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Microsoft Retracts Patent

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Mon Jan 29, 2007 12:53 PM
from the too-hot dept.
Microsoft Patents
An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft has retracted their recent controversial patent application. The story was first brought to light by Slashdot on Saturday. Today, Jane Prey of Microsoft announced the retraction on the SIGCSE (Special Interest in Computer Science Education) mailing list. 'Many thanks to the members of the community that brought this to my attention — and here's the latest. The patent application was a mistake and one that should not have happened. To fix this, Microsoft will be removing the patent application. Our sincere apologies to Michael Kölling and the BlueJ community.'"
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[+] Microsoft Copies Idea, Admits It, Then Patents It 333 comments
An anonymous reader writes "BlueJ is a popular academic IDE which lets students have a visual programming interface. Microsoft copied the design in their 'Object Test Bench' feature in Visual Studio 2005 and even admitted it. Now, a patent application has come to light which patents the very same feature, blatantly ignoring prior art."
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  • Moral is complicated (Score:4, Insightful)

    by chriss (26574) * <chriss@memomo.net> on Monday January 29 2007, @12:55PM (#17802204) Homepage

    I have a tendency to believe that humans can err, but are basically good. And even Microsoft consists of humans. So my first reaction was "Oh good, they are not as soulless as we believe, this was an honest mistake." That option had already been pointed out during the discussion on slashdot as a problem within their process:

    1. Microsoft collects suggestions from different sources
    2. Someone suggests the BlueJ functionality
    3. Someone extracts a list of features that should actually be implemented
    4. Some developer implements the function, not knowing where it came from
    5. At the end someone sees the function, attributed to the developer, does not see the BlueJ connection and suggests it for patent application, because this is the routine way to handle new ideas at Microsoft

    So, an honest mistake. But this being Microsoft it took me seconds to fall into conspiracy mode. How could they have such mistakes in their process, if they care about intellectual property? Was the mistake that they didn't hide it well? Did they simply try if they can get through with this? Can an entity that consists of basically good humans be not good in the end? (I'm afraid yes). So I still cannot decide if I can trust them or not, they seem to have lied too often in the past.

    • Re:Moral is complicated (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 29 2007, @12:59PM (#17802244)
      My cynical reaction: The patent application would not have been pulled except for the written admission on the part of a Microsoft developer that the feature was copied from BlueJ.

    • Re:Moral is complicated (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Frosty Piss (770223) on Monday January 29 2007, @01:03PM (#17802312)

      But this being Microsoft it took me seconds to fall into conspiracy mode.

      There's no "conspiracy" about it, this is now common among most big technology corporations: Throw buckets of patent applications at the Patent Office, and see what sticks. Often the "little people" they are ripping off don't have the means to fight it, and while the other big players know it's bullshit, they find it cheaper and quicker to just pay the license. It's not just Micorsoft, they all do it.

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Just to play a little devil's advocate:

        Nobody is going to sue MomAndPop.com for patent infringement because its not profitable. They sue the Microsofts and the Apples who have the deep pockets to shell out big settlements. With software patents being the legal quagmire that they are, the only protection these corporations have from others abusing the system is to be the patent holder themselves. So they apply for a patent and this ends in one of a few ways:

        They can't get the patent because someone else h

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by russ1337 (938915)
          >>> "At Disney Internet Group, we actually receive an award if we develop something we can patent."

          I hope that 'award' is a share of the royalties and not a plastic Mickey Mouse statue. (They still have thousands left over from the 80's you know.)

    • Re:Moral is complicated (Score:5, Insightful)

      by sholden (12227) on Monday January 29 2007, @01:05PM (#17802354) Homepage
      Except that three people are listed as the inventors on the patent application.

      So those three must have thought they'd invented something - otherwise they lied on that application.

      Or is it legal to put people's names on a patent application without asking them if what they did is actually an "invention"?

      The people at both 3 and 4 have to know they didn't "invent" anything and surely the people at 5 have to ask them at some point?

      • Re:Moral is complicated (Score:5, Informative)

        by kansas1051 (720008) on Monday January 29 2007, @01:20PM (#17802576)
        Each inventor listed in a U.S. patent application has to sign an oath (declaration) that states that he believes that he is the first to invent what is claimed in the patent application. So you are correct in that these Microsoft inventors were either: (1) lazy (didn't read the patent application); (2) lying (knew of BlueJ and didn't care); or (3) incompetent (didn't know what BlueJ was).

