Xerox Sues Google, Yahoo Over Search Patents 202
gnosygnus writes "Xerox Corp has sued Google, Inc. and Yahoo, Inc., accusing them of infringing the document management company's patents related to Internet search. In a lawsuit filed last Friday in the US District Court in Delaware, Xerox said Google's Web-based services, such as Google Maps, YouTube and AdSense advertising software, as well as Web tools including Yahoo Shopping, infringe patents granted as far back as 2001. Xerox seeks compensation for past infringement and asked the court to halt the companies from further using the technology."
Can someone help? (Score:3, Insightful)
Anyone have a link to this patent? The summary fails to accurately describe what it is they patented - though the impression I get is... Practically Everything?
Real Goal: Cross-Licensing? (Score:5, Insightful)
Article summary (Score:2, Insightful)
"We want your cake too. And it'll cost us less in legal fees than the potential benefit. That's a mighty nice website you have there. It would be a shame if anything were to...happen... to it. Probable result: cross-licensing agreement to patent portfolio to lock out smaller competitors, higher costs for consumers in countries with strong IP laws. "
Re:Can you say "Patent troll"? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Can you say "Patent troll"? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Can you say "Patent troll"? (Score:5, Insightful)
And once upon a time SCO was a respectable Unix vendor.
Re:Remember when PARC actually invented stuff? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Remember when PARC actually invented stuff? (Score:5, Insightful)
Good times, but how the mighty have fallen these days. I for one miss the idea of a pure research group.
Yeah ... no kidding. Put Bell Laboratories on the short list as well.
Re:Remember when PARC actually invented stuff? (Score:4, Insightful)
Do you just say that every time? (Score:4, Insightful)
I can: PATENT TROLL.
I know it's in vogue here on Slashdot to scream "Troll!" anytime a patent holder sues for infringement, but "patent troll" really means something distinct from "patent suit."
From the Wiki, a patent troll is someone who:
* Purchases a patent, often from a bankrupt firm, and then sues another company by claiming that one of its products infringes on the purchased patent;
* Enforces patents against purported infringers without itself intending to manufacture the patented product or supply the patented service;
* Enforces patents but has no manufacturing or research base
* Focuses its efforts solely on enforcing patent rights.
* Asserts patent infringement claims against non-copiers or against a large industry that is composed of non-copiers
TFA and TFS are thin on details, so there is no evidence to support the idea that Xerox is doing any one of these.
Re:Remember when PARC actually invented stuff? (Score:4, Insightful)
Too bad management at PARC were too retarded to profit from what the guys (and gals) there invented (they were 10 years ahead)
researchers: "We've invented the GUI, OO programming, etc, etc"
managers "hurr durr durr what's that hurrrr"
Re:Timeframe (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, no, you can't sit on it and expect to be able to enforce it like you imply.
You don't lose the patent like you do with Trademark- but if you delay, the range of things that ends up happening goes from no damages to an inability to enforce against the infringers that you didn't enforce against during the time you "sat on it". Subsequent infringers can be enforced against during the life of the patent- but not the others if you delay any substantive time on it from the moment that the infringement becomes obvious to you or should have been so.
Re:Xerox Gets a Pass (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not cutting them any slack. Roughly 7+ years to determine if they're infringing and not enforcing their rights is a bit beyond the pale and is very probably subject to equitable estoppel out of the gate. They very probably shouldn't have ran this one up the flagpole in the first place- and it's very, very patent-trolly. Patent trolls do not get an out no matter what their past contributions might have been.
Re:Can you say "Patent troll"? (Score:5, Insightful)
If there's a better definition of a troll, I don't know what it is...
Re:Can you say "Patent troll"? (Score:5, Insightful)
...They practically invented the GUI.
...and if they'd be able to patent it, we'd still all be running DOS, since Xerox never came out with a GUI product. Such is the power of software patents to drive innovation (into the ground).
Re:Go America! (Score:2, Insightful)
Patent it.
Re:Can you say "Patent troll"? (Score:2, Insightful)
Xerox has done a lot of innovating. They have also quite famously totally failed to properly DO anything with the things they've created. We could have had something akin to Java a lot earlier in the form of Smalltalk-80. Xerox in their "wisdom" decided to charge a king's ransom for it forever enshrining it in it's ivory tower. It took Apple, Microsoft and Amiga, Inc to bring the windowed interface to the world, despite Xerox having the working system right in front of them (again, in the form of Smalltalk-80).
So Xerox missed the boat...nay, the entire 20 year revolution of home computers and business computing without so much as a "duh?" Guess there's not much left to do but become the next great patent troll, now that SCO is out of the picture. See Bing in that lawsuit anywhere? Of course not...look not behind the curtain, mortal.
Re:Xerox Gets a Pass (Score:3, Insightful)
You are right, how could I forget. I really love Smalltalk the language, but I'm less keen on the whole "modify the image" thing. I'm sure it would have been a lot more successful if it were file-based.
Re:Can you say "Patent troll"? (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, no - since the GUI would have been patented in the 1970s and at that time the law gave protection for 17 years from the date of publication (and usually took 3 years to get published - current law is 20 years from filing). GUIs didn't really become popular until the late 1980s and that would have been near the end of any patent for it, so it may have delayed the GUI, but not killed it. Some hardware patents Xerox showed off such as the mouse would have already been near end of patent by the 1980s (invented in the 1960s).
I'm not saying software patents don't suck - I don't think people should be able to patent, say, how to do the Navier Stokes equations for fluid dynamics in software and on graphics hardware, which has been done multiple times (and the methods are trivially obvious in some cases - one hardware accelerated patent I saw was essentially implementing an expired software patent in hardware). OTOH, if you INVENTED the Navier Stokes equations, then sure - allow a patent that can apply to software. I also don't think an idea itself should be patentable, either - for instance, I remember Woz talking about when he made characters display on a screen and then later getting sued by a TV manufacturer that had patented the idea - there needs to be some practical plan to implement it.
Re:Xerox Gets a Pass (Score:1, Insightful)
Xerox is notable for failing to commercialise or profit from PARC's accomplishments, including the invention of the gui, laser printing, bit-mapped graphics, the mouse, and Ethernet. It is the most monumental example of dropping the ball that I can think of.
Or, you could say that Xerox is notable for taking a portion of its profits, and philanthropically donating them to society at large through PARC's accomplishments. It is one of the most monumental examples of enriching society through technical innovation that I can think of.
All depends on whether you want to dump on Xerox or praise them. Personally, I admire them for their efforts, and how they freely gave the results away for others to reuse. I wish more companies "dropped the ball" like this; it'd probably result in a much richer economy.
Re:Patent problem solved! (Score:3, Insightful)
Simpler solution: Besides all the other problems with them (like the inability of the patent office to tell what is an "invention"), software patents are a net drag on the economy, therefore they should be eliminated.