Microsoft Seeks Patent On Virtual Desktop Pager

ihabawad writes "Microsoft has a patent on file for this really cool new technology called 'virtual desktops' where you see a 'pager' on the screen. Read all about it by searching under "Published Applications" for patent #20030189597 at the US Patent and Trademark Office. You know, I had a dream that I was using such a thing once; what was it called? -- yes, FvwmPager! Weird, eh?"

nVidia Desktop Explorer does this on windows

It's crap, but it does provide the same functionality

Re:nVidia Desktop Explorer does this on windows

Microsoft also has an (unsupported) utility for this, one of their XP Powertoys [microsoft.com].

Re:nVidia Desktop Explorer does this on windows

This goes back to windows 3.1. I guess the most widely used utility of the time that made use of the technology was HP's Dashboard product circa 1992. This product pretty much set the standard for how Virtual desktops would be used and visualized. I know all current VD's work as similar if not identical manner to the Dashboard tool.

Re:nVidia Desktop Explorer does this on windows

I seem to recall that the Sun machines I played with at school in '87 had this capability. CDE's had virtual desktops for as long as I can remember.

Re:nVidia Desktop Explorer does this on windows

I also had my first VD (virtual desktop) experience with Sun's CDE. I use to think that the invented the concept. So can we now expect a new round of law suits against MS?

THANK YOU FOR CLARIFYING. WE THOUGHT YOU MEANT VENEREAL DISEASE.

X virtual desktop window managers much older

ctwm and tvtwm were one of the oldest window managers with virtual desktops, derived from one of the oldest X window managers twm (uwm was older).

Here [visi.com] is an interesting family tree of twm descendants, showing the first virtual desktop window managers appearing in 1990/1991.

Re:nVidia Desktop Explorer does this on windows

http://home.eol.ca/~andgur/software/goscreen.html

Beats anything in powertoys hands down.

Re:nVidia Desktop Explorer does this on windows

Now...if I had a seperate monitor for each desktop, that would be cool.

If you actually had a separate monitor for each desktop, it would be hard to call them virtual at that point, wouldn't it? :P

Re:nVidia Desktop Explorer does this on windows

You know, Slashdot often posts articles on patents for apparently obvious inventions, or patents for things that very obviously have prior art, where usually the facts are rather less certain than the submitter assumes.

I think this has to be the first time I've read such a posted patent and come to the conclusion the submitter is absolutely, 100%, right. While I see a few apparently new (but not exactly non-obvious) features (a preview button is on one of the variants), the vast majority of the inventions covered by this patent have abundant prior art, dating back to the late eighties at the latest. And, to the best of my knowledge, while Microsoft has made some of these features available in bonus packs or add-ons or downloadable features since the mid-nineties, I can't recall MS ever bothering to actually include the features by default in their operating systems. It's like they're taking credit for something they've only ever supported grudgingly.

Full marks to Microsoft for blatent patent abuse.

this is a patent application

this is a patent application, not an actual patent. All patents filed after the near end of 2000 are pubished 18 months after they were filed. This is a good thing, as examiners can now search this database of prior art, which is substantially larger than the current USPTO patent database.

As this is only an application, it does not have patent protection.

joke

this is a patent application, not an actual patent. All patents filed after the near end of 2000 are pubished 18 months after they were filed. This is a good thing, as examiners can now search this database of prior art, which is substantially larger than the current USPTO patent database.

I hope you're kidding. Not only is the USPTO generally incompetent, they're generally overworked to the point that they have something like half an hour to research a given application. They most certainly will NOT be spending 18 months researching this.

The number of ridiculous patents being granted is stunning, and given the crack MS legal team, I have no doubt this one will too.

If I had means of collecting bets from /. readers, I'd propose a bet.

its not a joke

no joke

I work as an examiner.

The claims presented in this application will likely be signifigantly different if it becomes allowed.

Examiners usually have 10-40 hours based on paygrade to fully examine a case. Keep in mind experts don't need as much time to search, and unless you have a proper legal background to understand the metes and bounds, you may not realize how narrow or broad the claims actually are.

I can not comment on office policy, or validity of the claims for this, or any other patent application.

Re:its not a joke

Actually, large entities are charged the normal fee and companies with less than 500 employees (there are other criteria such as "did you license the tech to a large entity?"), you qualify for Small Entity Status in which all application, etc fees are literally half the normal fee.

PTO fees [uspto.gov]

Re:its not a joke

>>I work as an examiner

Boy, you are in trouble now!

Wait, shouldn't you be reviewing patents instead of posting here?

Re:its not a joke

The claims presented in this application will likely be signifigantly different if it becomes allowed.

While that's true, I wonder if the easiest way to fix the patent system or at least to significantly band-aid it would be to permanently reject any patent for which initial submission has obvious prior art that dates back more than 10 years prior to the claim. At the very least that would eliminate a ton of the claims like this without having to waste everyone's time in cycling processes of reivew an revision.

