A New Age in Patent Liquidity -- NYC 2/15 -- MIT Enterprise Forum Panel Session

This is a panel that should be very relevant to all entrepreneurs who have an interest in getting and monetizing patents, as well as those who work with them. "A New Age in Patent Liquidity: New Opportunities for Entrepreneurs," is presented by MIT Enterprise Forum of NYC.

I will be on the panel to present the perspective of an entrepreneur/inventor who has successfully navigated the Kafkaesque world of patents, which can be rewarding, but also hugely frustrating, costly, and risky.  I described some of the twists and turns of my adventures in a 2008 blog post "'The Six Phases of a Technology Flop' ...Patents, and Plan B." The theme was how I started seeking to build a software/services business, but also sought patents as a hedge to protect my investment -- a "Plan B." When the business failed to keep up with better-connected competitors with deeper pockets, I turned to the patents to try to capture value for my innovations.  Working with partners who brought the expertise and funding needed to do that, and eventually to undertake a patent suit, I went part way through infringement cases against Microsoft and Apple.  Some additional background on that is in last year's post that tells how Intellectual Ventures changed the game with a very creative, win-win deal.

I also expect to touch on my 2008 sale of another portfolio of patents to another very innovative company, RPX, as well as my ongoing work developing other patents.  I am pleased that Kevin Barhydt, VP, Head of Acquisitions for RPX (and formerly at IV) will also be on the panel.

From my perspective, IV, RPX, and others are making a real difference is offering inventors and other patent owners a way to monetize their IP for reasonable compensation -- in a market that is rational, and has a middle ground between "take a hike" and the nuclear option of litigation, with its huge costs in money, time, and disruption.

It is a pleasure to be a panelist and organizer for this event, especially given that I was the moderator and an organizer of MITEF's well-received 2000 panel session  "Patents for Dot-coms," which had an equally distinguished panel.

Coactive TV -- The World of TV is getting there, and more is yet to come...

The kind of advanced "coactive" TV that I been promoting since 2002 is finally reaching the mainstream, but there is still much more to come.

As noted in a new page on the CoTV Web site, "Coactive TV: User-centered Convergence Today and Tomorrow:" 

The increasing prevalence of "media multitasking" (simultaneous use of TV and the Web) on laptops and smartphones began to change perceptions, and 2-screen ITV began to be seen as desirable in itself. Users were creating their own manual ITV experiences by finding relevant Web services on their own.  That set the stage for the emergence of CoTV 1.0, which was then kick-started by the iPad.  One indication of CoTV crossing the chasm into mainstream attention was the survey by Katherine Boehret of the influential Mossberg/Wall Street Journal/All Things D team on 12/20/11.

Another indication this is getting real was the number of announcements at CES. As reported by Bill Niemeyer in the 1/13 OTT Monitor from The Diffusion Group:

One key takeaway from CES that has floated above the noise pertains to Automated Content Recognition (ACR) for TV and video platforms. CES saw announcements from a number of ACR vendors including Audible Magic, Civolution, Gracenote, and Zeitera.

What is ACR? It's a variety of technologies that allow a device or service to recognize automatically a specific piece of content and synchronize to it within seconds. ACR can be based on audio/video watermarking or fingerprinting (i.e., cloud-based pattern matching used by mobile music app services like Shazam). Let your cell phone hear a brief bit of a song and Shazam will tell you what it is and even provide synchronized lyrics.

How can ACR be used in OTT [Over The Top]? It can synchronize interactive experiences for programs - whether viewed live or time-shifted - as well as advertising or e-commerce apps. Distinct from watermarking, which requires insertion in the content, fingerprinting can be done completely outside the realm of content providers, networks, and PayTV operators. That said, developing third-party synced apps without infringing on copyrights could be tricky.

With ACR, literally "the possibilities are endless" (to use a trite phrase). It's a powerful tool that needs to be put in the hands of creatives to realize fully its artistic potential, as well as clever business-side types to see how much "extended revenue" it can create.

