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Oops, I meant,
One hopes that introducing a single further step DOES NOT constitute a "workaround" of Neomedia's patents -- that would be too easy, especially since often people may WANT the choice of whether to link automatically, or simply store the info.
You're right that there is a step or two introduced between the bar code scan and the actual link.
I don't know how Neomedia's patents may cover that concept. One hopes that introducing a single further step constitutes a "workaround" of Neomedia's patents -- that would be too easy, especially since often people may WANT the choice of whether to link automatically, or simply store the info.
I don't really have any further insight on this point at this time -- I'm just raising the question of how solid Neomedia's IP is on using 2D codes, insofar as they directly encode a URL, rather than going through a "resolution server".
And it's hard in any case to know what to make of the patents simply by looking at the claims -- those are almost always pretty obscure in their language, and, typically, requires the so-called "file wrapper" to make a sensible interpretation of them.
And I'm not a patent lawyer.
So, again, I just don't know. But I don't know of a case in which Neomedia has sued someone for using a 2D code without the utilization of a resolution server.
Thing is, as best I can tell from the Nokia documentation, the way in which the Nokia 2D bar code reading application works is that it directly encodes a URL -- which would imply that it bypasses entirely the Neomedia "switch", or resolution server.
The question is, if a 2D code does this, how well does Neomedia's IP really tell against it?
In all the other cases I'm aware of in which Neomedia sued someone, a 1D code was involved, or at minimum a "resolution server" -- Airclic, Virgin Records, lScan, Scanbuy.
Now the real question arises, that I raised a while ago: what does Neomedia have in its patent portfolio, if anything, that addresses the use of 2D codes to encode the URL directly?
In other words, who needs the Neomedia "switch", and how can Neomedia enforce its use?
You're certainly right that, in general, there are a lot of potential pitfalls in relying too heavily on patents.
In general, US patents are probably a lot more valuable than patents in other parts of the world, because we have a relatively strong patent system. In many other nations, nations that historically have copied far more from US inventions than they have themselves contributed, the patent system is pretty weak, and the patents, both in granted claims and in enforcement, tend to allow easy workarounds of the ideas of others (basically to allow their home-grown companies maximum ability to copy with impunity). For this reason, I'd expect that Neomedia's US patents probably mean a lot more than their foreign patents. But the US is in any case a HUGE market, and all the major tech players are here anyway, including Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo. What these players adopt will have a great deal of influence over the global market.
Now Neomedia certainly has some early patents in this area, and that is a very good thing. But my own view is that you can't have too many patents protecting a basic, broad concept. What they should be making sure of is that they amass as many in their portfolio as they can get. Each patent they add can add increasing certainty that they will be a major player in this space; if they rely on too few, some piece of prior art, or some workaround, can sabotage their efforts to establish their presence in the marketplace.
You're right that a typical patent (outside of the exception of some drug patents) can't be extended past 20 years.
But what companies often do is to file a number of patents through the years that capture critical improvements or variations on the earlier patents. Insofar as these improvements or variations really block out the competition, they can be nearly as effective and important as the original patent.
Sometimes I think it is possible to extend the life of the underlying invention by the sort of means you're describing, though I think drugs represent a special case.
But doing so is not always possible.
The real hope for a business is that it can use its patents to achieve dominance during the effective lifetime of the patents, and then use that dominance itself to stay on top, perhaps by establishing a standard.
US patents are now effective from 20 years from filing date. It used to be 17 years from issue date.
So Neomedia's earliest filed patents won't expire for about 10 more years.
An interesting development.
From Reiter's Camera Phone Report:
http://www.wirelessmoment.com/2006/05/ctia_venture_gr.html
CIA venture group invests in Rhevision for camera phone autofocus optical zoom
A U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)-backed startup company, Rhevision Technology, is developing a tiny autofocus zoom lens designed especially for camera phones, according to an article today in Silicon Beat.
