Mobile Media Server - PRIOR ART REQUEST

Question

I've come across this patent for Mobile Media Servers, and to me it seems incredibly broad and obvious, even back in 2009. For my own benefit and for others, I'm trying to find prior art that gives strong reason to believe this patent is invalid.

If you've ever seen anything like this before, please submit evidence of prior art as an answer to this question -- one piece of prior art per answer. We welcome multiple answers from a single individual.

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TITLE: MOBILE MEDIA SERVER

Summary: Mobile media server hosts and clients utilized for ubiquitous sharing of media content. A mobile phone can act as a host and stream content to clients over IP sourced from a wide variety of locations, from the host camera to network locations.

• Publication Number: US20110138018 A1
• Assignee: QUALCOMM Incorporated
• Prior Art Date: Seeking prior Art predating 4th Dec 2009
• No longer open for challenge at USPTO (from what I can see)

Claim 1 requires each and every step below:

A method of serving media from a media server, comprising:

1. establishing a logical link with a client utilizing an Internet Protocol interface;
2. initiating, over the logical link, a streaming session with the client;
3. retrieving media content from a media source; and
4. serving the media content to the client over the logical link.:

What blows my mind is that as broad as the title "Mobile Media Server" sounds, the claims are even broader as they don't mention mobile - it's simply claiming about media servers.

In English this means:

1. the server connects to clients via an Internet Protocol
2. the server streams data to the client
3. the server can retrieve that media from somewhere
4. the data that the server streams is media

Good prior art would be evidence of a system that did each and every one of these steps prior to 4th Dec 2009.

Answer 1

It sounds like Microsoft's NetShow meets all these requirements. Here is a link to a press release from 1997 that may describe all the elements.

Answer 2

Knocking Live was an app reviewed on 2nd Dec 2009 that:

uses server side technology to stream and broadcast video feeds from your iPhone 3GS camera to its servers and across to the receiving iPhone into the Knocking app. Now you can send and receive live video on your iPhone from your friends anytime.

See here for a YouTube video portraying it. As it runs over 3G, it's certainly not a direct connection from host to client.

This covers all four points of the first claim. It also covers the reversal of the common paradigm (having the server initiate the stream instead of the client) described in [0009] of the summary.

The difference though is that the client of which the server has a logical link to acts as an additional server, broadcasting to recipient phones. Nonetheless, it covers the basic claim, leading me to suspect it's sufficient prior art to invalidate the patent.

Answer 3

I'd suggest you look at the Barix streaming products.

These have been around for years and do what's described by Claim 1.

Answer 4

This Patent is so broadly worded it could could describe any HTTP server.

The definition of media is so loose it could be applied to downloading a picture/sound clip onto a device.

Some examples DLNA guideline versions

1.0: released June 2004; 2 volumes: Architecture & Protocols, Media Formats; 2 Device Classes: DMP, DMS; About 50 media format profiles [12]
1.5: released March 2006; 3 volumes: Architecture & Protocols, Media Formats, and Link Protection; 12 Devices Classes and 5 Device Capabilities; About 250 media format profiles [12]
2.0: released August 2015; Includes topics like EPG, Content Sync, RUI, WPS, Media Formats, Scheduled recording, DRM [12][13]
3.0: released August 2015; enhanced response time, improved power efficiency, HEVC support [14]
4.0: planned release 2016 [15]