        • Re:Moral is complicated (Score:4, Informative)

          by kansas1051 (720008) on Monday January 29 2007, @01:25PM (#17802648)
          As a follow up to my own post, inventor oaths are typically made under penalty of perjury, so that if an inventor knowingly signs a false declaration, the inventor may be punished by fine and/or imprisonment under 18 U.S.C. 1001.
        • Quite confident that they could buy their way out of any resulting trouble using the money from licenses for the thousands of other patent applications on which they did something like this and did not get detected.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Chris Burke (6130)
          No, there's a fourth option: They didn't know what BlueJ was, not because of incompetence but because they deliberately didn't seek it out under the express instructions of the company patent lawyer.

          Since knowingly infringing a patent is treble damages, it's SOP for companies to tell their engineers not to do patent searches or other prior art searches before submitting patents or using ideas. The other half of this strategy is to patent as many things as possible. This way when you violate someone else'
    • No one ever thinks he or she is being evil (except for cartoonish supervillains and goth teenagers). Someone thought having another patent in MS's portfolio would be a good thing (from his/her perspective); if this person knew about the the BlueJ origins and still thought, "hey, we should patent this!" it's not because they were also thinking, "because that would make us even more evil! Muwahahaha!" but because they saw having another patent as being a good thing. inside the culture at MS, adding to the o
      • "maybe it was only that MS got caught with their hand in the cookie jar that this retraction has occurred" ...

        ya think? (Hint: how many times have they retracted a patent application *without getting caught like this ...

        reminds me of all the crappy pop singers who get caught lip-syncing and *swear that on every other night of their lives they sang for real, it's just that they had a sore throat that day and ... etc. etc.
    • "How could they have such mistakes in their process, if they care about intellectual property?"
      Not everyone has heard of BlueJ. The person(s) who wrote it might have fallen into this camp.

      "Was the mistake that they didn't hide it well?"
      No, incoming patents can be examined by outside parties. Microsoft knows that all patents they submit will be closely looked at by people outside of the patent office.

      "Did they simply try if they can get through with this?"
      You never know with these large corporations.

      "Can an

    • I have a tendency to believe that humans can err, but are basically good. And even Microsoft consists of humans.

      I have a similar belief. However, I would more specifically word it as "Without any other information given, I have a tendency to believe a person is basically good."

      For example, if you tell me that person is a member of Fred Phelp's church, I no longer believe that they fall in any category I would classify as "good." The same is true if they belonged to the Earth Liberation Front. This does

    • I have a tendency to believe that humans can err, but are basically good. And even Microsoft consists of humans. So my first reaction was "Oh good, they are not as soulless as we believe, this was an honest mistake." That option had already been pointed out during the discussion on slashdot as a problem within their process:

      Sure, an honest mistake. But what are they doing to fix their process so it doesn't happen again? If their process is prone to "honest mistakes" and they don't do anything it becomes "

    • Re:Moral is complicated (Score:5, Funny)

      by Speare (84249) on Monday January 29 2007, @01:34PM (#17802778) Homepage

      I have to say, with all the legal loops that you have to hop to work with corporate lawyers just to get a patent to the submission stage, that this is not just a simple mistake.

      In other words, I definitely heard "And I would've gotten away with it, if it weren't for these meddling kids!" running through my head. Zoinks!

    • Is everyone going to completely ignore the fact that this feature is one of Microsoft's very, very few that aren't developed in Redmond??? The Microsoft India Development Center [microsoft.com] in Hyderabad, is responsible for this whole feature area.

      Draw your own conclusions, but at a minimum, it would increase the chances of mis-communication...

    • I have a tendency to believe that humans can err, but are basically good.

      And that last part is where the whole house of cards comes tumbling down. Basically good!? Are you kidding me? Sure there are a lot of people that do good things running around, but mankind is not intrinsically good by any stretch. I am just going to guess that you are either:

      a. very sheltered

      b. very young

      or c. very naive

      I hope you don't find out the truth the hardway.

  • Here is the description from the linked slashdot post, if you were wondering what this patent was about:

    "BlueJ is a popular academic IDE which lets students have a visual programming interface. Microsoft copied the design in their 'Object Test Bench' feature in Visual Studio 2005 and even admitted it. Now, a patent application has come to light which patents the very same feature, blatantly ignoring prior art."

    • Re:In case you don't feel like clicking (Score:5, Informative)

      by gregarican (694358) on Monday January 29 2007, @01:11PM (#17802460) Homepage
      In more detail this feature is something akin to an Object Inspector, something that has been a part of Smalltalk languages for probably 20 years in a GUI form. Funny thing, seeing how Visual Studio 2005 has an Object Browser, which is another throwback to the System/Object Browser feature of various Smalltalks dating back to Smalltalk-80 :-)

  • Would it have killed the editor... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ivan256 (17499) on Monday January 29 2007, @12:59PM (#17802242)
    ...to include half a sentence describing the basics of the patent in the hyperlink?

