Sony refused peer-to-peer patents

by admin August 17, 2006 at 9:30 am

‘Computer programs are not patentable’

Sony cannot patent inventions in the UK that remove the anonymity of the peer-to-peer (P2P) user experience and put social networking at the heart of file-sharing.

The Patent Office ruled last week that the inventions are not eligible for patents.

Sony filed two patent applications for complementary inventions. One describes a means of exchanging information between computers or other devices in a network. The other describes ways of using that information.

The application for the “system and method for reviewing received digital content” describes building a web community.

When a P2P user downloads a piece of content from another user’s computer, be it a song or a game or a movie, he normally knows nothing about that user ?¢‚Ǩ‚Äú or where that user obtained the content. Sony’s proposal would change that experience.

Sony describes a method for attaching a user history to content when it is shared among computers or other devices. When one user downloads a song, he can see who had it last and what he thought about it.

Full article: The Register