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Patents

Adobe Sues Over Tabbed Widgets 212

Posted by CmdrTaco from the you-gotta-be-kidding dept.
angst_ridden_hipster noted one that you'll find hard to believe. Adobe is suing Macromedia over the patent they seem to have on tabbed widgets. Now I'm torn: Is this lamer than one click shopping? Definitely not as lame as hyperlinks, but pretty sad.
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Adobe Sues Over Tabbed Widgets More

Adobe Sues Over Tabbed Widgets

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  • A Direct quote by Adobe's CEO from the yahoo piece:
    "Adobe will not be the R&D department for its competitors. Our patent and other aspects of our user interface are key to the user experience and functionality of our products; they are essential to differentiate our products and brand from others."

    This seems kinda sad... that for adobe, tabs are a big part of what differentiate their product from competitors... shouldn't the differentiating factors be features, price, quality and not a small part of their UI....

    $.02,
    11oh8
  • Apple's using tabbed widgets in AppleWorks 6. MS uses tabbed widgets in their pref panels. Apple also used tabbed widgets in At Ease, and with some Multiple Users settings in Mac OS 9.

    Are these also infringements?

  • Macromedia has Freehand to counter Illustrator. It's less feature rich but the splines actually work well

    The thing about Freehand is that it doesn't really work in postscript -- it uses its own intermediary format, and translates to Postscript. (This is how you can get transparency and such in Freehand). Also, because of this, Freehand seems to be generally "snappier" feeling than illustrator.

    The down side is that whatever I make in Illustrator, I know will rip correctly. Always has, always will. But, my Freehand files... well, they run about 90-95%. Not bad, but not "production" quality -- at least to me.

    The damnable thing is, there are parts of both apps I like, and so tend to do things in both. Damn those two companies... :)

  • If I'm not mistaken, this comes under the heading of "look and feel". Which is fair game ever since that lotus 1-2-3 court case years and years ago.

    Besides that...

    Tabs are a common feature in current gui's. Adobe should also be suing Microsoft, IBM (OS/2 used tabbed properties palettes), NetObjects, etc., etc. Is Adobe going to argue that the unique invention is the use of tabbed properties palettes in a graphics program, but not in a Operating System?

    Macromedia could certainly argue that they were just trying to create an interface that matched the operating system. Then Adobe would have to sue Microsoft / etc. just to show that they are not selectively enforcing the patent (which will invalidate it). That probably wouldn't make much business sense.

    For what it's worth, here's macromedia's dull corporate response. [macromedia.com]

  • Not true at all, Flash is continuing to grow and though only about 20% of the web-using world is using Flash, Adobe can't come close.
  • I don't believe I said he couldn't get upset. But cussing out someone for calling something news instead of a press release bordlines psycho.
  • Who have a claim [ibm.com] on Tabs filed 12 months earlier than Adobe. Here's another [ibm.com] interesting Patent Borland owns, I wonder if Microsoft is paying their IP fees on tooltips.
  • I'd been using MetaCreations Painter for image slicing forever and then was so excited that Adobe had finally built one - - until I used it. Ack. But I do have to give props to Photoshop 5.5's compression features (Save for Web). It's really pretty good, and about 50% of the time it's better than say, a Ulead Smartsaver filter.

    The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
  • How is this post Insightful?

    "Adobe did make a pretty neat discovery with regard to UI design, which Macromedia went on to use in Fireworks to great effect, therefore being innovative"

    No, therefore taking someone's established intellectual property and plagiarizing their ideas.

    Why are they doing harm to the consumers? They're just saying that Macromedia can't steal their specific GUI functionality. Macromedia has the ability to "discover" their own GUI design and functionality, which is good for the market and consumer because it introduces a conflicting opinion that could pan out to be a better interface. At which point Macromedia would patent their concept.

    I don't think this has anything to do with defensive tactics or either company being scared. They both have a large market share in some of their many products. Macromedia has successful products in Flash, Fontographer, Dreamweaver (as well as many others), while Adobe has Acrobat (always forgotten), Photoshop, Imageready, AfterEffects, Pagemaker, etc. And they're both duking it out between Freehand and Illustrator (each problem has both some pluses and some minuses)
  • Tabs were used that far back.. Was Adobe even around then? Hell, GEOS from 83 might have even had some Tabs somewhere in it .. But don't quote me on that one! Dungeon Master (My Favorite RPG) used tabs exclusively. I believe that was out in the 80s .. Came out on the Atari ST before that... When was this tab thing patented?