But this is just the start. To look further into the future of advanced TV and video-based hypermedia, check out the section on "CoTV Tomorrow -- CoTV 2.0" on that new CoTV page.  A partial list of advanced features:

• Selectable, Alternative "Enhancement Channels" 
• Screen targeting
• Flexible session-shifting
• Link-and-pause (and sync bookmarks)
• Full hypermedia browsing  
• TV Context parameter/API
• Full Coactive Internet commerce and advertising
• Third-party linking rights/fees

The Necessity of Steve Jobs: ...Inventor? ...or Necessitor?

The recent comparisons of Steve Jobs to Edison and Ford brought me back to an important point: Invention is the mother of necessity. We don't realize we need something until an "inventor" shows us what it can be, and what it can do for us.

Which came first? Is necessity the mother of invention? (as the saying goes) ...or is invention the mother of necessity? Is inventing unrecognized necessities the real heart of inventing? As Jobs famously said: "It’s not the consumers’ job to know what they want.”

Jobs was more important as a necessitor, than as an inventor.  It struck me that the point some have raised -- that Jobs did not invent the technologies he popularized -- has some validity, but fails to balance the picture with this important point.  It is true that the mouse, the "drag-and-drop" graphical user interface, hypertext, music downloads, MP3 players,smartphones, tablets, touchscreens, computer animation, and many more key "inventions" applied by Jobs were not invented by him.  It seems widely recognized that Jobs' key contribution was that he saw how such things could be put to use in new configurations, and to serve needs that others did not see or saw less clearly (and also that he had the drive and resources to realize his visions...)

This resonated with me, because I have often felt that my own history as an inventor has a similar focus (even if hardly on the scale of Jobs').  The contribution is not so much in solving a recognized technical problem, but in seeing what technical problems should be solved, and why, and what else that would mean.  (That is why the theme of this blog is "user-centered media" -- that is pretty much the theme of much of my work.)

In a sense, this relates to innovation at the level of "systems thinking."  The necessitor does not just solve a problem, but creates a whole new system, within the larger system of people, technology, economics, and culture.  Jobs saw that what was missing in the music business was a new model for aggregated, simplified sales of music, and integration of an e-commerce system (the iTunes store) with a user agent (iTunes) and a device (iPod).  Once people saw that, they needed it.  No one created the wholistic vision that enabled that necessity to be recognized and acted on until Jobs did.

Similarly, some argue that Edison's real impact was not the light bulb, but the electric distribution system and related infrastructure that he recognized as needed to make the light bulb broadly useful.  It is perhaps more apparent that Ford was not so much an inventor of cars and mass production, but a necessitor, who realized that we needed simple black cars, and lots of them.  Often such cases are not simple inventions, but whole systems of invention.  One necessity/invention leads to other necessities/inventions, to whole ecologies of inventions.

So which came first? the necessity or the invention?  I suggest, as in most things, the answer is a non-dualistic "yes, both."  It is hard to separate the two.  Our patent system seems to think of inventions as the thing that matters.  The constitution defines patents to be for "any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvements thereof."  This has always seemed to me a limited view of what inventors do.

I suggest an equal form of "invention" is what Robert Kennedy spoke of:  "I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?"  Once we take that step, we may need to invent some technology, but often what we need to do is take the vision, understand all that it entails, and assemble a whole system from technologies that may have previously existed, but not been combined and adapted in the right way.  This kind of systems thinking, is on a much different level than the more commonly recognized engineering tasks of solving the technical problems to meet a previously recognized need.

...This also has led me to questions about the place for such contributions in the patent system.  It seems to me that such contributions may be equally deserving of some kind of patent protection, to reward the creative thinking that advances our "useful arts" and our civilization in general.  Just as with more narrow senses of technical invention, this takes not just inspiration, but perspiration (to paraphrase Edison).  But just how this kind of invention of necessity fits (or could be fit) with our current patent system seems a bit unclear.

