cross application/language communication

Les and David,

I'm not a patent lawyer either.  (I also am not the inventor of Silhouette, nor do I own shares in IVN or presently have a business interest in Silhouette).

Imnasho, Silhouette definitely is an interesting approach to doing avs which are much more expressive than the relatively static usual avs. It works too. Kinda.

I do not know whether or not Benman's patents re his Silhouette video avatar technology hold water and would prevail in court. Given that Benman is a patent lawyer by trade, the odds are good that he did his homework properly though. I for one would not like to go to court over something invented as well as patented by a patent lawyer.

Although... I occasionally pointed out products to Benman which I thought came close to Silhouette and asked him if they infringed his patent or not. In the case of the EyeToy, for instance, he felt it did not. So far, I cannot recall a single product I pointed out to him which he felt infringed on his patent.

As to finding alternatives, that may not be necessary. I believe Benman may be persuaded to very friendly licensing terms. IVN indeed has found it relatively challenging to date to market the Silhouette license and to get it being used by any significant number of users. So a distribution platform like OpenCroquet with its ambitions of -given half a chance- even going so far as replacing the 2D web as humanity's default interface to online information and services... is definitely attractive.

Should that approach not yield satisfying results, I believe -preferably subject to verification (of the full Benman patents -- I am not sure the full text of all of them are online) by a patent lawyer- Benman's patents may not cover the case where one drapes otherwise unprocessed video of a person over a 3D mesh. I mean, where that video is the full unprocessed frame. In other words, if you use straight video without extracting the video of just the person from the background. I can think of a few ways to use that approach and essentially end up with a similar result... and perhaps yielding a result that is even better than Silhouette.

By the way -full disclosure- I presently do not work for IVN (only worked for IVN on a consultancy basis too at that) plus I own no shares in IVN or any business associated with it or William Benman. I do maintain a friendly relationship with him.

Philippe Van Nedervelde
E-SPACES
SkypeID:  philippevannedervelde
http://www.e-spaces.com/lbw/portfolio/portfolio_time.htm


David P. Reed wrote:

Well, to each his own.   If you got a valid patent, good luck on figuring out a business model beyond trolling.

The world can probably find an alternative for 17 years.

Les wrote:

Hi, Phillippe,
	I read the two patent listings that came up on Google, and as that runs
it is a trivial extension of prior art.  The means described have been
available from a number of image manipulation packages for many years.

	I cannot argue patent applicability, as I am not an attorney, but
simply a programmer with over 3 decades of experience. 

	However what I have proposed is much more complex, and may or may not
be easily produced.  It is much closer to puppet animation technology,
and matches with work done in Blender and several other 3D packages only
adding the facial tracking capability.  

Regards,
Les H