  • In the first instance, the question is not whether someone could have done something similar in the past but whether they actually did and then proving it.

    To have the features of the claim, you would need to open a window, drag several folder icons into the window and perfectly align them one over another along the Z axis. The you need some way of selecting one of the folders to bring it to the front. With a tabbed dialog this is usually the tabs, but one could used page numbers or icons in a margin area for example.

  • Macromedia's response. [maccentral.com]
  • You'll need more than a simple plugin to replace MacOS's system wide color management.
    --
  • So does this mean that Microsoft tabbed widgets that do the same thing are also braking the law? After all, I've seen this thing in GUIs for a long time. In Windows it's refered to as a "Tab". Sue MS!

  • Re:More than Tabs (Score:3)

    by Stele ( 9443 ) on Friday August 11, 2000 @04:08AM (#863732) Homepage
    At my previous company, I implemented a "tear-off tabs" interface for a graphics application (Windows and IRIX). After meeting several times with our legal department, we decided that Adobe's patent was effectively too broad to be enforced, so we went ahead anyway.

    The gist of our arguments were that the patent sounds suspiciously like tear-off menus, which have been around (in OpenLook) since before Adobe filed the patent.

    (Aside: implementing tear-off tabs in X/Motif/ViewKit was a seriously fun and annoying excercise!)
  • Aren't patents supposed to be invalidated if the holder doesn't enforce them for a long time? Stuff like 1-click shopping, this tabbed thing. If everyone's been using it for so long, how come the can still come out with a patent and try to stop everyone?


    ---
  • ...and that's what I get for posting in the pre-coffee state.
    --

  • Re:Not all tabbed widgets (Score:3)

    by GreenHell ( 209242 ) on Thursday August 10, 2000 @05:52PM (#863735)
    I got that too, that the patent is just on tabbed palettes, however, IMHO Adobe isn't on very strong legal ground, after all, tabs are quite common and as such it would be hard to prove infringement. Personally I can't even see WHY they were allowed to take out a patent on the damned things in the first place, maybe its just cuz the patent office loves to hand the things out...

    Anyways, for more information see the adobefacts website [adobefacts.com] which unfortunately seems to be ./'d (or something) at this time... anyone manage to grab the pics before it went down?

    -GreenHell
  • Borland filed a patent for Tabs [ibm.com] a year before Adobe.
  • It sounds suspiciously like "GUI" to me.
  • I'm just curious why Adobe is accosting Macromedia specifically. The tabbed window interface was used very extensively (and effectively) in Paint Shop Pro 6, but I can't recall an Adobe/Jasc lawsuit. Anyone shed some light on this? Presumably, if Adobe truly had a leg to stand on and wasn't just picking a fight like the neighborhood pixel bully, they could go after AltaVista... and any number of sites and applications that use a tabbed interface without any idea that the Adobe patent exists.
  • Yes, actually, I did read the article. I've also read Adobe's own article, including the spiffy little animated GIFs. In addition, I have been a user of Adobe's products for years. In particular, Photoshop and Illustrator, and am therefore quite familiar with the behaviors that Adobe has managed to patent.

    It is my opinion, based on these years of experience, that although the tabbed pallete behavior is useful, and possibly unique, it is a feature that amounts to little more than look and feel. Apple vs. Microsoft quite clearly showed that suits based on look and feel are, in general, doomed to failure. As they should be.

    I think that 99% of everyone else got what I was saying from the original post. Whether they agree or not is another story. In any case, it's an easy thing to call someone a shithead whilst posting as an AC... It's another thing altogether to call someone a fuckwit when not posting that way.

  • I am writing in response to most of the comments about this issue whenever it comes up. You're right though, the writers are just as retarded as the readers, good point, thanks!

    sig:

  • Re:Not all tabbed widgets (Score:3)

    by MrBogus ( 173033 ) on Thursday August 10, 2000 @05:56PM (#863741)
    OS/2 2.0 had tabbed palettes in 1990. The tabs were on the right side though.

