Microsoft Sued Over Ultimate TV DVR Patents (http://news.yahoo.com/s/cmp/20070602/tc_cmp/199900305)

Patents, esp. software patents are going to be the ruination of the software industry. Just another area of life that would be better without government.

Consider that the computer field was once the most free-market industry in the country and think about the advances that came about before software patents were added to patent law.

I wonder what patents on dvr exist anyway. It's a pretty obvious idea; pretty much no different than any previous recorders, except it uses disk drives instead of tape.

Then again, amazon got a patent on their one-click idea. Can you imagine that; they patented remembering your credit card on line!

Over 40 years ago I worked on a computer that had no disk drives, or even punch cards. Just magnetic and paper tape. So I wrote a "ram - tape driver" simulating tape drives with ram (actually it was core memory) so I wouldn't have to rewind tapes. This may have preceded ram disks. I bet this could have been patented had the law existed then (not sure when software first became patentable).

Isn't "Intellivision" the name of an old Home Arcade System from the early 1980's?

Sounds like someone could be sued for that. :)

Surprised to see this happening nearly 4 years after most UTVs were "destroyed". (Tried finding a replacement/spare in Summer 2003 and couldn't find them at CC,BB, or Radio Shack, which said they "destroyed" their remaining units.)

I suppose it could have taken this long to make their case and get everything in order.

we all know the UTV has the superior interface. shame MS killed it. wonder just what they hope to recover from a dead product?

Microsoft is dead? :) The UTV DVR Code still belongs to MS. So as long as MS owns the code and maybe continues to use it in various products (maybe makes some money off it)... I can see the "originators" of some of it's UTV DVR code wanting to get what they think they deserve (since they contend MS misled them when MS acquired the code).

ever see the original Dish Networks Dish player?
the UI is almost identical to the UTV wonder if the same guys wrote that?
I do know that Dish got it from MS

The question is, did these guys sign an actual agreement to this effect with Microsoft? If not, it's their word against MS. It seems like if they actually had written documentation, they would have brought the suit on much earlier - as in following the launch.

Of course, these guys had to have been real boobs to not know the DVR was coming out if the ad campaign started a week later. What, did MS develope and build the units in a week? You're telling me in an industry where there's probably a patent on industrial spying that they didn't hear word one about this product coming out. Were they off the planet?

Don't get me wrong, it wouldn't be the first time Microsoft (or Apple or any other tech company) stole technology from someone else. However, this sounds a bit suspicious to me. I see a land grab.