Funded by the CIA’s In-Q-Tel venture capital arm and EDF Ventures, Rhevision’s Web site says nothing except, “Shh! We are quietly developing the most advanced, miniature autofocus and optical zoom lens system in the world! This lens module is going to rock the entire camera-phone industry.”
Tim Rueth, CEO of Rhevision, says in the company’s press release today, “Soon, camera phones will have image sensors comparable to the quality of digital still cameras. What's lacking is the optical zoom and auto focus functions due to size, weight and cost limitations.
"Our optical zoom lenses will meet these market demands and offer auto-focus and 3x optical zoom while fitting in the small form factors of new cell phone designs. Our unique and proprietary approach will prove superior to competing approaches.”
Beyond the lab
Silicon Beat says In-Q-Tel “assures us this technology is out of the lab and very close to commercialization….”
Rhevision is a spinoff of the University of California at San Diego.
I’ve been surprised (pleasantly) by the rapid developments in camera phones. I didn’t think we’d see any optical zoom lenses by now, and already there are 2x and 3x lenses — not including Rhevision’s — incorporated into camera phones.
I certainly agree that the trend is going to be more powerful cameras on cell phones, some of which may rival today's better digital cameras.
Really, I was just focusing (hah) on the question of how camera phones work with bar code technology. A macro capability certainly solves the problem; autofocus would probably do better; for a variety of reasons, I wonder how much simply adding more pixels, while maintaining only fixed focus, solves the bar code reading problem.
Anyway, as I indicated, I don't think that there's resembling a serious technical or expense issue when it comes to approaches such as adding macro capability.
It's probably worthwhile to bear in mind, though, that cameras on phones DO suffer from certain disadvantages: they tend to require small lenses, and those lenses tend to be much closer to the sensor than on an ordinary digital camera, and the sensors themselves tend to be smaller. All of these affect image quality significantly, even if the number of pixels is the same as with an ordinary digital camera.
While I certainly expect cameras on phones to get a lot better than they are so far, I regard it as an open question just how good the average camera on such a phone will really get. The form factor of a cell phone is highly constraining, and its unclear how much the public will be willing to pay for high quality camera parts on a cell phone.
So, again, I just don't know exactly how this is going to play out, in terms of camera quality itself -- but bar code reading capability is easily possible.
I'm really in complete agreement with you here.
There's absolutely no reason that the technology in use in Japan can't be adopted in the US. None.
But it's important to realize that there are impediments to progress that delay the adoption of the technology (something as simple as the failure of most camera phone manufacturers to include an inexpensive item like a macro capability).
It should also be noted that it is easy for appropriate 2D codes of reasonable size to be used by ANY camera phone, no matter its optics or sensor. To introduce very usable technology employing a suitably designed 2D code requires nothing more than the introduction of software on the handset. So, using such a 2D code, there really IS no impediment but that of persuading a carrier or a camera phone manufacturer to put it on their handsets.
I don't disagree that the trend is toward megapixel cameras on camera phones, but they are still a minority, as best I can tell, at least in the US and Europe. As I've said elsewhere, even if a megapixel camera without macro focus can read some product codes under some conditions, it doesn't mean that they are really usable in that mode. There may be important difficulties with framerates (the image is many times as large as with VGA), with motion blur (requiring a very steady hand), that just aren't going to go away.
My guess is that the way most camera phones in Japan do bar code reading is by the introduction of a macro capability. This is NOT an expensive item, per se: it only requires a cheap mechanism to change the offset of the lens from the sensor. For some reason, camera manufacturers resist introducing this feature. Maybe in Japan they have already been persuaded that it's worth it.
One further possible solution to this problem is the introduction of autofocus -- I gather the Nokia N93 phone coming out in July will feature this. That might be the best possible solution, because it wouldn't require any input from the user.
Thanks for the info about Hudson.
But I still don't understand why on earth Scanbuy would not post any press releases on its web site about recent developments, or why its VC backers don't simply insist on it.
There's something there that really needs explanation. I mean, the last press release is March 2005??
