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Gold/Mining/Energy : Tri-Vision & The V-Chip -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lennox who wrote (3316)	7/8/1998 6:12:00 AM
From: edsam	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 5743

Lennox: I am a software engineer by trade. Learnt how to read a circuit design in my university days. I don't have access to TVL patent application. However its product features can be found on www.v-gis.com. TVL's unique feature seems to be its ability to dynamically upgrade the TV program rating decoding instruction set. So if the ratings were changed, TVL's products will recognize this new rating. Whereas the Elam technology will require a hardware upgrade. You can imagine which option is more preferrable. Here is yet another Yahoo rehash. Someone asked me about potential legal action by ACRI. I did a quick comparison between Elam, Sony, PG and TVL. > Since TVL is proceeding without licensing from Soundview, when should we expect legal action against TVL? Interesting question. I think the Soundview's case has been weakened by the other 2 patents. Remember the Elam patent is a collection of 3 components used together to block TV signals. The similarities and differences between the 3 patents make the case very difficult to build. The 3 tell you that a slight variation in the equation is a different equation. Yet the 3 all tell you that drastically different approaches can be used to achieve the same result. Both PG and Sony have its own way to extract line 21. PG uses hardwired gates to decode. Sony uses a microprocessor. Same scope. Different extraction methods. Different blocking technology. Different implementations. 2 patents. No infringement. Both Elam and PG use hardwired gates to decode. But PG extracts its own line 21 data. Elam relies on closed captioning. Same blocking technology. Different scopes. Different implementations. 2 patents. No infringement. If anything, TVL will be much closer in design to Sony. It will use a microprocessor to decode rating. How it extracts line 21 is unknown. But if PG and Sony could develop its own, then so can TVL. Even if TVL relies on CC, that's still OK. Because CC is not part of Elam. So compared to Sony. Same or similar blocking technology. But TVL has a mechanism to dynamically update rating decoding instruction set. So TVL and Sony should have different scopes. Will the patent be issued? I don't know. Compare Elam to TVL. Line 21 extraction is irrelevant since it is outside of the scope of Elam. Different blocking technology (hardwired vs. software). TVL does not use a lamp interface like Elam. ASCII detection does not belong to Elam. So where is the infringement? The anwser is there isn't! Don't get sucked into the hype. Even ACRI admitted that there will be other approaches.