    "The patent discussed on saturday" isn't significantly shorter than "the patent on a copied IDE feature" but contains more useful knowledge and less useless knowledge.
    • There's still research going into Integrated Drive Electronics [wikipedia.org]? I thought SATA had replaced that.

      /joking. Seriously, throwing an acronym into the summary doesn't make it any more clear.
    • I thought "<a href="http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/01 /27/147243&tid=109">controversial patent application</a>" covered the bases pretty well, it's both shorter and more informative than even your suggestion. (Well, without the space.)

      (Links on the web aren't an incidental thing, they are a vital part of what is being communicated.)

  • Why does it not surprise me... (Score:3, Funny)

    by abscondment (672321) on Monday January 29 2007, @01:06PM (#17802372) Homepage

    Why does it not surprise me that someone named Jane Prey is involved in a Microsoft patent SNAFU?

      • Oh, I think I do.

        The predator preys on weaker animals (like... BlueJ?).
        The prey is preyed upon.

        In case you're still unclear about my use of words, the important nouns have been italicized, while the important verbs have been given a bold face.

        Thank you for turning a tongue-in-cheek play on words into a grammatical pissing contest.

  • I'd be a lot happier if the Empire's own minions had noticed the problem
    and withdrawn the patent BEFORE the outcry arose. As it is:

    "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." -- Wendell Phillips, (1811-1884)

    Modern addendum: "And the price of open software."
  • Watch now for patents that come as close as possible to stepping over the line, but stop just short. Microsoft easily has the resources to toss up nuisance patents that block possible future development of BlueJ.

    • Watch now for patents that come as close as possible to stepping over the line, but stop just short. Microsoft easily has the resources to toss up nuisance patents that block possible future development of BlueJ.

      After publicly admitting the misstep with the original patent, I'm not sure what the value to MS would be in aggressively trying to thwart BlueJ. It seems their strategy here is to hold themselves out as an ethical player. They have to know that they're on notice now about BlueJ, and any attmpts

  • Mistake? (Score:2, Informative)

    by MaggieL (10193)
    Anyone who thinks this was an innocent mistake in "implementing a suggestion" probably hasn't seen the screenshots comparing The VS screens with BlueJ. ( http://www.bluej.org/vs/vs-bj.html [bluej.org] )

    Personally, I'm convinced the most plausible explanation for the *extremely* close replication of the BlueJ screens in the MSFT product is that the BlueJ source was ported to C#, probably using an automated tool.

    • Re:Mistake? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by drinkypoo (153816) <martin.espinoza@gmail.com> on Monday January 29 2007, @01:53PM (#17803030) Homepage Journal

      Personally, I'm convinced the most plausible explanation for the *extremely* close replication of the BlueJ screens in the MSFT product is that the BlueJ source was ported to C#, probably using an automated tool.

      That's a bunch of nonsense. I mean, it's not impossible, but it's ridiculous to jump to that conclusion. There are tons of workalike tools in Unixland that look and behave just like the programs they're knocking off. Does that mean they were developed by porting the original program? I just made some documents that look amazingly like some other documents in-house (I'm a graphic artist, and I needed some documents very similar to some old ones but with new graphical elements, and couldn't find the originals.) By your argument, the most rational explanation for the existence of these documents is that I loaded up the originals and altered them. The new document is just so similar!

      Maybe the GNOME desktop is actually a port of Windows' source code, since it looks so much like Windows?

  • Now the slashdot echo chamber will have a moment of self-satisfaction while more theft, more corporate domination and fraud at the expense of consumers and entrepreneurs.

    Most importantly: We don't have to get out of our chairs and participate in our political system to make the government we want. Woohoo!

  • Missing the point (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Microsoft's apology changes nothing about the fact that all the original factors that caused this embarrassing mistake by them are still in play. It is very lucky that Microsoft's misbehaviour in the BlueJ example was quickly noticed, carefully documented and forcefully exposed by the BlueJ people themselves, but it is not and should not be an inventor's job to police the behaviour of big companies like Microsoft. The next time Microsoft misappropriates somebody else's invention, the problem is unlikely to
  • I disagree with the idea of just attempting to patent absolutely anything, and then only when the app comes back as "has issue", the company says, "Oops! heh heh, never mind that one..." and just keeps on going. It's pretty clear that even if the patent office was great at detecting dupe patents, prior art,etc., that if there are 10,000 patent apps a day or whatever coming in, how do you have time to check them all? Surely a lot are slipping through and being granted based on this "apply first, worry late
    • What I don't get is the rush to pass them. Should just be round-robin through the owners. So even if you submit 9000 patents today, only one will be looked at before looking at the others.