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[Should anyone know of any good thinking by others on this theme, I would welcome references.]

Social TV -- The "Killer App" for Coactive TV -- Ready for Ubiquity

Social TV promises to be the killer app for coactive TV (CoTV).  (A "killer application" is an application that is so desirable to users that it drives the adoption of a larger technology.  The concept emerged when spreadsheets and word processors drove the adoption of PCs, which have obviously broadened to far wider importance.)

There are a number of signs that Social TV is emerging as such a killer app (some mentioned in previous posts).

• IntoNow launched in January 2011 and was quickly acquired by Yahoo on 4/25/11, and Spot411 re-launched 7/18/11 as TVplus.  Both have gotten prominent press and both do fully automatic syncing to any program, without need for any involvement by the TV distributor. 
• The Wikipedia article on Social Television was created in 5/07 with 3,244 bytes, grew to 5,528 by the end of 2009, then grew to 10,469 by the end of 2010, and to 16,851 by 8/23/11.  It now includes a list of 32 such systems (not all of which involve two-screens).
• One of the most popular FIOS TV apps was the Twitter app.

Being a killer app does not mean it will ultimately dominate the use of the platform, but only that it drives early adoption.  I suggest there are other killer apps for coactive TV as well, and that the long term value will span a wide range of apps.

• From a user viewpoint, EPGs (electronic program guides) are another important killer app, not least because it is one the MSOs (multi-system operators, TV distributors) are embracing along with users.  EPGs showcase the value of the companion device to allow interaction with a nice UI, and without interfering with current viewing.   The irresistible power of the iPad UI and relatively open ecosystem has finally convinced the MSOs that they must go outside the box (at least as to the set-top box and the TV screen).  Comcast and Time Warner Cable have moved quickly to offer tablet-based EPGs and DVR programming.  The coactive EPG will evolve into the full "Media Concierge" service that I have been blogging about since 2005). 
• The real money to drive all of this is in advertising.  Obviously this will drive the service providers and advertisers, but I submit that users too will recognize and increasingly demand the value of well targeted ads that exploit the flexibility of coactive UIs to be unobtrusive.  Well targeted ads can be a valuable service, as long as they are no more intrusive than the viewer wants them to be (which may vary from time to time, and from ad to ad).  Coactive ads--driving from a short spot to a companion microsite (whether linked to live, or deferred using a bookmarking feature)--can be far less intrusive and far more useful than a longer TV ad with no coactive companion element. A good UI can give the user control over when and how such ads appear.

All of these promising killer apps have synergy with one another.  Coactive TV is at heart hypermedia, and thus "everything is deeply intertwingled." (Quoting Ted Nelson, who also coined the terms hypertext and hypermedia.)

• Social TV apps can work both as program enhancements and to provide program guide/media concierge services.  
• Social TV can also be about ads, such as during the Superbowl, or when any ad of interest to my social circle appears.
• All of these will drive usage of enhancement content (such as IMDB pages), which will create further synergies.

But there is one more thing that is essential, and that is ubiquity. While full, ubiquitous coactivity is not central to all Social TV, I suggest it is essential to enabling it to reach scale.

• Synchronizing Web browsing to TV can be done manually, and has for decades.  Viewers have created their own Social TV ever since the first two people sat with a laptop in front of a TV, and ever since the first online chat about a TV program.  It can also be automated with program specific apps.  ABC did it a decade ago with Enhanced TV for the Oscars and other shows, and now on the iPad for Grey's Anatomy, but program and network apps cannot create massive synergy.
• What is essentially to enabling Social TV (and most other CoTV apps) to cross the chasm is ubiquity.  Siloing companion apps to a separate app for each network or program or advertiser is hugely self-defeating.  How many users will load more than a few apps, and how many will bother to open those apps more than once?  Just as the Web eliminated the need for separate apps for every content service, a ubiquitous CoTV service will require only a single context-linking app to reach services for every program, to every Web service. There will be all kinds of mashups driven by that context, but an effective context-linking service must be essentially universal.

