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USPTO Confirms Validity of U.S. Patent 6,304,715.

Boca Raton, FL – October 23, 2013 – The United States Patent and Trademark Office's Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) has issued a decision in the ex parte reexamination of U.S. Patent 6,304,715, owned by Nissim Corp. The PTAB reversed all claim rejections on the merits, thereby confirming the validity of all claims of the '715 patent under reexamination. This was the second ex parte reexamination of the '715 patent. The first reexamination concluded on January 4, 2011, with a confirmation of the validity of all claims. Both reexaminations of the '715 patent had been requested by Time Warner, Inc.

The '715 patent was originally issued on October 16, 2001 to inventor Max Abecassis, and is titled "Disc Having a Code for Preventing an Interference with a Playing of a Video Segment." The '715 patent covers optical discs utilizing User Operation Control capabilities as specified in the DVD Specifications for Read-Only Disc, Part 3, Video Specifications, Version 1.1, December 1997. User Operation Control capabilities prohibit users from, for example, fast-forwarding or skipping through certain segments such as the menu, advertising, and the FBI copyright warning preceding a movie prerecorded on an optical disc.

Exemplary claim 1 of the '715 patent recites: "A laser readable disc for use in conjunction with a playback apparatus having a random access capability and a plurality of control functions for selectively playing separately addressed video segments, said laser readable disc comprising: at least one spiral track storing a video program comprising a plurality of separately addressable video segments; video segment address information directly defining said plurality of separately addressable video segments; and at least one segment code, in addition to said address information, for preventing at least one of said control functions of said apparatus from interfering with a playing of at least one of said plurality of separately addressable video segments."

PTAB's decision