A further point.
As I said, it's very odd that Scanbuy does NOT have any press releases on its web site after March 2005 -- over a year ago -- and that even those at that point only have to do with conferences at which it will be present.
One possible explanation for this (only a POSSIBLE explanation -- I certainly don't know that it's true!) is that it buys Scanbuy wiggle room in its assertions about progress in the marketplace. It can talk as though its making great strides with carriers to the outside press, but there need be no substance to back it up. You see, if you use an actual press release, both parties must sign off on it, and it in effect becomes a legal document.
It is impressive that not a single press release since March 2005 backs up any of the assertions Scanbuy appears to be making.
Now it may very well be that every last thing Scanbuy has even hinted at is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth; I of course have no way of really knowing. If so, all they have to do to correct any misapprehensions here is to post relevant press releases on its web site. But why don't they?
With respect to carriers "supporting" them, I guess I wonder what that might really mean in any case.
One basic problem is that virtually no camera phones in the US or Europe actually can read product codes without an add-on lens (maybe a megapixel camera can do so without such a lens, but their are other serious usability issues in such cases -- e.g., slow frame rate among others). So what can it mean that Scanbuy has a carrier supporting them? That at some point down the pike, the carrier will introduce a camera phone that CAN read product codes? How do we really know that's going to happen? Where are the press releases by the carriers themselves to that effect?
The real problem is that it's easy for Scanbuy to talk about support from carriers, but it's not clear what, in reality, any of this might mean.
Likewise, it's very odd that the VC money has not been mentioned on Scanbuy's site -- which more generally is pretty bizarre in that its press releases are so far out of currency. Again, what's the evidence that that VC money is actually coming in? Is it really more than just a rumour (a convenient one for Scanbuy, I'd think)?
What real evidence is there that, first, this alleged new "acting" CEO really is in that capacity, and that, second, there is VC money about to kick in?
How do we know this isn't all just something made up by Scanbuy to make themselves look like they've got more substance than they do?
Maybe there's good evidence of these two points, but I find it very odd that none of it has turned up on their web site.
I mean end users.
The technology is interesting, in the same sense that, say, Artificial Intelligence is interesting.
But being interesting doesn't mean it's going to work reliably enough in enough circumstances that people are going to use it in everyday life. That was the problem with AI -- and, in effect, Mobot's technology really just IS another species of AI/pattern recognition, with all the attendant difficulties.
As I said, it is probably good and maybe even necessary PR for Neomedia -- just as it serves that purpose for Microsoft. But if you hope that it's going to have a huge direct revenue payoff, I personally don't see it. For what those two cents are worth.
As critical as I've been of Mobot's technology, the serious problems with the Mobot acquisition has to do with its likelihood of success with consumers, not with its financials.
Look, Mobot is a company pushing a technology that has yet to be adopted. It is hardly to be expected that it's going to have good financials, and no serious criticism of it that it doesn't yet.
As far as any value attached to its IP, well, no one can really know the scope of patents until they are awarded. I expect that the value quoted is just a nominal figure, and not expected to mean much of anything.
And, though, again, I personally doubt very much that it's technology is going to prove very useful for most people, it DOES serve a useful purpose for a company like Neomedia -- namely, the same purpose the like technology does for Microsoft: it seems cool and leading edge. That's why Microsoft played up the technology so much, and why other companies do the same. From the standpoint of PR, it DOES serve a very real and important purpose.
Well, to begin with, not all camera phones have megapixel sensors (my guess is that it's only a clear minority at this point that do so) so that it's certainly not true that 3GVision's software works on ANY camera phone to read ANY standard bar code.
I'm guessing that what's going on here with the specs is that if you introduce a very large sensor, with many pixels, you can in principle decode a standard bar code at some distance, because now you can move the camera phone back, achieving some focus, and yet have enough pixels to decode the code.
The problem is that it starts to become increasingly awkward to point to a particular code (what if there are more than one in the field of view?), and it is very likely the case that other factors such as motion blur, etc., become major impediments to decoding.
