A gripping tale of patent wars and even industrial espionage!
The article is written by Steven Carroll, who was the head of UK company Intimidation in the 90s. Some older DJs might remember Intimidation for producing some seriously innovative mixers for the time, such as the classic Blue:
These guys invented kill switches!
To put this in perspective, this was at a time when companies like Gemini still thought it was “cool” to put sound FX buttons on their (ugly) premium mixers, so DJs could drop “UFO” and “machine gun” FX into their mix. No joke :
Whereas Intimidation produced futuristic and forward thinking mixers, with the company being headed by a young, creative guy (in his mid-20s when running Intimidation). Big respect to Steven!
It’s an interesting tale, and no doubt some elements of it are true. But there are a bunch of just plain wrong information in there as well. I’m assuming that comes from only knowing one side of the story (and it happens to be the side most removed from the development of the first DVS).
Also, let’s clear up this whole Andre Rickli / RZA thing. That patent was for an OPTICAL system, and if you dig back further you can find similar systems dating back much further (like the optical mouse patent from 1984, or the optical digitizer patent from 1982 it was derived from, and on, and on). It’s completely unoriginal, and was never fully realized or monetized because this kind of system has several insurmountable limitations when applied to DJing.
N2IT’s first press release for FS1.0 was published in November 1998, and was announcing it’s retail availability in March 1999. It had been shown working at several shows before that, so it had been in the public eye as far back as 1997 (when I first heard of it), and in development at least a year before that. According to the UK patent office, Steve applied for a patent for a “digital control device” in early 1998, and that application was terminated in early 1999. I find it highly unlikely that Steve drafted an NDA, spoke to several companies about “his” invention in the fall of 1998, and then in early 1999 decided to abandon his patent application. And even if this were true, it would still be suspect, because he (by his own admission) only had some IP, and and at the same time N2IT had several prototypes and was ready to go retail in March 1999.
Also, Stanton was no “new kid on the block” in 1998, having been around since 1946 producing consumer phonograph products and DJ equipment for YEARS before digital vinyl was ever an idea.
Regardless of what happened with his DVS, it really sounds like he was treated like shit. No wonder he is so jaded. Someone even ripped off his entire company! They were whoring TouchDVS at BPM last year with some haggard booth girls. Tried to sell me one while I was wondering around with a TSP box! Had I known, I would have given them some shit.
Evidence is provided on the site in full detail with links to all relevant documentation and supporting the claims made:
It is no surprise that your perspective is distorted given your affiliation but having documentation and hard evidence as I do, it is impossible to argue with the claims made unless you can provide counter evidence to disprove any of my claims.
And for the record: what I said about Stanton being the ‘new kids on the block’ was with reference to them selling their own brand DJ mixers. It’s common knowledge they have a long history with stylus etc.
I usually offer nothing in terms of a topic continuing down its original path (mainly because I am fed up with the amount of idiots in the world who won’t even read).
This is no exception:
I know that people who create something new in the world want the credit. I get it. Personally, I don’t care who did it…all I can say is that I am very thankful that was even done. It has changed our culture dramatically. I would have never thought 14 years ago I’d be able to DJ on my computer in the future, without using WinAmp
I think you’re asking for the answer as to who originally invented it?
In which case, I have proved I was the first to conceive and patent the concept in Jan 1998 the concept of an encoded vinyl disc to control digital music (other versions were hardware systems or after mine), also given N2IT did not conceive of their company until about July 1998 and further their first patent was made in 2000 (2 years later) it was clearly not them.
Legally others like Ms Pinky etc. would be able to use my evidence in defense of any legal attacks made by those behind or are pulling the stings of the current rights holder who has made cases and nearly ruined some players as far as I can tell.
I am no longer involved in this market so have no direct commercial interest, therefore the direct consequences should be IMO that no one has any claim over this invention and the battle should fought out in the market place.
It would be nice to see real innovation rather than the constant duplication and in fighting and plagiarism, the same as which I faced earlier with the DJ mixers and is why I chose not to continue to develop the product. I had envisioned all this before hand and I’m not sorry to have pivoted into other sectors now I look back and see the current state of play.
If I had stayed I’m sure the industry would have moved on a bit further by now though, as it seems to have stagnated again .
Again, very interesting.
So to take your point that Ms Pinky could, in theory call N2ITs bluff and argue that N2IT neither have the right to sue them nor lay any claim to copyright.
Then Native Instruments could claim that they have been paying N2IT for nothing for all these years and at the very least just stop paying them..?
Oh and erm… dont you want some of that potential money yourself
Hey Steve. I’ve never hidden the fact that I worked for Stanton. Most people know me and are well aware. I don’t get how that somehow prohibits me from knowing what went on.
Let’s ignore the fact that I could make that NDA say that I invented water, and that the ONLY place that document exists is a digital copy from your own server and has no corroborating data from a non partial source. What I don’t understand is why you would attempt to shop around some IP, and then turn around and not a year later let lapse your biggest potential form of protection for that IP. You had no prior art, because you said you didn’t have any prototypes. You were shopping only ONE component of modern timecode (you mention nothing of the noisemap). And you were never granted a patent for “your” idea.
Nevermind that James Russell’s paper published from 1995 outlines the same thing. Or that by the time you put your NDA in place with Roland and filed for a patent, N2IT had already shown a working system publicly and was ready to offer a fully realized product for retail (and not just an idea about one component of it).
In 1680, Christian Huygens designed an internal combustion engine (based on gunpowder - hey Mythbusters!). There’s unquestionable proof of his design. But no one gives him credit for inventing the automobile.
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