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● 07.19.11

●● Former Microsoft Staff Shows That Microsoft is a Ripoff Artist (and Proud of It)

Posted in Microsoft, Patents at 3:04 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Collaborators left high and dry

Summary: The untold story about origins of the Kinect and how it relates to patents

THE i4i case is a classic story where Microsoft approaches someone with a good idea, pretends to be a partner, copies this someone's idea, and then throws this 'partner' to the dogs. Over the years we have covered several stories like this (sometimes the goal is to hoard patents) and there is a new one in last week’s news, alleging that Microsoft probably ‘stole’ the Kinect:

=> ↺ i4i case | Microsoft approaches someone with a good idea, pretends to be a partner, copies this someone's idea, and then throws this 'partner' to the dogs | sometimes the goal is to hoard patents | ↺ new one in last week’s news

After hearing of the HiE-D, Microsoft courted [Carlos] and requested a prototype. He gave Microsoft a prototype of the HiE-D, and according to [Carlos], it was taken to Redmond in February of 2007 – more than two years before the announcement of Project Natal. After meeting with Microsoft two more times that year, he was told by Microsoft that a patent on his invention wouldn’t be a bad idea.While any action on Microsoft’s part would be speculation, we will say that the Kinect is remarkably similar to the HiE-D. Both use a ‘constellation’ of infrared dots projected on the user, and both can are able to detect the ‘skeleton’ of a user for motion control. The image below, from the HiE-D patent, shows how the movement of a face can be tracked.

Keep this in mind when Microsoft screams “innovation” in relation to Kinect (which we sometimes call “KINect” because of KIN). █

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