RealNetworks streaming patent
p2p news / p2pnet: Companies struggling desperately to get rich in the vicious, but as yet completely undeveloped, dog-eat-dog corporate online music biz need all the help they can get, and it seems RealNetworks might be getting another leg up.
It’s already on the receiving end of a hefty anti-trust pay-out from Microsoft and now it seems it’s come out on top in what company boss Rob Glaser told the New York Times was a ‘Kafkaesque’ struggle.
It’s all to do with a way to stream multimedia content and a continuation patent which, “could allow the company to demand royalty payments from those competitors or from media companies,” says the story.
“Many of the companies it competes with use patents as defensive protection, like the needles on porcupines,” says the NYT, going on:
“The patent, which is described as being for a ‘multimedia communications system and method for providing audio on demand to subscribers’ (No. 6,985,932), describes the idea of permitting a PC user to play back audio, video and other information on a PC. RealNetworks executives said the technology was distinguished from other similar systems by the fact that it permitted ‘intelligent’ streaming of data in potentially congested networks.”
But in enforcing the patent, RealNetworks must still get around an earlier one owned by Apple Computer, the NYT states.
“Apple applied for a patent related to its QuickTime technology for streaming media in May 1994, before RealNetworks’ first filing. The Apple patent, No. 5,561,670, for ‘method and apparatus for operating a multicast system on an unreliable network,’ was issued in October 1996. It appears the patent office examiners did not consider it in their evaluation of the RealNetworks patent.”
However, iTunes, et al, needn’t worry too much about law suits, says the story. Glaser said Real would “probably not” use the patent against its direct competitors.
Also See:
anti-trust pay-out – RealNetworks buys Zylom, February 8, 2006
New York Times – Patent Awarded to RealNetworks May Give It a Competitive Edge, April 24, 2006