Re:its not a joke

We'd eliminate half the problems if we rejected outright any patent who's title was something like:

A method for doing X "on the Internet.

<sigh>

Re:its not a joke

if someone submits a patent that has obvious prior art dates back more than 10 years, the patent application is immediately rejected, AND the entity filing the application is permanently banned from ever filing any more patent applications.

That is so extreme that it will never be considered. I do think that a "bad faith application" should carry a penalty. It sounds as if companies are currently gaming the uspto; they must hope to get an examininer who, for whatever reason, lets something through with a lot broader scope than be should be allowed.

So maybe a bad faith application shuts down the application process (with loss of all filing fees) and a penalty, based on the number of previous offenses by the filing entity, is charged to the filing entity.

Supposedly that the problem is that the uspto needs money and that refusing patents does not make them money. Here is a way that they can get paid for granting patents and sometimes get paid for shooting down patents.

Re:joke

Examiners don't spend 18 months reviewing prior art. All applications filed after 2000 publish at 18 months. This does not mean they become a patent (that is "issued"). It merely becomes public knowledge. This means that patent applications that were never issued are still searchable as prior art instead of just getting tossed in the circular file, never to be seen again.

And the PTO is not incompetent. Overworked, yes. Incompetent, no. I guarantee you 99% of the people posting on slashdot don't even look at a patent before crying foul. Of the 1% left, 99% of them only read the abstract and not the claims, the claims being what is considered enforceable/infringeable.

IANAL, IANAExaminer, but I deal with both daily and the ingorance of the /. populace when it comes down to even the basics of the patent system is astounding.

Re:joke

I guarantee you 99% of the people posting on slashdot don't even look at a patent before crying foul. Of the 1% left, 99% of them only read the abstract and not the claims, the claims being what is considered enforceable/infringeable.

Thanks for pointing this out. Tried a few times before; but the message doesn't seem to get through. With respect to publishing after 18 months: the US (this time) followed worldwide tradition.

I might not be completely agreeable though with the stated competence of the USPTO. Having been an examiner until 7 years back, they had a tendency to be politically correct; more than legally correct. And how do you distinguish between incompetence and overworked ? When our car comes back from a shoddy repair I don't bother if the mechanic was incompetent or overworked. And I wouldn't know; badly repaired is badly repaired. A horribly granted patent remains a sore; for the industry and the consumer.

The independent claims will be discussed, eventually slightly modified and granted; I bet quite some money on this outcome. Patent business is a monkey business. Whatever they get - and they will get something - they can always use it to strangle the competitors: would you / Gnome / KDE / enlightenment have the funds to go to court against Microsoft ? So, there won't even be a need to make the patent stand in court; just a few letters and Longhorn will have workspaces and desktops while OSS won't (any more). Cease and desist: the honestly conducted business of the future.

Re:nVidia Desktop Explorer does this on windows

I'm not sure whether it's patent abuse by MS, or simply defensive patenting to avoid becoming a target. If nothing else, by filing for the patent first, they get themselves a little protection from subsequent patent claims.

The problem is in the patent system... once the system is in place, however flawed, you can't blame people for trying to get the most out of it, because they're competing with other people who are trying to make the most of it. Shaking our fists at MS will no good, it just means that somebody else will benefit from a flawed system. But the consumer loses either way.

The problem is...

...that there's TONS of prior art available that does exactly what they're describing here.

Starfish Dashboard...
Several different pieces of shareware at the time Dashboard95 came out...
FVWM...
GNOME...
KDE...

Simply put, they shouldn't have filed this one.

Patent Abuse = Slander of Title?

A. Microsoft costs the patent office time on this, and that's our money.

B. They cost us, as a community, time.

C. They're gambling on getting it through under radar, and if that happens it'll cost lots of folks money to fight it.

So there's a monetary component to this.

Meanwhile, Microsoft KNOWS they don't have actual title to this, and are submitting it in effort to take title to this idea FRAUDULENTLY, as they KNOW they don't have title.

That sounds to me like slander of title, and is ACTIONABLE, correct?

And while it's hard to figure out who needs to do the actual suing, damages to the community could be set as a fraction of legal fees expected as an average of Microsoft's expenditures on patent actions.

And it would put the fear of God into some of these slanderers of title we've been talking about for the past year(s).

Re:nVidia Desktop Explorer does this on windows

enlightenment supported these features back in 97 / 98. I'm trying to find a copy of the SuSE CD that was being handed out at linux expo (the donnie barnes one, not the IGN one) by bodo & co so we can have some documented proof, not just timestamps on a computer.