    Lotus Apps had very Adobe-like tabbed palettes going back to 93 or even earlier. I've seen countless program launchers that operate on that principle (had one running on my Mac back in the early-mid 90's) Even Microsoft is now getting into the game with tabbed palettes (Office 2000 web controls, screen shots of MacOffice 2001 UI.), even if you don't quite consider a Windows Control Panel to be a tabbed pallete.
  • This is an obvious PR ploy constructed by Adobe - it is cynical in the sense that it seeks to undermine the USPTO hegemony on the protection of our intellectual rights to valid patentable items (such as, say - a new type of handheld device that runs on solar power) at the expense of a vaudeville approach to get others to comment on their actions. Please be aware that I am recommending we all really begin to ignore this stuff. Its stupid.
  • It's ludicrous that Adobe could be granted a patent for something this trivial. It's a form of 'drag and drop', something made popular by the earliest GUI's. Maybe someone should have patented dropping a file into a folder. This is stupid.

  • At least Paint Shop Pro doesn't try to look exactly like Adobe's products. It still keeps its own identity.

    And I don't know, can you drag those tabs out to become their own palettes?

    If you can, then that would mean that Adobe is selectively enforcing their patent, which is not a good thing for their case.

  • I am a psycho! :-) You hit the nail on the head, man. Thankfully, I can also be heard around here (sometimes)

  • I don't know where the name "tabbed widgets" came from. In the article [yahoo.com] and in Adobe's press release [adobe.com] they talk about "tabbed palettes", which sounds very different. Clearly, they are not talking about those popular multi-page dialog boxes with tabs at the top. Still, I haven't been able to figure out what exactly this is as the web site [adobefacts.com] which Adobe put up to discuss the issue is not responding at the moment... /.ed, perhaps? Anyway, if anyone knows what "tabbed palettes" are, please do tell.

    ------

  • All elements of look and feel effect functionality. An icon on a desktop is part of look and feel, but also provides a functionaly of starting a program (on both macs and pcs...)
  • This 'patent' was filed in 1994, and issued in 1996. In 1994 I remember using IBM OS/2 v2.1 (released in may 1993), and beta's (the so-called "performance edition") of 3.x (later to be known as "Warp", formally launched in october 1994). OS/2 2.1 already had tabbed widgets (notebooks). This alone should void the patent I'd say. Up yours, Adobe!
  • Without doing a reasonable amount of research into this, like reading the patent or seeing the Macromedia product, I would guess that what we're talking about here is more than just tabbed windows. Heck, if it were just that they'd be suing a lot more folks than just Macromedia.

    Yeah, you're right, they are talking about the floating dialog boxes with the separatable tables. But other programs have similar functionality as well, such as Corel Draw, although their rollups don't use quite the same interface, but they are customizable (you can group different palettes together, but its not as cool as it is in Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator)

    Don't forget that this is really a bitter feud that has gone on with these companies forever: Macromedia was started by a bunch of ex-Aldus employees when Adobe bought Aldus to get PageMaker. They dumped Freehand (because it competed with Illustrator), so the Freehand guys went and started Macromedia. Both camps have been bitter since.

  • Has anyone used Visual Studio by Microsoft? You can do the exact same thing--drag boxes into others to add a tab to the existing box. For some reason, however, I doubt Adobe wants to sue Microsoft.
  • I think there are two things that make a palette a palette:
    1. A thinner titlebar on the window
    2. No "close" button on the window. Closing is done by clicking the "close" widget in the titlebar or through program menus only.

    If it's just palettes Adobe's claiming, Macromedia simply needs to give their "palettes" a thicker titlebar, which would turn them into "dialog boxes".

    This is funny.
  • Microsoft Visual Studio acts in almost the exact same way... Floating dialogs with tabs that can be dragged out to create new windows or in to consolidate them.

    Except the microsoft implementation also supports docking and latching those dialogs and is infact, just a little more flexable.

    Additionally, ms has been using these types of windows since vb3... yet there hasn't been any noise at all between ms and adobe on the issue.

    -T
  • The planetweb magnification patent is different than what xdvi and gv do. The magnification is in a translucent window so you can see beneith it while magnifying. The window is also offset from the cursor so you can see the original unmagnified view. It is definitely different than xdvi, it's the subtle details that make the patent, not the general nature of it.

    In my mind, it is a good patent. It is something that is unique, they advanced the state of the art and they probably did it before someone else did, they deserved the patent they got. The problem is that by the time that patent expires it will be an irrelevent technology, all TVs will support 1080i. I'm all for letting corporations patent themselves into a cold war with other corporations but they need to last a shorter period of time, especially as related to software. Software is expensive enough to develop without paying an army of lawyers to make sure your product doesn't infringe on a UI patent.

