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To: Steve Hausser who wrote (3781)	1/4/1999 9:54:00 AM
From: SIer formerly known as Joe B.	Respond to of 4748

Don't know if this was posted here yet: losangelestimes.com

To: Steve Hausser who wrote (3781)	1/4/1999 11:27:00 AM
From: Steve Hausser	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 4748

PATENTS January 4, 1999 New Technology Revives Old Debate By TERESA RIORDAN The technologies may be new, but the debate that promises to dominate the patent industry this year dates from at least the days of Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell. The debate now centers around whether methods of doing business over the Internet, known as electronic commerce, should be patentable. "A hundred years ago, the Supreme Court struggled with the same issues that we struggle with today -- how to make our laws responsive to new technologies," said Rick Nydegger, a patent attorney who represents Microsoft Corp. and other companies and teaches intellectual property law at Brigham Young University. "The question that is being raised with e-commerce was raised with the telegraph and telephone," Nydegger said. "At the time, no one had envisioned using electricity as a way to communicate." The Supreme Court is expected to decide in the coming weeks whether to review a July ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit that, according to some patent experts, represents a potential windfall for those who were among the first to file electronic commerce patent applications. Although no statistics are available, many experts speculate that the case, State Street Bank vs. Signature Financial, has set off a stampede of new electronic commerce applications to the Patent Office. The ruling affirmed and broadened earlier court decisions as well as Patent Office guidelines on software patents, including electronic commerce patents. "In the mid-1980s, when I used to lecture on software patents, I would get laughed out of the room," said Robert Greene Sterne, a patent attorney in Washington. "I'd get booed. I'd be called a capitalist pig by software entrepreneurs who thought it should be owned by the masses." Now, Sterne notes, filings from companies like Microsoft, which initially rejected the idea of software patents, are tumbling in. Gregory Aharonian, a patent-search consultant, has long been critical of the quality of the nation's software patents, and he is no more sanguine about electronic commerce patents. "The e-commerce patents are about as valid as software patents in general, which aren't very valid to begin with," he said. Aharonian contends that the Patent Office does not have the proper resources to research what is known as "prior art" -- previous inventions that are similar to a new technology. For example, he says, a score of software patents have been issued recently covering solutions to the Year 2000 problem, but none of them mention a paper on the subject produced by IBM in 1986. Such oversights make a patent more vulnerable to legal challenges. "It's extremely relevant," he said. "But none of the issued Y2K patents have cited it. That's just gross failure." Q. Todd Dickinson, acting commissioner of the Patent and Trademark Office, says his agency is doing an admirable job and adds that 20 new patent examiners have been hired recently for the division responsible for reviewing most electronic commerce patents. How successful have patent-wielding companies been in licensing their electronic commerce technologies so far? It's hard to say: Patent licenses are not publicly recorded. Sterne, who represents several dozen software companies, says patents are important for small enterprises mostly because they help attract investment capital and provide momentum for initial stock offerings. "Patents are having a major impact on financing," he said. "The investment banking community, the venture capital community and the angel investing community are becoming very interested in intellectual property." But Aharonian remains skeptical about the value of electronic commerce patents. "Until they end up in court, nobody's going to know whether they're valid," he said. Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company

To: Steve Hausser who wrote (3781)	1/5/1999 2:20:00 PM
From: Stonesouls	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 4748

I absolutely agree Steve, I believe that this will all change very shortly. Bill's statements in this case, do not represent the stock holders best interest and create value, as he has often stated he would do. IMHO, Sesame Street's Big Bird is the last thing the stock holders want to hear about. What we need is a broad based public campaign to explain how we will integrate DTV, the internet and the GIC 5000 series box using the HyperTV platform. Big Bird is not where the revenue is going to come, it is a personal agenda with Bill. I am not a touchy, feelly liberal and I don't give a crap about "Big Bird". Let's get the show on the road, we will worry about Big Bird later. FMG

To: Steve Hausser who wrote (3781)	1/5/1999 3:35:00 PM
From: Steve Hausser	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 4748

If you think the demand for Fox Sports Net Plus will be huge wait for the DCT-5000 and HyperTV: Rush of Traffic Sacks Fiesta Bowl Web Site; NetMechanic's Server Check Pro Monitoring Identifies Problems HUNTSVILLE, Ala.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 5, 1999--The heavy hits weren't just in the Fiesta Bowl during Monday night's College Football Championship game. A corresponding rush of traffic also sacked ABC's Enhanced TV web cast, effectively shutting down the web site during the game. ABC, ESPN and Infoseek's Go Network were featuring the Enhanced TV web site as part of a simulcast with ABC Sports coverage of the bowl game. The site was designed to supplement the information available to those watching the TV broadcast. Site visitors were offered access to a 'push' channel offering real time game statistics, player profiles, and a sports ticker. Unfortunately the volume of traffic caused ABC to turn users away early in the game. "As soon as they allowed visitors to log in, the site was saturated with traffic," said Tom Dahm, the Chief Technical Officer for NetMechanic.com. Dahm was monitoring the Enhanced TV site using NetMechanic's Server Check Pro (http://www.netmechanic.com) monitoring service. The service is designed as a warning system to alert webmasters when their site is down. NetMechanic's Server Check Pro service monitors servers by downloading a file from the server at 15-minute intervals, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. During each download, the service tracks the amount of time required to fetch the page, setting off an alarm if too much time elapses or the page is incomplete. The service then alerts the webmaster via pager or email. NetMechanic monitors web sites from two geographically separated servers located in Huntsville, Alabama, and Amsterdam, the Netherlands. "Both of our monitoring stations exhibited that the ABC site was in trouble early on," said Dahm. "The volume of traffic was so high, they were refusing connections from new visitors even before kickoff." Users were required to login through a registration server, which also turned away site browsers. By the end of the first quarter of play, ABC had posted a message on the site asking users to try accessing again later because their system had reached full capacity. By half time, the registration server was responding quickly to new requests, yet new visitors were still prevented from logging into the system. Dahm speculated that this measure was taken to prevent additional users from overloading the backend servers. "The ABC site maximized its user capacity, and allowing more visitors might have crashed the whole system. Given the situation, that was probably a smart move," Dahm said. Asked what lesson can be learned from this performance, "Web server problems can happen even to the big guys." Dahm elaborated that he has seen similar performance problems while monitoring other event sites, including superbowl.com and oscar.com. "The group that created the Enhanced TV site has A+ credentials as one of the finest organizations on the Web. But the technical challenges for a high profile site like this make it almost impossible to overestimate the enormous amount of traffic forthcoming." NetMechanic Server Check Pro is a product of Monte Sano Software, LLC, and is available through netmechanic.com. ABC's Enhanced TV web site is located at etv.go.com. CONTACT: PR Unlimited Kristi Kosloske or Jennifer Stonebreaker 847/253-6600 or kristi@prunlimited.com KEYWORD: ALABAMA