 MooJohn
join:2005-12-18
Milledgeville, GA | reply to BF69
Re: Gotta love the vagueness of patents Sorry I didn't ask your permission before expressing my opinion. Your position is clearly more valid than mine.
There are two portions of the patent that state exactly what I said:
quote:
It should be understood, however, that the intention is not to limit the invention to the particular embodiments described. On the contrary, the intention is cover all modifications, equivalents and alternatives falling within the spirit and scope of the invention as defined by the appended claims.
and
quote:
The various embodiments described above are provided by way of illustration only and are not intended to limit the invention. Those skilled in the art will readily recognize various modifications and changes that may be made to the present invention without strictly following the example embodiments and applications illustrated and described herein.
Note the phrase "spirit and scope." In plain English, that's another way of saying they stake claim to basically any videoconferencing method using a terminal setup via a set-top box. It's an intentionally broad scope.
It's fine that they want to invent something that can do this. It's not fine that they can prevent someone else from accomplishing the same thing using a completely different method. It's like inventing a portable music player and then saying no one else can have a portable music player, even if the original unit was a radio and the new unit played MP3s. It's music and it's portable so you owe me money!
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John M - Cranky network guy |
