I promise – these are my last two posts of the day (SFX –wild cheering)…

Apple founds its infringement defense largely on the fact that ‘995 utilizes some kind of “time compression” technique, that is used in IPOD or ITunes.

But in fact ‘995 does not utilize time compression. Why? It utilizes DATA compression.

In addition to the excellent arguments in this vein presented on this board, here is another one.

Look closely at the prior art cited by ‘995 in which any means of compression is just merely mentioned (and not necessarily claimed). Without exception, all the compression referenced is DATA compression (capitals my emphasis).:

4,851,931

“…The present invention relates to a novel method and apparatus for taking an analog audio signal, converting the signal into a DIGITAL AUDIO SIGNAL, and thereafter converting the digital audio signal into a standard bandwidth video signal and thereby substantially compressing it….

“…..digital audio signal from said signal storage means and converting said digital audio signal into a standard bandwidth video signal by passing the DIGITAL audio signal through a 256 Kbyte video frame buffer and thereafter outputting the signal from the video frame buffer sequentially through an 8 bit digital to analog converter thereby converting the signal into a standard bandwidth video signal which is a compressed audio signal…”

My comment: compression of digital audio is accomplished via a video frame buffer. A buffer is memory in which digital DATA is stored. The compression is achieved while the audio signal is in DIGITAL DATA form, hence it is DATA compression.

4,698,664

“Yet one more object of the present invention is TO COMPRESS BY PIXEL AND LINE SAMPLING AND THEN STORE THE COMPRESSED DIGITIZED PICTURE IMAGES in a unique ring memory array holding a plurality of such images wherein latest frame writing operations are carried out during playback sweep blanking time intervals to avoid data write and readback conflicts during real time display of the compressed images….

“…Once the line has been transformed into e.g. 512 digital data values or samples (pixels), those values enter a line store memory 98 where they are sub sampled. Requisite DATA COMPRESSION occurs at this point. Instead of storing every sample for the line, only one in four samples is stored in the array 98. In this manner, the horizontal line is compressed to one fourth of its original data content…This DATA COMPRESSION enables the monitor 16 to display four picture lines for each raster line of the display 18.…”

My comment: sampling (and storing only a part thereof) is a digital DATA compression technique. Compressed and DIGITized images are stored in a MEMORY ARRAY which does DATA “ read and writeback.”

4,750,034

“System for collecting DATA, relating to the showing of specific video information registered together with a core signal onto a registration carrier.”

My comment : this patent has to do solely with DATA collection and utilization.

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