Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84 exptools; site ihwpt.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ihnp4!ihwpt!knudsen
From: knudsen@ihwpt.UUCP (mike knudsen)
Newsgroups: net.music.synth
Subject: Re: FM Music & Bogus Patents
Message-ID: <487@ihwpt.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 26-Sep-85 17:18:22 EDT
Article-I.D.: ihwpt.487
Posted: Thu Sep 26 17:18:22 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 28-Sep-85 07:28:36 EDT
Distribution: net
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Lines: 38

That Stanford FM patent sounds a little bogus, or at
least it would apply only to Hardware realizations
(they don't really expect everyone who runs FM programs
on a computer to pay a nickel per song, do they?).

Reminds me of the good old Allen Digital Organ, ca. 1970.
It used the most basic of synthesis techniques -- scanning a 
prestored waveform.  I read their patent, which, as one post-er
would expect, dealt mostly with the ingenious details by
which their hybrid chip set did the job very cheaply.
However, as the individual patent claims rolled on,
they got progressively broader and broader, till the last
one "claimed any means of storing a waveform and reading it out
sample by sample to a D-A" or words to that effect.

Now, this technique had been published years before in
"The Technology of Computer Music" by Max Matthews of Bell Labs,
back when Bell usually let such trivia slip into public domain.
So Matthews had no patent, -- anyway, the patent was by Allen
Organ Co., not by Matthews or Bell Labs and assigned/sold
to Allen.  Here was clearly a
case of claiming a patent on a concept and algortihm that
was "well-known to those skilled in the art" of computer music.

The chip hardware claims are valid, but that last claim
is a joke.  I believe it is possible for individual claims
within a patent to be challenged and overthrown.
Anyway, Allen has never tried to sue Apple or Commodore
(whose Mac* and Amiga chips scan RAM waveforms), let alone
the vendors of software packages that play 4-part harmony
on TRS-80s.
	And I play FM (one voice) on my Color Computer.
I'd pay Yamaha a nickel per nite royalty if I thought
they could build instruments that sound half as good
as their dirt bikes.	mike k
(Their acoustic pianos are pretty good)
*Oops, the Mac scans by firmware, not a chip, but I think
the default waveforms are in ROM.