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Fallout From Japanese Patent On Help Icon
Posted by
timothy
on Mon Feb 07, 2005 02:39 AM
from the interesting-times dept.
from the interesting-times dept.
MeridianOnTheLake writes "The Tokyo District Court has ordered the destruction of Ichitaro, a software product that is the only serious competitor in Japan to Microsoft Word, and has been on sale since 1985. The ruling is based on the claim of a competitor, Matsushita, that the use of a help icon to invoke a help function infinges on one of their patents. "We are a global enterprise and we are just following international practice to enforce our IP rights," Kitadeya (Matsushita) said." Here's more on the story, as covered by Bloomberg and The Japan Times.
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Where have I seen that before? (Score:5, Funny)
Gee, do you think there might be any other software out there that uses a help icon? *cough* *coughwindowsmacoswordexcelaccesspowerpointwordpe
It's a shame (Score:5, Insightful)
Does anybody know?
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Re:It's a shame (Score:5, Informative)
I'll translate about as much as I can without getting into copyright trouble. The patent includes clicking on one icon displayed somewhere on your console, which attaches a special graphic to your mouse cursor. You then click on another icon or function on your console, and it brings up context-sensitive help. This is specifically distinguished from using context-sensitive help by pressing one special key or icon which is in a constant place, and also from each function embedding an explanation of what it does through other means which do not change the state of the mouse cursor.
The meat of the story is paragraphy #3, although the three screenshots on the front page are understandable even if you don't read Japanese. Due to quirkiness with derivative works law in Japan, tranlating their captions exactly could potentially lead to a lot of trouble. Suffice it to say that the first screenshot shows the offending icon, the second shows the mouse cursor changing as a result of clicking the icon, and the third shows the result of a second click on a generic interface function (an explanation pops up).
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It's not the thing, it's the method (Score:5, Interesting)
Instead, they hired on an ex-Matsushita employee and he went on to use the Matsushita patented method for the help system. So they sued, as is their right.
This is not a problem with the patent system. However what it does bring up is "How much knowledge can you take away from your previous employer, even if all that knowledge is just in your head?" As we gain ground in technology, such to the point that Johnny Bnemonic-style memory expansion is possible, how can patent holders and companies owning "trade secret" IP be protected from information pirates?
Re:It's not the thing, it's the method (Score:5, Interesting)
It also depends some on the reason why the patent infringement is coming up now. For example, since the company affected is a competitor to Microsoft, did Microsoft pay Matsushita to launch the lawsuit? IANAL, but there may be a case for appeal, if it turns out that the lawsuit was in bad faith, and/or is an attempt by Microsoft to gain further control of the Japanese office market by paying Matsushita to eliminate the only serious competitor.
In general, the courts tend to frown on being used subversively as the "enforcers" of a protection racket.
I'm not saying that this is what is happening. What I am saying is that there are enough suspicious circumstances to warrant a closer look at this, and that the Japanese courts might be persuadable that this isn't as innocent as it appears.
As for the "what you know" problem - since any work "could" be tainted by any prior experience, it would be impossible for any technical person to be re-hired within the lifetime of any patent they may have come into contact with. AT&T argued a similar line, against the BSDers, arguing that since they'd come into contact with AT&T proprietary knowledge, they were tainted and therefore so was any/all their subsequent work.
This is one reason I don't agree with the existing concept of IP. Nobody could ever have more than one job, and once they quit/leave/get sacked, they could NEVER be re-employed. IMHO, that is not protecting anybody and is clearly excessive.
Therefore, it should not be possible to "taint" work with IP, merely by being exposed to it. There has to be a far more material breach, and one which isn't protected against IP claims in some other way (such as being obvious, public domain, etc).
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Re:It's not the thing, it's the method (Score:5, Interesting)
Not sure if anyone interested in the trivia, but here's a bit just in case... The old Ichitaro actually had a lot of elements copied from ancient WordStar, but the interface got pretty much tortured to death when they were trying to add a Windows-style menu system. I'm pretty sure some versions had both interfaces. They had originally been almost completely dominant in the software word processor market, but that was back when NEC had the lock on proprietary Japanese hardware. Their foundation was their Japanese input system, which was still better than Microsoft's for many years. That was called ATOK, and was also sold separately for use as an IME replacement. They tried to expand into integrated office suites about the same time Lotus was getting beaten out of that market. Later on they tried to become an ISP with a system called JustNet, but I think they eventually sold it to someone else. (But I did see a few of their boxes in a large computer store just this weekend, when I was visiting Akihabara.)
