Rivergate Software Inc. - makers of DVDAfterEdit

Hi Everyone,

It is probably obvious by now that we have not made any progress on Seamless Branching, aka Seamless Multi-Story. I have chosen to put our development efforts into other areas, where I believe the potential payback is much greater. That does not mean that I have given up on SMS, and in fact John Brisbin and I filed a provisional patent two months ago, which still leaves ten months in which decide whether to pursue it further. John did the work to prepare the filing at no charge. (By the way, it cost my previous company about $25,000 for the FontChameleon patent in patent lawyer fees, which was well worth it since it drove the Adobe buyout. You can't take a half-baked approach to these issues, the provisional is just a stop-gap measure).

But John is a contract programmer, and understandibly has chosen to work for clients that can afford to pay him his normal rate. He has also come to the conclusion that a successful outcome to SMS would require a slightly different approach from the one he originally took, and a significant rewrite.

There is another possible scenario under consideration, but I cannot say more at this time. However it is not likely to be resolved in the very near future.

Regards,

Larry