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Someone Patented Product Placement in TV Shows
Apple Granted Patent on iGlasses
Google Patents World's Simplest Home Page
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Google in $3 billion Russian lawsuit
Microsoft can now @&!* censor your $#!@ in real time
Broadcom sues Qualcomm for supposedly ripping off its customers
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Is Microsoft after Yahoo's paid-search patent?

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SeeingI
10/30/09

In reply to Someone Patented Product Placement in TV Shows
Weirdly, the guy eating looks just like me. #productplacement
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günter macbeetle, codename: chrystlubitshi
10/30/09

In reply to Someone Patented Product Placement in TV Shows
now that i know that that is a knife.. i do kind of have an odd feeling of compulsion to go buy another one... and the rest of the article... well.. vaseline is a household necessity... should probably buy some more.... (looks at full cabinet).. yeah, definitely need more.. #productplacement
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smegz
10/29/09

In reply to Someone Patented Product Placement in TV Shows
This looks like reverse product placement, in that they are trying to associate a program with a commercial in the commercial, not the program. Like, take the World of Warcraft Mountain Dew commercials. Or, any commercial that may have included a storm trooper or other iconic film character. By what was written I assume they mean to take this further by integrating storylines from the show into the commercial. Skip the commercial, miss part of the show.

So, instead of seeing Bill getting killed in the food court with the knife in the show. You see a Carl's Jr. commercial showing Bill getting killed in the food court with the knife behind the guy getting ketchup on his shirt and shoes.

So, in that respect...this is still old hat. Most major fast food outfits include tie-ins to movies. Nothing as direct as offering plot points in the commercial but you probably get the idea. This seems like a good way for Hollywod to alienate fans of popular shows. I can see it now on a future episode of House:

House and team are stumped on a particularly infectious hangnail that is causing the patient to break out in green spots.

We cut to a stark white hospital hallway with a janitor mopping and noting the fresh pine scent.

"That's the power of Pine Sol."

In the background, House and team are rushing the patient into an open room as he spews various bodily fluids all over the floor.

"You missed a spot honey."

Cut back to the show. #productplacement
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goetz
10/30/09

@smegz: Thanks, you totally just ruined that Pine Sol episode for me. #productplacement
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tjhaflinger
10/29/09

In reply to Someone Patented Product Placement in TV Shows
This doesn't look like product placement to me. By the inventor's language, product placement might be called "Commercial-Integrated Programming", not "Program-Integrated Commercials". There's a big difference here.

If Greg House (I like that show) puts on a pair of Ray-Ban glasses, that's product placement.

If you're watching a commercial for Fujifilm, and someone in the commercial takes a picture of a cancerous lung, and later, in "House", you see a guy with a cancerous lung, that's what this guy invented. Not the same thing.
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ICanHasComments
10/29/09

In reply to Someone Patented Product Placement in TV Shows
Clearly Denizen has never been forced to watch the "new" 90210 as an unpaid intern... Summer Road Trips sponsored by Dr. Pepper... A yard sale episode just to allow the Big Mouth Billy Bass to appear a minimum of 5 times... need I go on? #productplacement
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atlasfugged
10/29/09

In reply to Someone Patented Product Placement in TV Shows
Before I read the patent, I thought this was probably relatively old, probably filed in the 80's or early 90's at the latest. But, the filing date of the patent is in 2001 and it was granted in 2005. It makes me wonder whether the patent examiner, Ngoc Vu, has ever watched a television show or seen a movie produced in the last half century. The entire history of television programming and recent history of film could have been used as prior art.

btw: Are our comments all promoted by default now? Yippee!
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airmikee99003
10/29/09

In reply to Someone Patented Product Placement in TV Shows
Prior art should cancel this patent out. Jim Carrey's movie, "The Truman Show" talked all about product placement for advertising. That movie came out in 1998, seven years before the patent was filed.
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WhiteMan'sBourbon
10/29/09

In reply to Someone Patented Product Placement in TV Shows
I don't understand the hostility to product placement. Wouldn't it be better to have people in TV shows always using brand-name items if it meant no more commercials? You can't blame the producers: TV shows are expensive as hell to produce. They've gotta get money from somewhere. I would be thrilled if product placement replaced commercials entirely. Just sayin'. #productplacement
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MissNormaDesmond
10/29/09

@WhiteMan'sBourbon: Seriously? You'd prefer to be pretty much entirely disabled from suspending disbelief and engaging in the story because every minute or so you're getting yanked out of it by a prominently displayed logo? Welp, that makes one of us. #productplacement
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WhiteMan'sBourbon
10/29/09

@MissNormaDesmond: But look: At my job, for example, pretty much every time I look over at one of my co-workers, they're drinking a Diet Coke or eating some Skittles or whatever. I don't really notice it after a while. Brands exist in life, they kind of infiltrate everything we do. They come up in conversation all the time. Keeping them carefully screened out of the action in TV shows is almost more artificial than just having product placement all over the place. I'm not saying they should be made a big deal of, but having brands in the background wouldn't really bother me.