A truly ubiquitous coactive TV service will be always on, and always aware of a viewer's TV context (except when disabled).  Such a ubiquitous service can activate any Web service and any application, in a rich ecology much like that on the Web.  That way a user can just set up the coactive companion context service just once, and get synchronized for any program or ad, to any social networking service, content service, or whatever -- whether directly, or via mashups.  (Just how such services can be structured to enable flexibility and user control was described in my published patent disclosures, and will be a subject of  future posts.)

It now appears that Social TV is the next big thing in TV, and will drive full coactivity -- but a whole lot of other functions will ride its coattails.

My Intellectual Ventures Inventor Profile

Recently I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Intellectual Ventures for a story about my work as an inventor. I have been looking forward to seeing it posted in their new Inventor Spotlight area. Unfortunately, I still have to wait a bit. My story was one of the first to be written, but my deal was fairly complex, and they want to work up to that. So, while I wait for them to present the story, I have written a teaser that can be found on my FairPay Zone blog.

"Squeeze More In" for Video Devices -- Never get stuck again!

Wouldn't it be nice to have a video device with infinite capacity that never got full?

• Have you ever shot so much video that your phone/camera got full and made you stop?
• Did you miss getting something on video because the phone/camera was full and you did not have the time or opportunity to upload or delete some video to make space for more?
• Has your DVR ever erased a show you wanted because you lacked space for a new recording?
• Has your DVR ever failed to record a new show because all your old video was marked "do not delete"?

If so, what you need is Progressive Deletion -- a compression method that lets your device "squeeze more in."  Of course it is not infinite, but it can enable a lot of squeezing.

Progressive Deletion is a new spin on video compression that is the subject of one of my recently issued patents.  It is not yet available on any device, but I am seeking manufacturers who want to offer this new feature to their users.  If you are in the video industry and know people who might build this, please let me know -- and tell them!  If you are a user who likes the idea, I am interested in hearing that also.

Background on Progressive Deletion is on the Web, but briefly, here is the basic concept.

• Many image compression algorithms allow for varying levels of compression, where the more you compress, the less the quality retained, and many cameras and DVRs allow you to set any of several levels of compression.
• Generally you pick one, and are stuck with it.  But more flexibilty is applied in "progressive" video transmissions, where you might receive only a high significance layer if you have limited bandwidth, to get moderate quality, or additional lower significance layers if you have more bandwidth.  The added layers add more quality when combined at the video player.  
• But either way, once you have the video saved on your device, it can't be made smaller without reformatting, and that takes time (if enabled at all)
• Progressive Deletion methods take this one step farther by storing video in your device layer by layer, so that an entire layer can be instantly deleted if you want to sacrifice some quality to free some space.

Thus you can "squeeze more in" by simply telling the device to delete some low significance layers, and just keep on shooting or recording.  That could also be set as an automatic operation -- your device might indicate that you are reaching a deletion point, and just do it if you keep shooting or recording, with no interruption at all.  Of course you might also be given the option to select specific videos to be squeezed or not.

All of this is done without changing the compression method, just by changing storage order (from by time, to by layer). It maintains compatibility with standard formats by just exporting the standard ordering when video is uploaded or transmitted (or importing from standard ordering when downloading).

TVs, iPads, Time Warner Cable, and Viacom -- Copyright vs. Copyrape

The latest overreach of copyright owners over the Time Warner Cable iPad TV app is an interesting encapsulation of all that is wrong with the current excesses of copyright.

I see this as a key policy issue relating my theme of "user-centered media" -- one that gets to the heart of the social contract behind copyright and all intellectual property. The key question is the balance of what is good for users, and what is fair incentive to content creators. The Constitution wisely embraced that balance, but many have lost sight of it.