In general, these specs have to be understood in the light of how they are stretched to make their case. Yes, there may be a particular camera phone with a particular field of view and a particular focal distance with a megapixel sensor that is able to read particular product codes at 30cm (about a foot). But can it read them when they are printed very small, as is common? Can it read them with motion blur at that distance? Does it read them every time, or only once in a rare while? Do you have to back up still further, or get even more pixels in the sensor before it becomes reliable in decoding? What if the field of view is pretty wide, reducing the number of pixels a bar code subtends?
In short, there are all kinds of usability tradeoffs here that the spec cunningly simply does not address. But they will have everything to do with the actual viability of the application on the relevant devices.
I think that by far the most basic issue is the presence or absence of macro capability in the optics. Typically, this requires some means of adjusting the distance of the lens from the sensor. It's actually a pretty inexpensive item, but for some reason a lot of camera phone manufacturers resist using it -- possibly because it introduces another moving part that might fail.
There is absolutely no reason to believe that 3GVision's bar code reading software works on all camera phones reading any kind of code at any printed size.
Almost certainly, if a camera phone can read an ordinary product code, then its optics have been accommodated for this purpose, most obviously by including macro (close) focus.
Take a look at an image of a product code taken by a camera phone that does NOT have close focus. Notice the complete blur of the finer bars. This will tell you what you need to know about the ability of software to detect the edges of those bars reliably.
My guess -- and it's little more than that -- is that BSD derives most of its revenue from billing telecom customers, and that it counts as "revenue" anything that it collects from those customers. That would make revenues very high, but ultimate profits quite low.
If it's basically a bill collecting service, this would all make some sense.
Another way to look at the market is based on the number of people likely to use barcode technology in particular on their cellphones.
Yesterday, there was an article that mentioned that in Japan, TODAY, 27% of cell users utilize bar code technology.
In the US -- where I expect NEOM's presence should prove to be strongest -- the number of cell users in two years will be (very roughly) about 200 million. Assuming that it takes the US about 2 years to catch up to Japan in its adoption of bar code technology on cell phones, that would work out to roughly 50 million users of the technology.
I ask, how can this market NOT be huge at that time? If NEOM plays its cards right, and becomes a major enabling company behind this technology, how can it fail to bring in great revenues, even only two years into the future?
I don't know if what you're claiming here about NEOM's patents is really true.
One important use of traditional 1D product codes is that they can be used to do comparison shopping over the Internet, or to retrieve information about a product, etc. I'd expect that the patents NEOM got from LoyaltyPoint would have claims against that concept, and it may very well be that some of NEOM's own patents likewise do, because they certainly talk at length about the use of product codes.
Those are good questions.
It's a little hard to make out just what the IBM patent DOES comprehend. It seems that claims are oddly narrow and cumbersome, as best I can determine -- it would seem that there might be easy ways to work around these claims as they stand because, among other things, they hang on certain ways of using "customer records" to create URLs which are used only in certain ways. I don't think the way NEOM handles the "switch" works like this. I'd expect that NEOM just sets up a table on the "resolution server" with an entry for a unique ID as input, and some predetermined URL, set up by a customer, as output. The unique ID would not directly be used as a key into customer records, as the IBM claims describe, but only into the table on the resolution server.
What that would imply is that IBM might not be able to countersue NEOM on the basis of this patent, even if it felt impelled to do so.
I do on the other hand think these claims would certainly apply to a mobile device as a "client computer".
Did you even read my post?
I'm arguing that those are very promising numbers for the ultimate upswing in the US, which, I agree, is 1-3 years behind Japan in its adoption of mobile technology.
I don't get you guys. You can all in a sweat about how many shares are outstanding, and who at NEOM is selling which shares, and whether piddly Scanbuy, because it gets some publicity, is somehow "taking over market".
