

MIT sues television makers over digital sets - ilamont
http://www.universalhub.com/2012/made-tv-lawsuit-mit-sues-television-makers-over-di

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Eduard
TIL that since 2008, Philips doesn't market its own products in North America,
but lets Funai do it instead.
<http://www.funaiworld.com/pressroom/2008/080409.html>

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DigitalSea
Owning a patent on digital television is like owning a patent on trees. It's
not like people didn't know digital television was coming, ridiculous.

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slapshot
Indeed. But it looks like the actual patent [1] was not for "digital
television." It was for a particular means to do frame interpolation, error
correction, and motion compression. And it was issued in 1996, when presumably
those methods were more innovative. It might seem obvious in hindsight, but
step back 16 years and ask what methods of motion compression were state of
the art.

If it turns out that these methods were obvious (or had already been
implemented) in 1996 then the patent will be invalidated. But it's not like
MIT patented the mere idea of digital TV -- as one might expect of MIT, the
patent is a lot more nuanced.

[1][http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-
Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sec...](http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-
Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=5,485,210.PN.&OS=PN/5,485,210&RS=PN/5,485,210)

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noonespecial
Its also worth noting that when MIT patents something and then collects
royalties, it probably actually does further innovation, which is becoming
very rare in the "IP industry" these days.

