Every week, I look at a software patent that’s been in the news. You can see previous installments in the series here. In this week’s software patent adventure, Arbitron has sued competitor IPSOS for violating its patents on its “technologies” relating to collecting audience data from TV viewers and radio listeners. As Arbitron’s press release puts it:
Steve Morris, president and chief executive officer of Arbitron, said, “As a leading innovator of electronic audience measurement technology, we welcome competition as a way to foster the growth of the market. However, we must take action against companies that attempt to profit from our innovation by infringing Arbitron’s patents on the technology that we have worked so long and at such expense to develop. We have invested significant financial and other resources during the last 15 years in the development and testing of our PPM System and we will work aggressively to protect our investment and our intellectual property.”
I put “technology” in scare quotes because I think the word tends to be an obstacle to clear thinking when it comes to patent issues. Here is one of the three patents in question. It covers:
A method and apparatus for automatically identifying a program broadcast by a radio station or by a television channel, or recorded on a medium, by adding an inaudible encoded message to the sound signal of the program, the message identifying the broadcasting channel or station, the program, and/or the exact date.
How does it do this?
According to another aspect of the invention, the method also comprises selecting at least two narrow frequency bands of the sound signal and in altering the energy of the sound signal in said two frequency bands simultaneously in a manner that is predetermined and repeated to encode the identity message.
The encoding data rate can thus be increased by simultaneously adding different portions of the message in a plurality of narrow frequency bands in the sound signal.
It is thus also possible to improve the inaudibility of the encoded message by reducing the energy of the sound signal in one frequency band while increasing said energy in another frequency band so as to compensate for the changes of energy in the sound signal between the two frequency bands.
According to another aspect of the invention, the method comprises splitting up the sound signal into frequency components, either in analog manner by filtering or else in digital manner by a Fourier transform or by a wavelet transform, altering the energy of the frequency components lying in the above-mentioned frequency band(s) in a manner that is predetermined, and then rebuilding the sound signal and in broadcasting it or recording it on a medium.
As near as I can tell, this isn’t a patent on a particular encoding method. It’s a patent on the very concept of encoding digital information in an analog signal, at least for use in audience-measurement devices. Any smart engineer faced with the problem Arbitron faced would have come up with a solution similar to the approach described in the patent.
And that’s a serious problem. Arbitron talks about IPSOS “profiting from our innovation” and “infringing Arbitron’s patents on the technology that we have worked so long and at such expense to develop.” To the casual reader, that sounds like IPSOS made a cheap knockoff of Arbitron’s product in an effort to free ride on their R&D. But in fact, it seems that what’s happening is that Arbitron is simply seeking a monopoly on the business of monitoring audience share using digital signals encoded in analog transmissions. I’m having trouble seeing how granting such a broad monopoly helps anyone other than Arbitron.
Update: I should concede that this arguably doesn’t qualify as a software patent. I used it because it was the only major software-related patent litigation announced this week, and because it includes substantial software elements. Clearly, the software aspects of this “technology” are too obvious to merit patent protection.
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