Re:nVidia Desktop Explorer does this on windows

This patent application is thorough, obviously written by someone who knows how to push patents through. The last three pages of the PDF have a listing of 25 claims that they say are the embodiment of the "invention." I'm not a patent examiner, and am not in the place to refute each of them. However, its clear that they aren't claiming a patent on basic pager functionality. As mentioned elsewhere, they give examples of prior art.

There do seem to be some improvements listed. Foremost appears to be the ability to view a scaled version of the desktops in full screen instead of just the little icons in the pager. For instance, with 4 virtual desktops, they describe a scaled view where each desktop is essentially 1/4 of the screen. If you have two browser windows open in two different desktops, such a view would enable you to visually determine which is which. I don't remember seeing such a feature in other VWMs. They also describe animating the transition between this view and the full desktops via shrinking/expanding the active desktop.

While this does seem to be an improvement over existing pagers, many will argue its triviality. I personally suspect it's still enough to get the patent issued and drag someone into court...

Re:nVidia Desktop Explorer does this on windows

There do seem to be some improvements listed. Foremost appears to be the ability to view a scaled version of the desktops in full screen instead of just the little icons in the pager.

The Enlightenment [enlightenment.org] window manager does that already. Look at the lower left corner of of this screenshot [enlightenment.org].

There is a key difference

I think there is a key difference between the KDE, Gnome implementations, Bigdesk for windows etc. and this patent.

Reading the patent document, the key point is that the users hits a key and all the desktops are scaled within the window using animation. So if I have a 3 x 3 virtual desktop and hit the desktop view button, my screen is shrunk to (say) the top left 9th of the screen and 8 other mini desktops become visible. If I select another desktop it zooms towards me filling the screen. They make a number of references to background images and I guess animating 9 different background images for the demo above would look very cool.

I haven't seen this implemented before. The nearest is Mac OS X.3 which allows all application windows to be minimised and switched between, I use it a lot and it is excellent, particularly if you have a number of quicktime movies or similar playing. As I recall, Apple patented this and I think this is Microsoft's answer

How big a difference is it?

I haven't seen this implemented before.

The first X Windows desktop I remember seeing something like this with was Enlightenment, back in ~1998, whose pager had miniature screenshots of all your other desktops. I'm sure Microsoft is updating the screenshots more frequently and zooming to them more smoothly, but since even Enlightenment's improved version of the pager is too obvious an idea to deserve a patent, in a sane world "Enlightenment + more eye candy" wouldn't stand a chance.

Re:There is a key difference

Hm, I'm not so sure I agree with you there... I read the claims, and while I'm always getting confused by reading claims, the only thing they could have done, that hasn't been done here is that you could scale each desktop and actually use it... Say you had a bunch of applications open, 2x2 matrix for example, and normally you'd like to work with only one desktop open, but suddenly you want all four. So you scale the whole thing in, get all four desktops on your desktop, and you can use all applications open. That I must admit I haven't seen before. I was too confused by the patent application, but I didn't see that there. Anybody?

Come to think of it, that could be useful... :-)

Another thing I've been thinking about when using virtual desktops with Xinerama, is the ability to connect any arbitrary virtual desktop with any screen. Rather than having them side-by-side (or whatever), you use the pager to click on the desktop you want to appear in which screen. Anybody know of a WM that does this?

Besides, isn't it common to have references to previous relevant systems in a patent application...? I mean, if it were real, they should at least give a reference to the old FVWM pager.... (Actually, the FVWM pager was a killer app for me when I first discovered UNIX 10 years ago).

Re:Post link to site!

Geez, can't you post the link instead of us having to copy+paste?

I'm not sure if that was irony or stupidity. Anyway, here's a clickable link to the patent. [uspto.gov]

You may want to mention that

to the Patent Office! Because you just know they don't read slashdot.... if they did, they wouldn't approve half the patents they approve.

Re:You may want to mention that

I don't think that you understand. The US Patent office's function is no longer to get into validity. The new function is simply to accept money and issue patents which become legal weapons for businesses.

Microsoft will probably get this patent and go on to sue anyone using the technology out of existence.

Embrace and extend.

Um how about the DOS filesystem patents?

Perhaps you are forgetting the current patent licensing they started enforcing with the makers of compact flash and other digital media for the DOS filesytem?

Re:You may want to mention that

Perhaps their latest rash of applications are more defensive than offensive.

If that were the case, then why are they lobbying so heavily in favour of software patents in Europe? They even went as far as going to individual MEPs and asking them what they wanted (things like free licenses for schools in their constituency etc) in return for supporting the swpat directive. They also went to governments (together with national member organisations from EICTA [ffii.org]), urging them to support the swpat directive, because excluding software from patentability would somehow be very bad for our economy.

