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From: rlh@sfmag.UUCP (R.Hamilton)
Newsgroups: net.music.synth,net.legal
Subject: Re: Marble Madness & FM Music Synthesis
Message-ID: <710@sfmag.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 25-Sep-85 18:36:10 EDT
Article-I.D.: sfmag.710
Posted: Wed Sep 25 18:36:10 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 28-Sep-85 04:47:25 EDT
References: <2614@ihnss.UUCP> <267@weitek.UUCP> <2882@ut-sally.UUCP> <269@weitek.UUCP> <2953@ut-sally.UUCP>
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Xref: watmath net.music.synth:541 net.legal:2386

> In article <269@weitek.UUCP> mahar@weitek.UUCP (mahar) writes:
> >In article <2882@ut-sally.UUCP>, crandell@ut-sally.UUCP (Jim Crandell) writes:
		...
> >Patenting FM synthesis is a lot like patenting the color blue to my mind.
> >I'm well aware that others were there first. They didn't get that patent
> >however. There exists a feature of patent law which makes an idea unpatentable
> >if "it is obvious to anyone skilled in the art." I think FM qualifys here.
> >Yamaha's lawyers have big teeth however, and Atari didn't want to mess
> >with them.
> 
> This seems to be a good example of a type of incident that one hears
> about now and then and which usually leaves me with a profound sinking
> feeling.  I am assuming, of course, that Yamaha has a US patent, else
> much of this will seem rather silly.  The operative clause, the one
> about denying patent protection to any idea ``obvious to anyone skilled
> in the art'', is clearly designed to prevent unscrupulous moguls (or
> entrepreneurs, for that matter) from taking unfair advantage of patent
> laws, since there are obviously many good, potentially marketable
> technical ideas which have been in the public domain for a long time
> but have never been explicitly identified as such, despite (or perhaps
> because of) their familiarity.
		...
> 
> Am I the only person in the world who sees it this way?  Am I totally
> off the wall?  What is happening, anyway?
> -- 
> 
>     Jim Crandell, C. S. Dept., The University of Texas at Austin
>                {ihnp4,seismo,ctvax}!ut-sally!crandell

    As has already been amply mentioned, the patent was issued to
John Chowning and Stanford U. (the latter presumably because of
Chowning's affiliation with Stanford).  The point I want to make,
however, is that it is not at all clear to me that the idea of using
FM for music synthesis was not patentable, at least at the time 
the patent was issued.
    I am not a patent attorney, so take this with a grain of salt (it
is backed up by a perusal of our corporate reference book on patents):
there are four requirements for an invention to be patentable.  It
must be in a class of inventions defined as patentable, it must be
useful, it must be novel, and it must be non-obvious.  The first two
are straightforward in this case.  Novelty most likely also passes 
because it is only concerned with whether others were publicly using
the invention or already had a patent on it.
    The real question is non-obviousness, and I think that if you look
at what was going on at the time Chowning "invented" FM synthesis, you
will see that no one had done anything like it.  We now have the
perspective of a lot of development in computer music, but at that
time, I don't think that it was at all obvious that FM could be anything
more than an oddity at audible levels.  Even so, I agree that FM being
patented does put a crimp in the plans of those who would like to make
their own chip or otherwise capitalize on the technique.
				Dick Hamilton
				attunix!rlh


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