jonathan@... writes: >Just goes to show that if you can confuse the US Patent >Office well enough they will grant you a patent for anything. I saw something on 60minutes about ridiculous patents (this one wasn't discussed). The whole patent thing was developed to protect actual inventions, not to protect the useage of any imaginable idea. For example, nobody has a patent on using ASCII, but attempts have been made to patent emoticons (smiley faces etc...). Wise heads at the patent office prevailed on this one and rejected this stupid claim. But the "hidden track" thing for CDs, while also being a ridiculous claim, somehow made it through?! Think about it: The RedBook standard as developed about 20years ago is made available to everybody license free. Anybody is free to make a CD that adheres to this standard, so that it plays in any CD player on the planet. The RedBook standard has a lot of little nitty gritty specs - and ones that clearly allow for this "hidden track" stuff, although they don't explicitly mention it. f-erenc szabo, smarty pants Z+E+R+O+B+E+A+T "NOW POWERED BY THE MIRACLE OF THE TRANSISTOR!"