    I also think that there should be a reasonable response time. If you're a multinational corporation with billions of dollars at your disposal, there is no excuse for letting a competitor deploy a product, upgrade it througha couple of revs and then, years later, start rattling your saber. If you're a private inventor and you don't have the resources you should have a longer period of time but like trademarks there should be a period of time where non-defense of your patent turns it public domain. What Macromedia should do is accuse Adobe of sitting on the patent until macromedia had enough marketshare or money to make the defense worth their while.

  • screen shots (Score:3)

    by Afterimage ( 44695 ) <nwalls@is m e d i a . org> on Thursday August 10, 2000 @05:30PM (#863758) Homepage
    The screen shots Adobe posted look pretty similar to the Macromedia products in question. I'm really wondering though, even though they deny it, if they're running scared from Flash, Fireworks and Dreamweaver.

    Stats? Anyone?

    Also, how much doctering of the actual default screens did they need to do to make their case?

  • Re:stop confusing "obvious" with "simple" (Score:3)

    by SecurityGuy ( 217807 ) on Friday August 11, 2000 @04:44AM (#863759)
    Whether Macromedia would have thought of it is irrelevant. Whether someone well versed in the field (user interface design, presumably) would think of it is the test.

    Let's see, how great a leap is a tabbed widget? Wait a minute, all my life I've seen tabbed widgets! Prime example? Your personal phone book is probably a tabbed widget with little tabs indicating the beginning letter of the names on the associated page. Come on, how great a leap is it to apply that to a computer interface? How great a leap is one click shopping? It's as simple as someone saying, "Hey, it takes two clicks to do this. Wouldn't it be good to do it with one?" These *ARE* obvious.

    Transistors are both elegant and simple, but by no means obvious. The internal combustion engine, conceptually, is both elegant and simple, but not obvious. A user interface design that mirrors a real world object can be elegant and simple, but is likely to be reinvented if you put a class of undergraduate computer science students on the task, let alone a talented and well versed professional. A user interface design that mirrors a real world object will NEVER be innovative. A patent that basically says "I do $COMMON_THING_IN_THE_REAL_WORLD, but I did it on a computer!" should never be granted. That's imitation, not innovation.

  • patent is not for all tabs (Score:4)

    by Venebulon ( 74777 ) on Thursday August 10, 2000 @06:13PM (#863770)
    It seems to me, after briefly reading the patent [164.195.100.11], Adobe are not trying to protect just any old use of tabs.

    Their first claim describes a standard tabbed dialog box UI component, with the additional function:


    "and

    combining the additional set of information, displayed in a different area of the display from the established area, into the group of multiple sets of information so that the additional sets of information may be selected in the same manner as the other sets of information in the group. "

    I have not seen this software in use, but this sounds like a control in which other controls can be dragged into it, and appear on a new tab.

  • More than Tabs (Score:5)

    by Metrol ( 147060 ) on Thursday August 10, 2000 @06:13PM (#863771) Homepage
    Without doing a reasonable amount of research into this, like reading the patent or seeing the Macromedia product, I would guess that what we're talking about here is more than just tabbed windows. Heck, if it were just that they'd be suing a lot more folks than just Macromedia.

    Photoshop utilizes a number of floating dialog boxes with tabs that switch between the various tools. Where Adobe's stuff is unique is that you can drag those tabs out to create new dialog boxes. You can also drag between different boxes to form new combinations of tools within a dialog box.

    Okay, so customizing floating dialog boxes isn't exactly earth shattering stuff. Lot's of other folks have similar kinds of interfaces, but Adobe apparently owns this concept when utilizing tabs to customize them. You can have floating dialog boxes, and you can have tabs on them, but you can't use those tabs to customize them.

    Personally, I think Adobe is going to lose big time on this one. Those tabs emulate file folders moving between drawers, and with a heavy precedent for the folder analogy througout GUI's I think they're going to have a hard time maintaining this one. On the other hand, it is a very cool feature for customizing the look and feel of Adobe products which nobody else has done a good job of emulating without duplicating. It'll be interesting to see how this one plays out.

  • Read enough of these patent stories, and you start to get numb. Groooovy.


