Amusement devices: games – Including means for processing electronic data – With communication link
Reexamination Certificate
2002-03-15
2004-06-15
O'Neill, Michael (Department: 3713)
Amusement devices: games
Including means for processing electronic data
With communication link
C463S043000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06749512
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to computer network implemented gaming systems, and more particularly to a system and method for network implemented remote audio and image transmission of real time casino gaming events to enable remote participation therein.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The international nature of computer networks, sometime referred to as the World Wide Web or Internet, has rendered any attempts at complete prohibition of online gambling virtually ineffective. As result all sorts regulatory schemes pockmark the landscape which rather than outright prohibition funnel the online gambling activity into a desired set of privileges and exceptions. For example, the National Indian Gaming Commission has recently ruled that the Indian Gaming regulatory Act, by the simple expedient of a ‘proxy’ betting mechanism at the end of a phone line, exempts off-reservation remote gambling from the strictures of the Wire Act of 1961. Concurrently, several Federal Court rulings have held that the Wire Act does not apply to those activities that assist gaming communication to a state where it is lawful and the recently proposed Internet Gambling Prohibition Act keeps repeatedly dying many deaths in committee. Those attempts at prohibition that still persist, mainly at the state level, are colored by self-interest, as best exemplified by the online gambling prohibitions enacted in Nevada.
These manifestations of self-interest have not done well in the international setting, particularly amongst those countries whose citizenry has reached the wisdom and maturity to inspect, reject and strip off all pretextual patinas of morality that sometimes cover greed or self-interest. For example, the United Kingdom is now enacting statutory schemes which regulate, but do not prohibit, online gambling and the physical dictates of self-interest will compel similar responses from others if large scale monetary consequences are to be prevented. The dam has broken and online gambling is not just as an isolated privilege but a fact of life.
Consistent with these developments various network implemented gaming systems have been devised, exemplified by the teachings of U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,333,868 to Goldfarb, 5,351,970 to Fioretti and others. While suitable for the purposes intended each of the foregoing implement a computer program generated wholly virtual gaming system with the game, its images and sequences synthetically created and random number generated. Like all computer programs these can be easily replicated and have been even modified on occasion into various fraudulent bilking mechanisms. The same difficulties that have rendered prohibition virtually impossible are also in effect here and the population of such fraudulent sites will only increase as online gambling enters the mainstream. Notably, in the business of gambling even small levels of fraud are unwanted as the notion of cheating at cards or other games of chance is a venerable and familiar one. The reputation of a casino has therefore served for a long time as the underpinning for customer reliance and the brick-and-mortar facility remains the centerpiece for any effective marketing of gaming. These reasons limit the usefulness of program generated, wholly synthetic gaming events even if associated with some symbol of a real casino.
While trademark and trade dress policing may have had some effect, there exists nonetheless a persistent population of unscrupulous web site providers which boldly mimic or suggest association with an established casino to perpetrate fraud using doctored gaming programs. Verification by the potential patron is therefore a necessary ingredient of the process and one reliable verification of a gaming web site is the ability to browse through and inspect, at will, the several gambling venues of the real brick and mortar casino that is associated with the site. Such inspection cannot just entail some group of still pictures but should depict live and unrehearsed gambling in order to instill the confidence that the image is not merely a staged event and the selection of the accessible gambling venues should be both extensive and wholly within the viewers choice. Of course, these same features will expose the remote viewer to the compelling venues where the excitement of the local participants itself provides the inducement to join the game. In this manner the same process that instills verifiable association with a casino is also useful to attract those making the remote inspection into the game.
In the past various techniques have been devised which in one way or another provide a remote video display of a gaming event. For example U.S. Pat. No. 5,297,802 to Pocock describes a televised bingo game, U.S. Pat. No. 5,324,035 to Morris et al describes a video gaming system with various betting pools, and so on. These each rely on conventional transmission of a video signal which currently exceeds the bandwidth of a computer network. In the main computer networks have been associated as an adjunct to video signals, as for example program selection guides, such as those described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,532,754; 5,479,266; 5,479,268; and others all assigned to Starsight Telecast, Inc. of Fremont, Calif., or those assisting the operation of video cassette recorders like that taught in U.S. Pat. No. 5,151,789, also assigned to the same assignee. The use of a computer network as both the selection tool and also as a full fidelity video image signal carrier has not had much attention in the prior art, primarily because of the limited data rate, or bandwidth, and propagation delays inherent in any distributed network.
Those in the art will appreciate that the physical scaling laws of a human have dictated the response frequency of our visual processing system. Thus there is a minimum frame rate that must be exceeded in order to avoid the perception of flicker. More importantly, the scenes that convey most of the exciting events are group scenes, fill of very fine detail and therefore not susceptible to most current compression techniques as these rely on reductions of the field of view and/or reduction of detail. Nor do these group scenes lend themselves to effective compression along the time vector (change from a base frame), pattern recognition compression like interpolation (MPEG), spectral analysis based compression like JPEG and others. In the main these prior art interpolation techniques rely on a common scheme or focus in the frame image to base the deviations therefrom as the mechanism for data reduction. The scenes conveying players' excitement lack this central theme and are therefore difficult to compress to any degree while the minimum frame rate that avoids flicker has been earlier determined by scaling laws to be an immutable physical limit.
The same mechanisms of evolution that have observed the laws of physics like energy conservation have also evolved a human sensorium that emphasizes changes in the matter sensed and defers to boredom the steady state. Simply, in the large scale this is the better compression technique which is synergistically combined with the inherent propagation delays of a distributed computer network to accommodate the verification and entertainment aspects of a plurality of remotely viewed casino venues and it is such combination that is disclosed herein.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
Accordingly, it is the general purpose and object of the present invention to provide a computer network video image transmission process in which the frequency of the sensed image frames is varied according to the change in audio level in the area that is imaged.
Other objects of the invention are to provide a computer network enabled video image transmission process in which selected video image sequences are serially transmitted on the network with their reception display delayed to accommodate the bandwidth limitations of the network.
Further objects of the invention are to provide a video image transmission system in which the video images are
MacGregor Brian
Selden Jack W.
Bak-Boychuk I. Michael
Brocketti Julie
O'Neill Michael
LandOfFree
Computer network implemented gaming system and method of... does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this patent.
If you have personal experience with Computer network implemented gaming system and method of..., we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Computer network implemented gaming system and method of... will most certainly appreciate the feedback.
Profile ID: LFUS-PAI-O-3336246