The case reported by the NY Times Media Decoder is a classic of overreach (and one in which I find myself in the surprising position of supporting the cable companies).  As the Times reports, Viacom pleads that Time Warner Cable’s actions “will interfere with Viacom’s opportunities to license content to third-party broadband providers and to successfully distribute programming on its own broadband delivery sites.”  Let's think about that, both from a technical and a policy perspective.  This is not really a question of TWC vs. Viacom, but of the public vs. the rights-holders.

First, an quick look shows how silly this is from a technical perspective:

• Doesn't Time Warner's distribution of Viacom channels to TVs in the home limit "Viacom’s opportunities to license content to third-party broadband providers?"  If I could not get The Daily Show from TWC, I would certainly be much more inclined to use Hulu for it.  Why does Viacom allow that?
• How is an iPad different from a TV?  (Answer keeping in mind that this is the 21st Century.) 
• I have a Blu-Ray player and a Mac Mini both HDMI-connected to my TV, so I can watch any "third-party broadband provider" programming on my TV, and don't need TWC if Viacom is available through other providers. I can view such broadband provider content on any screen I like, and they are completely free to compete with TWC.  (Such any-screen connectivity will soon be the norm.)
• Why should TWC be locked off the iPad when Hulu is sold rights to distribute Viacom programming to any Internet-connected screen, including both TVs and iPads.
• Remember also that both TWC cable TV and broadband in TWC-served homes both arrive as RF signals running in different channels on the same coaxial cable!
• Once more, what century is this?

But this is really a deeper question of policy, and both content owners and content users seem to forget the basic social contract that drives copyright.  Let's step back to those basics:

• Copyright is designed to maximize social welfare by encouraging content creation
• Copyright owners are given limited rights as their incentive to create content
• The public pays to compensate creators for content.
• The public also may pay distributors and device manufacturers for facilitating access to content, but that has nothing to do with copyright.  (I have to pay for a book of Shakespeare plays or the Bible, or to download it to my cell phone in Timbuktu, but the content is free.)

Thus various parties have rights to compensation:

• The creators of Viacom content have rights to compensation for their content.
• Viacom is entitled to collect such copyright-related compensation, as well as compensation for their contribution to distribution (as well as some profit).
• Distributors and device providers are entitled to compensation for distribution and devices (which, again, has nothing to do with copyright).

But the viewer who pays for content has purchased the right to enjoy that content.  That can take a number of forms, but none are tied to what screen the viewer is using.  For a single viewer (or household, or whatever unit is bought):

• I can pay for time-limited access (such as a streamed subscription) or for permanent access (such as a download or DVD).
• Those costs may be bundled with distribution and device costs, but the underlying copyright fee is a simple and distinct component of that bundle.
• Any copyright-based limitation to content by device or location or technology that goes beyond the simple distinction of time-limited or unlimited access is without foundation.  Such limitations might be forced by technical limitations, but once those technical limitations disappear, they have no basis.

So if I pay for a Viacom program (content) one time, for a month, or forever, I should have unlimited rights to enjoy viewing that content, one time, for that month, or forever.  There might also be software fees for apps, and bandwidth fees for distribution, but there is no basis for any further content viewing fee.*

The copyright owners seem to have forgotten that the maze of licensing that they have so many lawyers working on is mostly an accident of technological history.  Hopefully the courts will not lose sight of the basics and let the tail wag the dog, now that technology is liberating us.  Hopefully they will not let copyright turn into copyrape.

Content does not want to be free, if its creator wants compensation (subject to his limited copyright).  But once I have paid for a license, I should be free to view it as I like, for whatever amount of viewing I have paid the creator for.  Watching multiple times might be a multiple use, but watching on one screen rather than another is not a different use.

Ask not for whom the copyright tolls, it tolls for thee -- for the public welfare.

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*A related issue is the current idea that cable-sourced access might be limited to in-home viewing.  That too is an artificial limitation,with no inherent justification.  It may be hard to prevent abuse of licenses, if I can let all my friends view my TWC content in their homes, but as long as TWC has the technical means to limit viewing to valid subscribers (and those viewing with them) why should there be any geographic restriction limiting out of home viewing?