    ---
  • A lot of this is the patent office's fault in the first place by setting precedent for idiotic patents. I'm sure a lot of companies patent things that are just ridiculous just because if they don't do it first their competitor will. Hey, how about taking just a little bit of my tax money that goes to corporate subsidies and actual employ some sentient people in the patent office?
  • After going over the patent info, I think I'll just go ahead and stand by my original post. I am still of the opinion this has far more to do with user customization methodology than simply tabs.

    Seems like Adobe must be getting prettied scared about Macromedia products if they're willing to unleash the lawyers on this.
  • Adobe's biggies are Photoshop and Illustrator. Macromedia isn't really horning in on that turf.

    Macromedia has Freehand to counter Illustrator. It's less feature rich but the splines actually work well...

  • Yeah, what's next?

    I want a patent on a common item that has lots of prior art so that I can come up with a lame lawsuit. Everybody else is doing it, why can't I? (furiously searching the patent database to see if the "Dialog Box" has been patented yet)

  • Macromedia responds (Score:4)

    by soda ( 6052 ) on Thursday August 10, 2000 @10:13PM (#863785) Journal
    Macromedia has issued a press release [macromedia.com] denying the patent infringement claims:

    MACROMEDIA DENIES ADOBE PATENT INFRINGEMENT CLAIMS

    San Francisco, California--August 10, 2000--Macromedia, Inc. (NASDAQ: MACR) announced today that it categorically denies the claims made in a lawsuit filed earlier this afternoon by Adobe Systems Inc. The claim alleges patent infringement relating to user interface features of Macromedia products.

    Macromedia believes the claims made in the Adobe lawsuit are without merit. The company believes that U.S. Patent No. 5,546,528 is invalid and unenforceable and that Macromedia does not violate the patent. Macromedia advised Adobe of this belief when first contacted by them in 1996, and readvised them when they last contacted Macromedia in May, 1999.

    Talking about patents... EU is about to pass laws making software patents possible in Europe. Check out eurolinux.org [eurolinux.org]'s petition [eurolinux.org] to warn European authorities against software patents.

    --

  • Funny...huh...same old patent dumb remarks (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Ha Ha Ha. Ok, the patent on the pixel would be wonderful retribution. As would the patent on air and every other god damn idiotic pience of nonsense at least 50 people will post.

    I think, however, it is more telling about the "community" of /. moderates this up. If it were the first time a comment like this was made, sure it's funny, but not now.

    Who designed this moderation system anyhow. If he/she bipedal?
  • When was the patent issued? OS/2's had tabbed widgets since the late '80's.

  • A pondering (Score:3)

    by Alik ( 81811 ) on Thursday August 10, 2000 @06:20PM (#863793)
    Obviously, Adobe doesn't give a shit about the opinion of the hacker community; in this regard, they are like most corporations. Is there any evidence (anecdotal will do) regarding how corporations treat the opinion of their stockholders (outside of annual meeting type stuff)?

    See, I own a bit of Adobe stock, and it's been doing pretty well for me. If I write them a letter saying "You're being jerks and abusing IP, cut it out", that letter goes in the circular file. OTOH, if I write "You're doing things to lower the value of my investment, cut it out", I hear a vaguely implied threat that "I think that I might be able to sue you for being jerks and costing me money." Hacker opinion might not count, but the thought of a class-action suit can generally get a few mental wheels turning.

    Any thoughts? I dropped an email to Investor Relations already (can't hurt), but I'm wondering if others think this might work (and would be willing to do likewise). If it might work in this case, might it work in the general case? Might it be possible to influence the companies we hate by buying stock in them and grumbling about our investment?

    I suspect that the answer I'll get is "It won't work, go do something useful", but I'm curious.
  • As noted in another post there is prior art as early as 1993 in the Next community that uses tabbed widgets. It looks like these designers didn't design jack shit. Shit is obvious. Brains are obvious. Shit for Brains is not obvious.
    Molog

    So Linus, what are we doing tonight?

  • If you don't like patents, come up with some arguments against them. Don't just pretend that things that nobody in fact did come up with, were things that anybody could have come up with.

    I would think that any normal, sane person would see an arguement isn't neccesary. Obviously we do not live in a normal, sane world.

