From: DEFENDANT BURST.COM, INC.'S REPLY BRIEF ON CLAIM CONSTRUCTION (pages 9-11)

http://burstingsquidoo.com/12_22_06_Repl...

A. Richard Lang's Inventions

While Richard Lang certainly found his inspiration while thinking about a successor to the dual-deck analog tape VCR, an invention for which he had jointly received U.S. Patent No. 4,768,110, that inspiration led him to conceive an entirely new way of handling audio and video. The VCR had enabled consumers to record onto magnetic tape the analog audio/video programs that were broadcast to their televisions in real time, allowing them to watch a recorded program at a different, later time. '995 Patent, 1:7-12. The dual-deck VCR added the feature of copying a recorded program from one VCR tape to another. '995 Patent, 1:40-49.

The dual-deck VCR was merely the launch pad for Mr. Lang's invention. To call his inventions a "mundane" improvement on the VCR, as Apple does, is to misread and misrepresent the Burst patents. To contend that only one sentence in the specification supports the patents' paradigm shift, as Apple also does, is to ignore numerous other passages in that specification. The innovations in the claimed inventions as compared to a conventional VCR are significant, and include:

• receiving audio and video programs from a variety of digital sources and analog sources, and converting to digital form. '995 Patent, 1:53-57; 2:18-22; 2:27-32.

• using data compression to reduce the number of digital bits that constitute the program, enabling reduced storage and high-speed transmission of a program in a time period shorter man it takes to watch it. '995 Patent, 2:42-51.

• storing the digitally compressed program in digital memory to provide quick, random access to any given segment of a program. *995 Patent, 2:59-66.

• enabling the user to edit the stored programs, using computer software executing on a processor. '995 Patent, 1:56-59,2:67-3:2.

• transmitting the compressed program over high speed communication channels to another device that can play those same programs back, and doing so in a period of time shorter than the real-time playback. '995 Patent, 7:51 -66.

• configuring the transceiver apparatus with computer system components such as a processor, memory, sophisticated digital circuitry, and software to provide enhanced capabilities and improved signal quality. '995 Patent, 4:17-27.

• packaging the transceiver into a portable housing. '995 Patent, 10:50-51.

In short, the Burst patents describe a device and a method for handling audio and video programs to eliminate the constraints of scheduled programs and real-time delivery. It may be difficult to recall that era now, 18 years after the filing of the first Burst patent application was filed. Today, a consumer can go to the iTunes Music Store to download a digitally compressed song, album, or video onto an Apple computer or Windows PC in less time than it takes to watch or listen to it; store the downloaded audio or video on that computer; and then efficiently transmit that song, album, or video to an iPod for playback at any time. Notwithstanding Apple's efforts to trivialize Mr. Lang's invention as a "mundane" improvement on the VCR, Lang*s invention embodies mis new world and me shift away from the broadcast paradigm that existed in 1988.