Google, Apple, Microsoft Sued Over File Preview 250
ClaraBow writes with this excerpt from MacWorld:
"A small Indiana company has sued tech heavyweights Microsoft, Apple, and Google, claiming that it holds the patent on a common file preview feature used by browsers and operating systems to show users small snapshots of the files before they are opened. ... Cygnus's owner and president Gregory Swartz developed the technology laid out in the patent while working on IT consulting projects, McAndrews said. The company is looking for 'a reasonable royalty' as well as a court injunction preventing further infringement, he said. ... Cygnus applied for its patent (#7346850) in 2001. It covers a 'System and method for iconic software environment management' and was granted by the US Patent and Trademark Office in March of this year."
Re:Economy is in deep shit, this is a symptom (Score:3, Interesting)
Patent Trolls are a GOOD thing... (Score:5, Interesting)
The moment where patent trolls battle it out with large corporations is right around the corner. I feel that this is not only the beginning of a shitstorm, but when it's finished - software patents will be made illogical if not illegal in most countries, and people will realize that it was just a marketing scam that big corporations used to squash the little guys, and then differently designed little guys built to take advantage of an unfair law will take down the big corporations at their own game. Its the way of things, until balance is found. Same with licensing software, same with MPAA and RIAA, and other such BS. No unfair advantage cannot be exploited, which is why free enterprise & the internet kicks ass. Value through innovation will always win. Period.
Re:So once the big guys are down... (Score:3, Interesting)
Interestingly if this would pass (which I strongly doubt) and MS, Apple etc. were required to remove the previews - then Gnome, KDE would benefit from that.
It kinda works like this:
1. Idiot sues Apple
2. Apple must remove the previews
1. Idiot sues MS
2. MS must remove the previews
1. Idiot sues Gnome Foundation etc.
2. Gnome, KDE etc. must remove the previews
3. One day later an unofficial patch pops up somewhere
4. Two days later that same patch is wrapped up into RPMs, Debs etc. for one-click install
5. Due to popular demand this patch is continuously maintained
Re:Claims (Score:5, Interesting)
NeXTSTEP 4.0 Alpha; sometimes mis-called Beta on web sites.
The software featured tabs across the screen bottom for various window types. (We cribbed these for Mac OS 8.5 after the merger, as the tabbed window feature.) The Documents tab was a window which presented icons of documents, each of which could be a preview of the actual document, badged to indicate the associated application.
This implementation nicely meets all the claims, but predates the patent application by 5 years. I won't bother going through all the details, but Cygnus is boned. Software patent litigation as a business model is so last decade...
Re:Two words: (Score:5, Interesting)
It was originally applied for in 1998
That'd be at least 5 years after Lotus Magellin did it, and IMO, did it better than anything MS or Apple does today.
Lotus dropped Magellin when Windows 3 came along, so most of today's techs don't know about it, but it is still
surprising their legal research overlooked it.
Re:Two words: (Score:2, Interesting)
Just because they spent hundreds of millions of dollars to try to seize ownership from the public domain of a concept for which there is ample prior art, doesn't mean the two words are wrong.
Or rather... that they hope to get hundreds of millions of dollars.
Excuse me while I go get my patent on the concept of an online hypertext-based page that permits viewers from the public to preview comments before appending them.
Re:Two words: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:So once the big guys are down... (Score:5, Interesting)
Step 3, 4 and 5 do not involve Canonical, Debian or any other distro.
The DEBs and RPMs could be hosted anywhere and if they sue the hosters then the packages will just move to bittorrent and p2p.
That's the beauty of OSS at work here. You cannot effectively ban a piece of software that many people find useful.
Have a look at the Xerox Docutech machine gui (Score:1, Interesting)
Our office had a schoolbus-sized Xerox docutech machine for
producing on-demand, printed, bound documents. In 1989. Documents
were stored on disk in the machine and printed using a touch-screen
with icons consisting of thumbnail images of the documents contained
in the machine. The patent claims appear to be describing this
system.
Just guessing, but I'll bet Xerox has a mountain of patents covering
this sort of thing.
Re:patent troll patent (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:So once the big guys are down... (Score:5, Interesting)
One would think that if you posted a Wikipedia link, you'd at least have had time to read the first sentence of the article: "Fair use is a doctrine in United States copyright law..."
Anyway, patent trolls rarely go after free software projects because they lack the money to dole out a big settlement. The various media standards and many other fairly standard features of Linux distros are patent-encumbered up the wazoo. Some projects actually have some fear of litigation and disable features or distribute source-only (FreeType's bytecode interpreter comes to mind), but that's fairly rare.
Re:Two words: (Score:5, Interesting)
you're missing the point. these non-inventions should never have been granted in the first place. that is what needs to be reformed about the current system.
things like file previews are currently patentable, and it's within the patent holder's rights to sue. whether you think it's contrary to the intent of the system or not, it's how the system works. right now the USPTO is wasting millions of dollars of tax payers' money each year by granting patents on trivial/obvious software features, which inevitably leads to frivolous lawsuits by patent trolls--who often win.
just look at the case between Creative and Apple [theappleblog.com] regarding file menus. the only thing that's different this time is that the defendants have much more legal muscle than the claimant (which is a separate problem with the legal system). so even if Cygnus loses this suit, that doesn't mean that when a corporate juggernaut like Apple/Microsoft file similar claims of patent infringement that they will lose.
Re:Claims (Score:1, Interesting)
NeXTstep 4.0 Alpha was only ever released under NDA to select developers. Unless Cygnus developers were in the select group, they could not have seen the prior art.
If they could not have seen the prior art, it doesn't invalidate their patent.
Creating Unity (Score:3, Interesting)
There's a least one benefit to patent trolls like these guys. They unify companies that normally are fierce competitors. Or, as Psycho Dave from Kuro5hin describe another group:
"...what common ground does pretty much every person regardless of their political or religious beliefs have? They all hate the Westboro Baptist Church."
Re:So once the big guys are down... (Score:3, Interesting)
An AC already covered this somewhat, but patents are meant to combat more than just others making money off of the patented invention.
Licensing is by far the most common route, but you can completely block the use of the invention by others for the duration of the patent if you so choose. Drug companies often choose this option, so you'll still have to wait a few more years for generic Viagra to hit the market.
Staying in the software realm, say you hold some software patent, and you actually make and sell a product using it. Now, Microsoft or Apple starts giving away a product that does essentially the same thing. The rights conferred to you by the patent still allow you to stop them from distributing the product, or force them to license the technology, despite the fact that they're not actually making any money off of it.
If only (Score:4, Interesting)
If only we could find a way to abolish these Copyright and Patent issues we might have progress, which is what copyrights and patents are supposed to provide.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Wait a minute... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Two words: (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Two words: (Score:3, Interesting)
This reminds me of the Lotus vs Quattro Pro and SCO professional lawsuit http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0CEFD7113EF930A35754C0A966958260 [nytimes.com].
Lotus sued and won over keystroke commands. Quattro and SCO Pro could both emulate Lotus 123 keystrokes and had to be taken off the market. At the time many people were moving from Lotus 123 to Quattro Pro, I thought it would be the next big thing. SCO Professional was great because it was a Lotus 123 clone that ran on Unix and worked great on dumb terminals (or telnet).