    The patent system is not intended to protect obvious inventions. It is meant to allow inventors to show the public how their inventions work, while still protecting their rights. Patenting widgets, file managers, or new ways to tie your shoe-lace is hardly benefiting the public, and it's the public that by and large pays for enforcement of these patents with taxes going to a legal system that now has to worry about folks like Adobe who are miffed that someone else is using a tabbed dialog. Imagine if they could focus on the crimes and issues that concern the public, and not those that concern companies like Adobe.

    Don't just pretend that things that nobody in fact did come up with, were things that anybody could have come up with.

    Are you seriously suggestion no-one would come up with a tabbed dialog? A window manager? A file manager? I'll grant you Post-it notes are ingenious, but protecting them with a patent is an abuse of the original intent of the system.

  • Adobe didn't think of it first. NeXT systems had stuff that had tabbed widgets in 93, the patent was filied in 94. Answer that one!
    Molog

    So Linus, what are we doing tonight?

  • tabbed widgets, not tabbed palettes. The tabbed widget is noted as prior art in the Adobe patent, for heaven's sake. Adobe innovated by allowing you to take the tabs, pull them off the widget and them reassemble them into new, customisable widgets. That's the innovation.

    I blame Taco for screwing this up in his headline. But you are equally culpable for believing what you want to be true, rather than looking for what actually is true.

  • Prior art (Score:3)

    by Simon Brooke ( 45012 ) <stillyet@googlemail.com> on Thursday August 10, 2000 @11:12PM (#863806) Homepage Journal
    I created a tabbed widget in 1986, and have documentation to prove it. Furthermore, I was divinely inspired -- the idea came to me in a Quaker Meeting, when I should have been thinking about something else entirely.

  • Re:yahoo calls this "news" ?! (Score:5)

    by GoRK ( 10018 ) on Thursday August 10, 2000 @06:27PM (#863812) Homepage Journal
    How come some fucking idiot always posts this comment whenever slashdot links to a newswire story using some site (usually yahoo or excite) as the gateway? How come a bunch of fucking morons always mod it up?

    Yahoo does not run the story. Yahoo does not claim that it is news. That's why it's served from biz.yahoo.com (the Newswire gateway), marked "Press Release, Source: Adobe Systems Incorporated" and tagged with the Canada Newswire graphic. This is so painfully obvious when you actually take the time to open your eyes and READ.

    Yahoo didn't write the story. Adobe did. You want the news story? Wait till you get the WSJ blurb in *tomorrows* paper. Want to start talking about it now? Read the newswire Adobe propaganda - the only thing available at the present time. Obviously you have no clue how the media works. Slashdot feeds you something a little bit uncut and all you can do is complain? I thought most of you people were supposed to be a cut above the rest?

    ~GoRK

  • Look and feel lawsuits (Score:3)

    by Frank T. Lofaro Jr. ( 142215 ) on Thursday August 10, 2000 @06:34PM (#863816) Homepage
    The old look and feel lawsuits were copyright based. They failed. I believe the justification for that is that user interfaces are functional and not expressive or something along those lines.

    However patent lawsuits based on look and feel are a separate issue. A UI can be considered a process for communicating with the user (processes are patentable) or as a design (possibly a design patent could be used).

    And there is a third option. If the UI is distinctive in form instead of in function, it could get protection as "trade dress". This is related to trademark law - if something is distinctive as belonging to a company - like the colored cases of iMacs or the specially shaped Coke bottles (*) it can be protected as trade dress. This concept could be extended to UIs that look like those of the company claiming infringement.

    There is an informative article about trade dress protection for UIs at http://www.fenwick.com/pub/trade_dress_for_user_in terface.htm [fenwick.com]

    The article says that idea is dying, but it possibly could still be used by a litigious company to harass a competitor.

    I'm not a lawyer, but it seemed patently (no pun intended) obvious that at least theoretically the concept of trade dress could be applied to a UI, even before I heard of any such attempt.

    (*) The Coke bottle is a great example of trade dress. It is still so familiar even to this day that they decided to put a huge Coke bottle replica on the Las Vegas strip as part of the Coca-Cola store. Everyone recognizes the shape instantly as belonging to Coca-Cola - that is what trade dress is all about.

  • Yes, they'll be busy protecting their property from all infringers. Like the VB Tab object and the tabs at the bottom of StarOffice's StarCalc.

    Oh, and I just saw boxes and boxes of infringing hardcopies of tabbed widgets at OfficeMax -- and if it's color selection that's an issue, there were multiple colors, colored flag attachments, colored containers, and not far away a pallette of ink of assorted colors in convenient plastic containers with built-in cloth brushes.