Maybe short term stock swings depends on that crap, mainly because you yourselves get all bent out of shape over it, but in the long term, it's the adoption of barcode-to-web technology and the strength of NEOM's hold over it that matters.
Do none of you keep your eye on the ball here?
Look at the numbers out of Japan. 27% are already using barcode-to-internet technology.
Please explain why the US won't soon be following suit?
Just to follow up, I think the number of people using bar code reading in cell phones is the sort of number long term investors in NEOM should REALLY be paying attention to.
At base, NEOM as a company can become a huge growth stock under two conditions:
1. The barcode-to-web market becomes important to consumers.
2. NEOM has a secure hold on that market.
The numbers out of Japan are very good evidence of 1.
NEOM stock may thrash about in the short term, but if conditions 1 and 2 hold, in the long term it should pay off very, very well.
This is VERY good news.
You can make all the good theoretical arguments you want about whether barcode-to-web technology will be important, but actual adoption is always the one and only true test of viability.
Since I'd expect that only a minority of phones in Japan even HAVE barcode reading capability at this stage, its adoption by 27% is enormously promising.
I do pretty much believe that what you say is true.
I think that in time -- unclear how much time -- Scanbuy's not going to like its chances so much in the patent suit, and is going to settle. In many ways, the somewhat slow potential adoption curve really works in Neomedia's favor here: Scanbuy really just can't hope to take over the market, and keep Neomedia at bay until the bitter end of a patent suit, with the expectation that they will still be the market leader even if they lose the suit.
Just to follow up on my previous post, one way to think about the point I'm making about Scanbuy is that it's hardly as if Scanbuy can possibly be getting so much traction in the market that it will capture it from Neomedia.
In fact, that market is going to take some years to come to fruition, given the obstacles to adoption. By the time it DOES achieve critical mass, the patent suit surely will have come to completion, one way or another.
Bottom line is, I wouldn't sweat Scanbuy so much.
With regard to Scanbuy, I wonder how many people are aware that the real problem with using its price comparison application via reading bar codes is that it would require an add on lens for virtually all current camera phone models in the US and Europe. That's a pretty big obstacle to adoption. The same problem holds for ANYONE trying to introduce this capability -- Neomedia included, for that matter.
Maybe someday camera phone manufacturers will be convinced to introduce macro lens capability in all their phones, but that's not an easy sell. I'm just not sure how long that process will take, but I'm sure it's putting a major damper on the adoption of the technology, which otherwise certainly seems very appealing.
This is a key reason that companies are turning to 2D codes to implement new applications linking print to internet -- 2D codes of proper design can be used on ANY camera phone. Of course, the downside is that they have to themselves be introduced -- they don't already exist in vast numbers on products or on anything else. But at least whereever they are placed, they can serve a specific function on ANY camera phone, in principle.
Now none of these problems is intractable by any means. Mainly, they just require adoption by the parties involved; the actual expense of the adoption is not great, but it requires a deliberate decision to proceed with the entire approach, and that sort of change can be hard to effect.
In any case, it's worthwhile remembering this when one wonders why Neomedia has taken so long to get adoption of the ideas it has been promoting. Basically, one just has to be patient with the process. I have no doubt that the adoption will occur, but the timing is nearly impossible to predict.
The moral is, Neomedia's real value may not be made apparent for many months or even years from now.
I certainly agree with this.
It's just very strange that such significant events such as the hiring of a new CEO and the supposed large infusion of investment from some VC firms has not yet been noted on their web site.
It's a little hard to imagine why the VCs would not be pretty upset if Scanbuy couldn't get it act together enough to see to it that the web site reflected these changes immediately.
Honestly, I wonder how much of this is even true, or truly put into contract.
If ActiveShopper is only in beta test with its reformatting of the data for a cell phone, I could see that that could be something that Neomedia might be waiting on to make a real push.
It's always better to aggressively promote a product with most of the wrinkles worked out.
Yeah, I think this is what most people on the outside don't realize.
The real movement within a company is stuff you probably won't know about until it gets announced. That's just the way it works.
