Patent trolls suck A$$
Has anyone bothered to notice that this 'patent' (only valid in the good ole US of A btw) was applied for months *after* the first BluRay players arrived in Japan, with no less than three different manufacturers showing working BluRay plaerys in early 2004 in Japan, and Sony actually bringing them to market *before* Patent Troll (aka Target) bothered to even ask for their patent.
Strange how that little gem doesn't get reported.
Another fun facet of this might be this slight quote from Target Technologies own website.
"For many years gold was the only workable solution for the semi-reflective layers of DVD discs, until, in the late 1990's, Han Nee, Target Technology Company's founder, successfully developed a significantly lower cost solution involving a highly reflective silver alloy material. Han Nee worked with many of the resin suppliers to develop materials compatible with the silver alloy film facilitating a material set that is used in the majority of DVD's sold in the market today. Most resins offered today for DVD's work well with Target Technology's silver alloy."
So, it would appear the that the use of Silver rather than Gold in the manufacture of optical disc formats predates their patent application by more than several years, so one might think that Sony could point to the existence of prior art. After all, how hard is it to extend the use of silver rather than gold in the making of DVDs to the making of other Optical formats such as HD-DVD and BluRay?
Seems like Mr Han Nee might have somewhat given the game away on his own web page. After all if a technological advancement is something that is an extension of an existing concept that a competent practitioner in the field could come up with in the course of their work, well, it's not patentable, as the Supreme court in the US has recently ruled.
Should be interesting to see just how aggressive Sony gets on this one. They have spent billions, with others, developing BluRay technology, and along comes Patent Troll USA to spoil the party. I think I am losing count of the number of times some US based IP monger comes out of the woodwork years *after* all the development work on a major product is done, in order to sue for supposed patent infringement. If anyone wants to know what's wrong with the US economy, this is it.