  • Patent interpretation (Score:5)

    by skoda ( 211470 ) on Thursday August 10, 2000 @07:07PM (#863819) Homepage
    First - IANAL. I'm just a grad student who has had to read patents for my work. I've developed a bit of the patience needed to read these works of obfuscation, so I thought I'd take a gander at Adobe's at the IBM database [ibm.com]. Here are a few thoughts. From the synopsis, they are patenting a method to (1)section off a small region of the screen to display often-needed information and (2) using multiple selectors within that section to allow the user to choose which info to see, at which time, the information is displayed, displacing the previously shown info. First thought: This patent was filed in 1994 and granted 1996. In 1993 I was developing software on NeXT computers for multi-view interface menus & manipulators, using drop-down selectors. This work was based on prior demos from the NeXT community. It seems that prior art makes trivial the Adobe patent. Looking at the patent itself: p1 - Ahh.. tabs... I've seen these in Illustrator (which I use for technical figures). Handy little things, those. p2 - image of Apple menu p3 - image of Apple dialog box p4 - images of icon interface bars; iamges of tabbed palettes p5 - images of palettes p6 - flowchart of tabbed interface logic p7 - intro: Hmm... they contrast their method (persistent info) to menus (drop down, then disappear) & dialog boxes (disappear after use). Menus get longer, dialogues more cluttered with greater info. Palettes will solve this problem in user interface design. p8 - preferred embodiment: Seems to be saying that this patent covers all uses of tabbed interfaces for compact information flow, with any combination of previous developed menus, dialog boxes, icon palettes, etc. p9 - p8 cont.: Here's a juicy quote: "The technique of the invention provides a way of combining palette controls to allow multiple sets of controls to occupy the same screen space. The invention allows any number of palettes to be combined or separated at the user's discretion." The claims given don't seem to require tabs. Thought on p6 - this chart is pretty similar to the logic used in getting multi-menu windows to work on the NeXT, as mentioned above. Thought on p9 - claims not requiring tabs. Common practice in patents is to make your claim as broad as possible, so I'd expect Adobe to do the same. Other thoughts - if you've been in the science/engineering business then you probably know that it's common practice to file patents on anything you can afford to file on, making the claims as broad as possible to maximize potential profits. It's also known that larger companies sometimes file facetious patent-infringement suits against smaller ones to bleed of cash (and possibley market cachet) and thus hinder their product development & sales. Following the claims, it seems this work was laregly accomplished well before 1994. (Given a NeXT computer, I could probably resurrect examples of such code.) It would seem that Adobe is following time-honored business practices of siccing lawyers armed with dubious patents against competitors.
  • Sorry, I beat you to that. Check the IBM Patent Server.

    So all of you ``First Post Lamerz" better knock it off. This is fair warning. Next time one of you lusers do this, I will sell the patent to a true scumbag of a company (No, I don't mean Microsoft -- Computer Associates would do nicely. Or maybe even Network ``Reviewing our software violates our NDA" Associates) that will track you down like a common criminal, & not only sue you but take your computer away & do even more evil stuff to you.

    Now if I could only get the patent to pouring hot grits on my pants (pat. pend.) & turning women to stone (pat. pend.)

    Geoff (pat. pend.)
  • Everyone always objects to these suits saying "well tabbed widgets were OBVIOUS! well one-click shopping was OBVIOUS, etc etc etc". If it was obvious, why did it take so long for anyone to come up with it?

    If anyone really thinks Macromedia would have thought up tabbed widgets without noticing Adobe doing them, then maybe you have an argument, but it is quite obvious that they wouldn't have, they have spent years not doing anything innovative. If Adobe was the first one to do this and got a patent, good. If it was obvious and Adobe should never have gotten a patent, then I guess there will be tons of prior art to win the case for Macromedia, right? Oh no, there won't be. Cause this is a genuine innovation.

    Slashdot readers: Stop confusing "obvious" with "elegant" or "simple". Just because something isn't crazy intricate does NOT mean it is not innovative and original.

    sig:

  • Why would you guess? It takes only a few seconds to look up the claims on the IBM patent server. And the claims are broad enough to cover pretty arbitrary uses of tabbed widgets.

