ALERT: Patenting Pitchbend Microtuning

AndyHal · Joined: Feb 17, 2008 Posts: 14 Location: Greenwich

Prior art? That tuning method is all based on the standard MIDI pitchbend message and this is like patenting pitchbend a quarter-century after its inception: I think the patent office purely got it wrong, which is not surprising at all if you consider the kind of incompetent people working there (possibly worse than the copyright office staff). If decently submitted, they would allow you to patent hot water and maybe even the wheel. This patent is completely useless from a legal point of view: not only because of the 'prior art' objection you already mentioned, but also because of the missing prerequisite of non-obviousness.

xjscott · Joined: Apr 25, 2007 Posts: 232 Location: Appalachia

Hi Carlo, yes that essay was my immediate response to finding out about this patent application.

So far it is only a patent application, but I suspect it will be accepted.

The reason is they have done this sort of thing before. On October 25, 2005, US Patent 6958442 was granted to Florida State University for the process of doing microtonality with polyphonic aftertouch. That was completely outrageous. At the time, I already had code that did poly-at retuning, but not just me, the technique is described on page 231 of Jeff Pressing's 1992 book "Synthesizer Performance and Real Time Techniques" (ISBN 089579-257-5) (along with a description of the pitch bend tuning method.) Warren Burt also published in July 1994 that both he and Jeff Pressing had written programs to do microtonality with poly-aftertouch, and then reported that the pitch bend method was better in his opinion. Despite all this well documented prior art, and also my writing a letter to the patent office informing of this prior art before the patent was granted, FSU still got their poly-at tuning patent and all I got for my trouble was a letter from the patent office that they do not accept comments from the public regarding patent applications. There is a terrible situation we have these days with patents being granted to non-inventors for things that are already publicly used and known, and there is little that can be done to challenge them before they are granted, and after they are granted, challenging them is an expensive and emotionally draining process in which usually the one with the more expensive lawyers (which is the bigger corporation, or the university) wins regardless of the facts.

Since I wrote that essay I've found that in 1994 Warren Burt published a microtonal score in which he listed as requirements a commercial program he had bought called "Microtonal MIDI Translator" by Denny Genovese. He reported that "Microtonal MIDI Translator" did polyphonic tuning via pitch bends. And I tracked down a 1987 article published by Ivor Darreg mentioning Denny Genovese's program, though he does not give the specific name of the program. If "Microtonal MIDI Translator" was the program in 1987, then it does predate my Nuscale system by a year, and so Denny is actually the inventor of pitch bend microtuning. Can't get back much before 1983 when MIDI was invented.

I've never talked to Denny, but I know someone who knows him, and Warren Burt has experience with the product so I'll try to get more information from either of them about its algorithm and date of invention. What can be done to stop this injustice at that point I do not know since the patent system is very flawed, but I think gathering a verifiable history of the invention and its contributors will be a useful endeavor regardless.

seraph · Posted: Sat Aug 30, 2008 3:37 pm Post subject:

I really hope things get straightened nicely Exclamation

btw Jeff Pressing was one of my teachers at Berklee and I also have the book you mention. Jeff was a great guy. Unfortunately he passed away in 2002

http://www.abc.net.au/arts/adlib/stories/s858418.htm

xjscott · Joined: Apr 25, 2007 Posts: 232 Location: Appalachia

Yes, I was sad to hear when it happened. It's amazing to me that you were his student. I didn't know he had taught at Berklee since he was living in Australia when he passed.

I'm glad you have his book. It has a lot of interesting techniques in it, things that would not have occurred to me even though I like to tweak things and can tell you strange gear trivia like the Roland D-50 had a preset for 19 tone equal temperament, which almost no one knew about.

seraph · Posted: Sat Aug 30, 2008 4:03 pm Post subject:

seraph · Posted: Sat Aug 30, 2008 4:09 pm Post subject:

look what I found:

http://electro-music.com/forum/topic-364.html

seraph · Posted: Sun Aug 31, 2008 3:07 pm Post subject:

Re: ALERT: Patenting Pitchbend Microtuning

see this:
http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/tuning/message/78369
and following posts.

XpanderXT · Joined: Oct 22, 2007 Posts: 137 Location: the flat universe

I worked at Roland and we had to remove the transpose function where you press a 'transpose' button and then hit a key on the D-50 (older ones will still have this feature and went after Roland for it. Yamaha managed to patent it years after others had done this. I heard that Yamaha even tried to patent the term VCO in the late 70's. I hope that this one gets rejected.
Roland then took up the game that yamaha played and now they get patents for all kinds of junk and love to threaten companies who do something that even seems to resemble what they have patented. I can't wait until their patent of using IR as a controller goes away. It's just stupid and they charge a lot for companies to use it.