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Re:It's not the thing, it's the method (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a problem with the patent system, for two reasons:
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Re:It's not the thing, it's the method (Score:5, Insightful)
p.s. Of course, the people are getting hurt indirectly, as they are thus deprived of a choice in the marketplace.
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Re:Patents must be published (Score:5, Funny)
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as if more proof were needed (Score:5, Insightful)
Also from TFA: Does the Japanese patent system have no concept of "prior art"? The patent in question was granted in 1998, but the products in "violation" has been on the market since 1985 and 1987.
Re:as if more proof were needed (Score:5, Insightful)
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For those wondering... (Score:5, Informative)
That said, the patent itself isn't regarding a Help Icon. It is the function where you first click on the help icon/button, and then on the particular function you need help with.
In court, Just System insisted that the Matsushita Patent was for a help ICON, which is usuall an item on the desktop, much like a file or folder, whereas the Just System Ichitaro used a button. The second point was that the "help" key on a keyboard already performed said function, and taking the keyboard to a GUI analogy did not require any insight, but was rather an obvious move as more and more keyboard functions were moved to the GUI.
The lower court found that the "icon" was used loosely and would be found to include the buttons-with-pictures as found in Ichitaro. As for the keyboard-to-gui concept, the court found that it would take more than obvious insight to make the leap, thus it was a valid invention.
Quite obviously, Matsushita was quite pleased that the court bought their story, while Just System was quite pissed off. By appealing to a higher court though, they did not need to immediately follow the ruling.
Whether you think this was fair game or not, keep in mind that this is pretty much what Microsoft did too with Win95 and IE. Keep the court case going long enough that the Win95/IE bundle was no longer relevant.
we're not alone (Score:4, Funny)
Hopefully Nintendo does not sue /. for use of that Linux penguin icon, which is an obvious ripoff of Super Mario 64's snow level character.
Dear Godzilla (Score:5, Funny)
They told me to tell you that your mother is a dishonorable dirty woman.
attatchment [jpomap.png]
Follow the Money.... (Score:5, Informative)
"Matsushita Electric, in close cooperation with Microsoft, will develop a high-performance personal computer suited to the advanced image-processing demands of the 21st century," said Dr. Yoshitomi Nagaoka, vice president of Matsushita Electric's AVC Company..."
Who stands to profit if this software is knocked off the market?
MacOS 7 as prior art? (Score:5, Insightful)
AFAIK the bubble help gave context sensitive information on GUI elements after activating it with a button.
Apparently MacOS 7 came out two years before the patent was filed. Here's a screenshot [emuunlim.com] of MacOS 7 with the help icon and a copyright notice.
Ichitaro and JustSystem (Score:5, Insightful)
In regards to Open Source alternatives such as OpenOffice, they are sorley lacking in Kanji conversion, dictionaries, and layout flexibility. I know that Turbo and Others put effort into this, but progress is slow...
Re:Ichitaro and JustSystem (Score:5, Insightful)
The issue is not Ichitaro. The issue is being able to develop software without having to look over your shoulder at the big corporations with their patent portfolios all the time. If decisions like this are allowed to stand, then small businesses cannot create software - because if anything they produce is any good, they will be sued out of existence by corporations with portfolios they can't match.
It's my view that software patents should not be allowed at all. But if they are going to be allowed the bar for non-obviousness and novelty has to be very high indeed.
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May as well face it, this is the future (Score:5, Insightful)
One missing fact... ok a few (Score:5, Insightful)
The Microsoft/Matshusita link is tenuous, what computer hardware/software company has not worked with Microsoft at some point on a collaboritive project? Sony? IBM? DELL? Compaq/HP? Using the logic that was put forth earlier anyone Apple sues could be construed as being motivated from M$...
Lets see if anyone can get some real info on this. Instead of conjucture from a few short news blurbs that contradict each other.
Re:Now if only someone had patented "Clippy" (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Now if only someone had patented "Clippy" (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Now if only someone had patented "Clippy" (Score:5, Insightful)
Frankly I believe Open Office handles older versions of .doc formats better than the current MS Word does.
Note: I'm not just MS bashing, I use Word a lot myself, and this is a very frustrating bug to deal with. It gets old having to upgrade every time a new version comes out (gotta make sure I can read all the Word documents that come my way), and having to keep older versions around on a backup machine for when the current version opens an older version .doc and it's unreadable without a few hours of formatting.
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cross licensing (Score:5, Interesting)
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Some screenshots of the offending icon (Score:5, Informative)
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