And as far as there being an art to commercials, yeah, of course there can be, but most of the time it's just some loudmouth screaming about the slap-a-chop or cash4gold.com or whatever. So yeah, if I could have Tina Fey uninterrupted for 30 full minutes and the only price to pay is that she drinks a Diet Coke while on screen, I'll take it. Suspending disbelief really isn't all that hard, I do it all the time in books for much more improbable scenarios than that. #productplacement
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MissNormaDesmond
10/30/09

@WhiteMan'sBourbon: But in order for them to fully replace commercials, I doubt they'd be in the background. The reason they'd cause me to have difficulty in suspending disbelief isn't that I'd find seeing someone drinking a Diet Coke improbable, it's that every time I'd see a logo flashed, or here a brand name casually yet ostentatiously slipped into a conversation, I would be pulled out of the action of the story and into remembering that this isn't really anything but one long shill.

I don't mind commercial breaks, as long as they're not too frequent. If the show itself ends up feeling like a commercial, though, it's just a shade too cheesy for me to buy into. Speaking of cheesy, hey, have you tried these new Cheetos? #productplacement
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Brett Benedict
10/29/09

In reply to Someone Patented Product Placement in TV Shows
I swear to God I'm going to pistol whip the next guy who says "program". #productplacement
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D2theMatthews
10/29/09

@Brett Benedict: Hey Farva, what's that terrible Jimmy Caan movie about the ridiculous college football team? #productplacement
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G.O.D.
10/29/09

@Brett Benedict: PROGRAM #productplacement
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Jrsy Devil's Advocate®
10/29/09

In reply to Someone Patented Product Placement in TV Shows
'an idea to integrate a brand of Vaseline into a Lifetime miniseries called "Maneater."'

Does the Vaseline make it easier for the 'Maneater' to digest her prey?

And yes I'm already assuming the Maneater is a woman because this Lifetime we're talking about here.. #productplacement
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D2theMatthews
10/29/09

@Jrsy Devil's Advocate®: It was a four hour miniseries of absolutely trashy golddigger action starring Scrubs cutie pie Sarah Chalke. #productplacement
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Jrsy Devil's Advocate®
10/29/09

@Cecil's Wielder: Did it make you want to buy Vaseline? #productplacement
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D2theMatthews
10/29/09

@Jrsy Devil's Advocate®: Not even slightly. #productplacement
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Jrsy Devil's Advocate®
10/29/09

@Cecil's Wielder: Well then this patent failed. #productplacement
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TedSez
09/29/09

In reply to Apple Granted Patent on iGlasses
Weren't there several versions of this around five years ago?

In any case, I'm glad to see that soon we won't have to interact with the real world at all anymore.
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Unsolicited Advice
09/29/09

In reply to Apple Granted Patent on iGlasses
I'm convinced that this patent was filed strictly for pun purposes.
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Astigmatism
09/29/09

@Unsolicited Advice: Next year Apple's coming out with a contraceptive called the iSenstadt.

YES!! ConLaw pun and I NAILED it!
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yuhong
09/03/09

In reply to Google Patents World's Simplest Home Page
Yep Google's simple home page design was by accident. From [www.rienswagerman.nl] [rienswagerman.nl] : "The first Google homepage was built by Sergey Bin one of the two founders of google. Sergey did not have enough HTML skills to make a fancy designed HTML page so he kept it simple. The page changed over time but is in essence still the same."
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Lunarplasma
09/03/09

In reply to Google Patents World's Simplest Home Page
It sort of seems like an Evil Company move.
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Bos'un's Mate
09/02/09

In reply to Google Patents World's Simplest Home Page
Altavista's page was similar, but I have to agree that the Google page is unique in terms of intellectually property.
[web.archive.org]
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Bos'un's Mate
09/02/09

@Bos'un's Mate: - Search sites circa 1996:
Lycos: [web.archive.org]
AskJeeves: [web.archive.org]
Dogpile: [web.archive.org]
Excite: [web.archive.org]
NorthernLight: [web.archive.org]
InfoSeek: [web.archive.org]
HotBot: [web.archive.org]
Inktomi: [web.archive.org]
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snugbug
09/02/09

@Bos'un's Mate: Servicey! Thanks for compiling this.

But no thanks for making me relive the daytime nightmare that HotBot was. Lord, the blinking ads..! The demented neon-green background..! The pileup of superfluous links at the bottom..!
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Bos'un's Mate
09/02/09

@snugbug: I should have added the NSFE(pileptics) tag.
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Edited by Bos'un's Mate at 09/02/09 4:50 PM Bos'un's Mate was starred Bos'un's Mate was unstarred

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