    identicon
    chris falco, Oct 14th, 2006 @ 3:56pm

    I suppose I should patient comboing french fries and a beverage with an entry into some kind on "numbered lunch combo"

    The Lunch Triple Play.

    Then preemptively sue all the fast food chains for stealing my idea.

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  13.  
    identicon
    Anonymous Coward, Oct 15th, 2006 @ 1:49pm

    well lets see 6 years without enforcing their patent should render it null and void.

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]


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