There may be some genuine issues raised Scanbuy's apparent relative success -- I just don't know. I would be far less concerned about the publicity it receives than by actual, money making deals it might strike. It seems to be signing on some deals, but I'm not sure whether there's any real money involved, or if it's just promotion.
Some pertinent questions to ask Neomedia is how it feels its technology measures up to that of Scanbuy's -- for example, how good is its database for comparison shopping? Is there anything about the business model its trying to get potential customers to buy into that may put them off?
I really don't know the answer to these questions, but I think those are the sorts of questions I'd ask. Given how much money Neomedia appears to have to put into sales and marketing relative to Scanbuy, I'd expect that Neomedia certainly should have more boots on the ground selling its solution, so I've got to think there's something about what Neomedia's proposing that may be standing in the way.
I have no idea what that might be. In fact, it could be that Scanbuy is making promises it can't keep, or selling a business model that is a loser in the long run, and Neomedia is steering clear of all that.
I'm not sure why you are concerned about this.
If Neomedia is doing it's job -- and I have no reason to believe it isn't -- it isn't waiting for major players to chance on them via a Google search. Instead, it would be proactive, seeking out those people, and explaining the technology to them. That's almost always the way sales and marketing works -- the public doesn't really have a way of knowing about what's going down until the deal is done.
Again, I'd expect that Neomedia is doing precisely this sort of thing behind the scenes. One just has to be patient.
Well, you're certainly right that Mobot is not saying that it currently is trying to recognize random images and divining what the consumer has in mind, but I DO think that this is what it regards as its long term mission -- as is true of the developments at MSFT. That, I think, is doomed to technological failure.
Actually, I think the restriction to logos is a very good step, from the standpoint of potential technological success; it definitely constrains the problem.
But can Mobot recognize the thousands or tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of logos out there, and identify them reliably? Or is it stuck being able to identify just a very small number of them? How useful is a technology so limited? Do consumers really care that much about information associated with generic company logos?
You see, once you get down in the weeds of the technology, with its real constraints and limits, questions arise as to its real value.
Again, I regard Mobot as very much an unknown quantity.
But Mobot is only a small portion of Neomedia, in my estimation. The real value of Neomedia lies elsewhere, in areas that are in any case much more easily known and estimated.
Look, I don't know WHAT Mobot has licensed or not.
I would guess that at minimum Mobot has a license to use, say, Imagen's technology, given what's on its web site, but I see nothing to indicate that it has EXCLUSIVE license to the technology. Neither do I know how good is the IP Imagen holds in this field; others may have equally good or better technology, so far as I know.
Now, Mobot could in principle have real value even if it lacks exclusive licenses here; it could have developed the greatest technology possible for this space. But I'm simply saying its mostly an unknown quantity, given what I've read about it so far.
On the other hand, Neomedia's IP is simply a matter of public record. We KNOW what it owns in terms of patents. The descriptions, claims, and priority dates are a matter of public record. I also know, as we all know, that bar codes DO work (likewise RFID). I'm MUCH more comfortable making predictions regarding possible success based on THAT kind of solid information than I am on the various kinds of speculation involved in evaluating Mobot.
Let me make the important qualification that I am NOT a patent attorney.
But I did once upon a time take a look at Neomedia's most basic patents, the ones it filed very early on. Mostly, they talk about the uses of 1D codes, and particularly the notion of a "resolution server" -- important perhaps for 1D codes, but not so for 2D codes (Semacode, for example, simply encodes a URL in the code itself).
My general sense was that the strength of Neomedia's IP is really in the area of 1D codes, product codes in particular, not 2D codes. This of course is only more shored up by its acquisition of patents from LoyaltyPoint, which focus on product codes.
All of which goes to make at least one point: Scanbuy in particular has chosen to storm the fortress at Neomedia's very strongest point: the use of standard 1D product codes. Why they would choose the strongest, rather than the weakest, point, is probably best understood by their therapists.