Re:You may want to mention that

Why do idiots (or astroturfing trolls) always say this and why do other idiots mod them up? Microsoft most certainly does go after people using patents. Just ask the author of VirtualDub [advogato.org]

Just because most of these never make it to court is hardly an excuse either. Honestly, how many open source developers do you think could afford to face Microsofts high-paid lawyers in a patent case?

Re:You may want to mention that

They haven't. They don't do business that way.

Yes, you are right that Microsoft, so far hasn't done that. They haven't needed to, since they have been able to dominate the industry through other means. So, Microsoft is not guilty of any special kind of abuse of the patent system, they simply abuse it in the same way every large company abuses the patent system.

There are plenty of folks suing them over frivolous patents.

And how is creating more "frivolous patents" going to help with that?

Perhaps their latest rash of applications are more defensive than offensive.

There is no such thing as a "defensive patent": sooner or later, a company has to assert, or at least threaten to assert, the claims in one of their patents if it is going to do them any good. And that makes the patent offensive.

Sometimes people think that a patent is used "defensively" in order to establish priority. That's nonsense--a simple disclosure does the same thing and is nearly free. Even Microsoft wouldn't waste $50k-$100k on that.

In fact, most likely, Microsoft is filing patents in order to allow them to get a portfolio for cross-licensing. And that, in itself, is anti-competitive because it ends up keeping people out of the market. It just happens that most of the big companies are in on that kind of anti-competitive behavior.

Re:You may want to mention that

I've never used FVWM, but isn't this the same as virtual desktops in any environment/WM? GNOME, KDE, CDE, and others have virtual desktops. KDE even has something called the Pager. FVWM? Maybe they came up with the idea, but it's all over I'd say.

Re:You may want to mention that

You know, why doesn't the US Patent Office simply open up a web submission system? Whip up your own patent document, upload it, and it's automatically assigned a number.

It's not really the Patent Office's job to ensure that every patent is totally original and has never been done before. A patent is only really used when the invention ends up in court. If it's not defendable, it will be nullified. However, who wants to sit across from Microsoft in a courtroom? Maybe if you slip and break your leg on the sidewalk in front of their office building. Even in that case you'd probably end up paying $10,000 to repair the scuffmarks you made in the concrete.

Re:You may want to mention that

yay for replying to myself!

from uspto's website [uspto.gov]:

A protest under 37 CFR 1.291(a) must be submitted in writing, must specifically identify the application to which the protest is directed by application number or serial number and filing date, and must include a listing of all patents, publications, or other information relied on; a concise explanation of the relevance of each listed item; an English language translation of all relevant parts of any non-English language document; and be accompanied by a copy of each patent, publication, or other document relied on. Protestors are encouraged to use form PTO-1449 "Information Disclosure Statement" (or an equivalent form) when preparing a protest under 37 CFR 1.291, especially the listing enumerated under 37 CFR 1.291(b)(1). See MPEP 609. In addition, the protest and any accompanying papers must either (1) reflect that a copy of the same has been served upon the applicant or upon the applicant's attorney or agent of record; or (2) be filed with the Office in duplicate in the event service is not possible.

who wants to do it?!

Re:You may want to mention that

From the USPTO FAQ:

#50 How does one file protest on patents that are pending?

Protests by a member of the public against pending applications will be referred to the examiner having charge of the subject matter involved. A protest specifically identifying the application to which the protest is directed will be entered in the application file if: (1) The protest is submitted prior to the publication of the application or the mailing of a notice of allowance under rule 1.311, whichever occurs first; and (2) The protest is either served upon the applicant in accordance with rule 1.248, or filed with the Office in duplicate in the event service is not possible. For more detailed information on protesting a patent, you may visit our Web site at http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/mpep.htm [uspto.gov] for the Manual of Patent Examining Procedure (MPEP) Chapter 1900.

This has got to stop

Someone at the patent office needs to wake up and smell the coffee. We are going to have a situation like the landrush on domain names as a few bottom feeders run off and patent every idea in the book, and if the past is any indication, the patent office will grant patents on whoever is the first to show up, regardless of prior developments or use.

Re:This has got to stop

According to the official job announcement for a Patent Examiner vacancy (special emphasis on ELECTRICAL & COMPUTER ENGINEERING, COMPUTER SCIENCE) the duties are as follows:

Reviewing patent applications to assess if they comply with the basic format, rules and legal requirements, determining the scope of the protection claimed by the inventor, researching relevant technologies to compare similar prior inventions with the invention claimed in the patent applications, and communicating the examiner's findings to patent practitioners/inventors with reasons on the patent ability of applicant's inventions.
Patent Examiners are responsible for the quality, productivity, and timely processing of patent applications, which is the basis of their performance evaluation.

See the actual posting HERE [opm.gov]

I'm not trying to be glib, and I know one person cannot change the world, but with all of the unemployed /.'ers out there, one of you could take a leap and actually apply for this position.

Let us know how it goes.