      That way if a company feels the need to apply for a shiatload of patents they'll get the joy of knowing they won't get looked at anytime soon.

      Anyone who is not really annoyed at the state of patents should try googles patent search. Enter any trivially understood idea like "task scheduling" or "integer multiplication" a

  • Okay, this whole thing is not too surprising. The patent system is broken and all major companies end up using a shotgun approach to get as many, mostly invalid, patents as possible. They apologized publicly for this instance. That was the right thing to do, and MS did it for a change. Good job MS.

  • Prior art detected (Score:4, Funny)

    by Ravear (923203) on Monday January 29 2007, @01:42PM (#17802904)
    (A)ssimilate? (Y/Y)
  • and donate all their licensing income derived from patenting sync ram that was derivative of early standardization attempts in an industry technical committee, we might start getting someplace.

    if not, hey, what the hell, it's only ethics and morals. I'm sure it did not influence any other large companies in the field, like HP and SCO.

  • "nothing to see here" (Score:4, Insightful)

    by mary_will_grow (466638) on Monday January 29 2007, @02:56PM (#17803854)
    Move along... It was "just a mistake".

    What about the zillions of other patents just like this one that they apply for every day? Is the burden really on ME to make sure that Microsoft hasn't been attempting to patent stuff I've clearly got "prior art" for?

    This is terrible. Stop acting like "The system works". This is one example where a prior-art holder had the means to notice someone's faulty patent claim.

    I'm not even sure where the burden of proof should lie. When you hire a patent attorney to do a "prior art search", they just give you a pile of existing patents that matched some keywords. How do you do a _real_ prior art search, beyond just what has already been patented? Its not even possible. The system is so hosed that every patent that resulted from it should probably just be thrown out.

    I can't believe people are buying this "It was a mistake" B.S.
  • If it wasn't for those meddling F/LOSS kids!

    *ducks*

  • Brought to light *by* /.? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by r_jensen11 (598210) on Monday January 29 2007, @05:58PM (#17806304)
    I call BS on that, especially seeing that the submission on /. included two links to stories related and neither was a direct link to an application. Brought to light to Slashdot? Yes, that I can believe.

    • Re:It's a good start... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by tomstdenis (446163) <.moc.liamg. .ta. .sinedtsmot.> on Monday January 29 2007, @01:02PM (#17802292) Homepage
      hey they have a lot of legitimate patents, like the one for the task scheduler (cron jobs). There is absolutely no prior art (UNIX) for that before MSFT came around. :-)

      Companies like MSFT/IBM/etc shouldn't get patents, not because they don't invent anything, but because they invent so little and patent so much.

      The hardware world scares me though. On the one had they collaborate as academics to share results, and on the other hand they patent everything in sight. No, you can't have an XOR gate, not yours!

      Tom
    • Really, they're more likely to push for "first to file" instead of "first to invent" so that patent applications like this will actually be valid.

    • Re:Um...what did Slashdot have to do with it? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Aladrin (926209) on Monday January 29 2007, @01:08PM (#17802410)
      When Slashdot did the 'bringing to light', it was Saturday. The developers 'brought it to light' for their crowd on Friday. To 'bring it to light' means that you've made some portion, usually a significant portion, of a group of people aware of it. The majority of the Slashdot crowd did NOT know about this before it was announced on Saturday, so it WAS 'brought to light'.

      Happy?

    • The story was first brought to light by Slashdot on Saturday.
      Um...what did Slashdot have to do with it? It looks like this fellow started complaining on Friday: http://www.bluej.org/mrt/?p=21 [bluej.org]
      Obi-Wan: "The article that I'm looking for should be right ..." (points at screen) "here."
      Librarian: "If an article is not on Slashdot, then it does not exist." (Turns abruptly and walks away)

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by nametaken (610866)
      Erm, there's a good chance it would have gone largely unnoticed for months if the story hadn't made /.

      To be fair, months can mean the difference between sinking thousands of dollars into a patent and deciding to defend it, or cutting it loose.
    • what did Slashdot have to do with it? It looks like this fellow started complaining on Friday:

            Ahh, you see - but he only saw the light when his server crashed from a decent slashdotting... ;)
    • Microsoft will severely punish employees who falsify invention claims.

      "No Jack, we're not going to fire you over this."

      "You're not?"

      "No -cough- there is, however, the minor matter of your reassignment. It's a cushy position - work from home really. We've taken the liberty of routing our 1-800 number for Vista activation to your home telephone number. And I'd like to be the first to welcome you to the Windows Validation department... Jack? Ar

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