Thanks to Justin for sending this in to us!
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Playstation 3 to Get MST3K-like Interface?The folks over at Siliconera recently spotted a patent filed by Sony Computer Entertainment America for a program that will allow Playstation 3 users to overlay avatars on top of “media presentations” like movies and TV shows. The patent even mentions MST3K as inspiration for the invention. You can read more about it here.
12 Replies to “Playstation 3 to Get MST3K-like Interface?”Commenting at Satellite News
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The netflix app on the xbox 360 does this already when you and your live friends watch the same thing at the same time. :)
I was just going to mention that Ethan lol. :eek:
If its inspired by something else (or pretty much a copy of, in this case) and already been done, can you patent it?
@zombie #3… You can’t patent a general idea like this. A patent is for a specific implementation of an idea, and requires detailed documentation on exactly how the thing you’re patenting actually functions. Therefore Sony can patent their particular implementation of this concept on the PS3 system, even though Microsoft already has something that basically does the same thing on their Xbox 360 as long as they are coming up with their own way of doing it and not directly lifting Microsoft’s technology. Ironically that is exactly how Microsoft “created” Windows. They lifted all their ideas from the Mac OS, but they didn’t just take the actual Mac OS and make it work on a PC. They came up with their own way of doing (or more accurately, trying to do) what Apple had already done with Macintosh, and made a comparable OS for the more widely spread, and less expensive IBM PC.
“You can’t patent a general idea like this”
Oh, yes you can. That’s why Nintendo can be sued for the Wii remote when the patent they were sued for supposedly breaching didn’t even mention videogames. You’d be surprised how minimalistic a patent can be and how wide-ranging the rights can stretch. Given the fact that they directly mention MST3K, they may be unaware that the Shadow-rama is rights protected and they may have opened themselves up for trouble here.
“They lifted all their ideas from the Mac OS”
Actually, of course, they both stole it from Xerox, but Xerox didn’t see any money in the ideas, so didn’t patent them at all. Apple lost the suit in which they sued Microsoft for “stealing” the Mac OS because Microsoft could easily show that it was all created by Xerox and not by Apple in the first place.
@ Philip Frey – Sorry, have to correct your version of events.
Apple *paid* Xerox for a tour of their PARC facility, to see and use some of their interface concepts. Xerox wasn’t commercializing what they had, and knew of Apple’s intents to “productize” what they would see. So, no “stealing” occurred.
Apple did quite a lot of adding and innovating on top of the Xerox ideas, as you can learn by reading folklore.org, which covers a lot of the early history of the Mac. A lot of the UI conventions we take for granted today were solidified at Apple, not Xerox.
After Steve Jobs was booted from Apple in the mid 80s, Apple and Microsoft signed a badly-worded contract which appeared to give Microsoft license to copy Apple’s UI innovations. Apple sued, but ultimately lost due to the poor wording of the contract. Xerox didn’t factor into this lawsuit in any way.
And I could be wrong, but I don’t believe patents factored into any of this, either.
I’M INTERFACED!
@Philip #05 I don’t think you understood my points, and I stand by what I originally wrote 100%. I’m not familiar with the Nintendo Wii lawsuit you mention, but I feel safe in saying that they couldn’t be being sued simply because they created a motion sensing controller for their video game system. If this were the case then the makers of the infamous “Power Glove” NES controller would be well within their rights to sue as well, not to mention the developers of all of the other such technologies, successful or not, that were created long before the Wii controller was made. If such a lawsuit against Nintendo were ever going to hold up in court it would have to be because the specific motion sensing technology they developed for the Wii is similar enough to someone else’s already patented motion sensing technology (whether that person’s technology was intended for video games or not) to constitute a patent violation. You can’t just write down the basic concept “motion sensing computer controller” on a patent application with no information on how you will actually create such a thing, and then sue anyone who actually does go about creating it. That’s not how patents work. A patent isn’t for a raw idea, it’s for the specific means that you have invented to make that idea a reality. In this Sony situation Microsoft had this idea first, and implemented it on the 360, but as long as Sony doesn’t copy Microsoft’s specific technology they can do it as well. And so my original statement that you quoted “You can’t patent a general idea like this” is correct.
Incidentally you’re remarks about Shadow-rama have nothing to do with patents what so ever. The concept of “Shadow-rama” isn’t patentable. The term “Shadow-rama” can be trademarked, and the specific look of either the MST or CT shadows are protected under copyright laws, but that can’t stop someone else from using the basic technique of placing blue screened silhouette images over a pre-existing video. Joel didn’t create blue screen technology, and he has no right to stop someone else from using it in the same way he has as long as they aren’t recreating the specific look of his work. You are confusing patents, trademarks, and copyrights. They are different things that serve different purposes.
As for the Apple stuff I think Spade said it all pretty well. I’ll just add that the whole original Apple vs. Microsoft, Macintosh vs. Windows lawsuit was over copyright, not patent.
I didn’t say that the Microsoft/Apple thing was about patents, merely that Xerox didn’t patent anything. (I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure they didn’t.) My points were not about the topic at hand, but to refute the notion that Microsoft “stole” anything from Apple. Even the court at the time pointed out that Apple’s claims of copyright wouldn’t hold water because they lacked originality (since they mostly came from Xerox) even if the GUI could be copyrighted in the first place.
And my point about the Shadowrama was not that they could patent it, but that it *could* open up Sony to an argument that they have infringed on BB’s rights in some way. It would have been better if they didn’t mention MST3K.
As for the “general idea” thing, maybe we’re talking about two different things. I thought you were saying that Sony’s patent wasn’t valid, but upon re-reading, I think you were talking about the “people in front of a video image” notion, which I agree can’t be patented.
Ethan will the new PS3 app with netflix do this as well or just the xbox360? fall wedding centerpieces harry potter mug
@ Phillip #9
I think it’s pretty safe to assume that Xerox would have patented anything important that they created at PARC, especially since they did offer up some of those innovations in a commercial form as the Xerox Star. But that was an expensive system meant for offices and large businesses, not a home PC.
Also I never said Microsoft “stole” anything. I said they lifted their ideas for Windows from the Mac. That is quite different. The first implies that they did something devious and possibly illegal, and the other one means that they did what most businesses do in some way or another, and what allows competition to happen at all. Apple lifted some ideas for Mac from what they saw at Xerox, yes, but what Apple eventually did with those ideas was undeniably innovative and revolutionized the home PC market. They were the first to bring those ideas to the general public in an affordable and widely available home computer. On the other hand Microsoft simply capitalized on Apple’s innovations by creating an inferior but comparable, and most importantly cheaper competitor to Macintosh. They didn’t innovate and create something no one had seen before in the home PC market as Apple had done. They just imitated what had already been done, and used a more successful business model to promote their version and make it the more widely used one.
@April S #10 Thanks for the spam.
I’d like to know if we can make our own sillouette guys. If so, Joel and Mike would probably be among the top made.
This sounds like a fun idea, and, considering I was going to buy a PS3 in December anyway, it sounds like another reason to get one.