    Will this stand up? Who knows. But patent applicants have no interest in narrowing down their claims--if they claim too much, the courts will simply narrow it down for them to as much as they can get away with.

  • I don't think FUD is at all part of it -- just protecting what differentiates Adobe's products with others.

    Funny, though, how one of the biggest complaints against Adobe products (even from loyal Adobe users) was when they introduced this kind of paletting -- too many palettes people constantly screamed Now competitors are copying them.

    Adobe was very late to the Web game, and they paid with Dreamweaver getting huge market share over that pathetic excuse for a program, PageMill. Instead of copying Macromedia, however, they did the right thing when you're in a hurry and behind -- buy a kick-ass program and put it into your lineup.

    With Flash graphics, Adobe was also late to the de facto standard that Macromedia created, but I guess they thought they had enough time. So they created LiveMotion. They didn't decide to copy Flash, but built their own product with Adobe looks and way of doing things, and lots of Flash users like it better (hence, Flash 5's surprisingly similar UI).

    Macromedia came up with some great innovations and cutting-edge products with a UI that many liked. But many Macromedia users I know are there because they don't like the Adobe UI, and now they really have no more choice in UI.

  • The first claim is:

    A method for combining on a computer display an additional set of information into a group of multiple sets of information needed on a recurring basis, comprising the steps of:

    It goes on to talk about "selection indicators" (which would include tabs, but also allow for other selection methods--buttons, checkboxes, etc.) and using them to select "different information" to be displayed. I see nothing about "customization" or "palettes" in those claims. They seem to apply very well to any use of tabbed widgets.

    Of course, Adobe's legal strategy would be to go first to what is obviously most similar to their current product. That way, they can point to a concrete instance and claim harm from the "infringement". If that goes through, they can go after other "infringers" afterwards much more easily if they want to.

  • "To be fair, competition has to be based on a level playing field -- companies must compete on the basis of innovation and according to the laws of the land. All we ask is that Macromedia play by these rules and stop infringing our patent."

    hmm... I would have thought that innovation meant to take what had been done before, and make it better... Adobe did make a pretty neat discovery with regard to UI design, Which Macromedia went on to use in Fireworks to great effect... therefore being innovative. but Adobe by trying to keep this (design, rather than technological) discovery to themselves are only doing harm to consumers.. and possibly eventually, to themselves....

    personally I agree with something I read here that Adobe is merely trying to piss off Macromedia who, in the web design stakes.. bring out products that are far superior to anything Adobe has come out with recently ... tabbed widgets or no. ..

    I mean... Is UI design REALLY a patentable technology??? ... or if it is... should it be?

    Just another day in Corporate paradise :)

    ,Tez
    www.tezmc.uklinux.net [uklinux.net]

  • They have a good argument: protecting their intellectual property enhances shareholder value in the only way that matters, the bottom line.

    Now, if you can show that there's a grass-roots campaign to boycott Adobe products (and Acrobat is too widespread for that to be effective) and that it will be fuelled by this action, then you might have a point. There's long-term harm to profits being risked.

    The trick with investor action is to get the institutional investors - pension funds and investment trusts and the like - on side. They are the ones holding blocks of six per cent and up, which in a publicly-traded company is big enough to attract proxies and swing a vote. They also act in concert (here in the UK, at any rate) to force good corporate practice on their investments by - basically - threatening the directors.

    If you can show them that Adobe is likely to hurt its own bottom line in the long term by acting like this, then those institutional investors, singly or as a group, will have a word with the board and suggest that if they want their stock price to stay where it is, they ought to reconsider.

    Frankly, though, I don't hold out much hope.

  • Adobe must be in trouble. (Score:3)

    by jetson123 ( 13128 ) on Thursday August 10, 2000 @07:29PM (#863853)
    If Adobe has to use such marginal patents in tactical legal maneuvers to bolster its business, it looks to me like they must anticipate financial trouble. Stock analysts, take notice.

    Beyond that, their pronouncements on intellectual property seem particularly hypocritical given that their core technology, PostScript, was developed by the Adobe founders while at Xerox PARC, and I doubt that Xerox got a lot of money out of Adobe for that.

  • Anyone who has actually used LiveMotion would know better. While it simplifies some animation tasks, it is pretty much useless when it comes to interactivity, and the gap on that front will become much broader with Flash 5.

  • I'm pretty sure that Adobe is not so much worried about Macromedia (I think the only apps which overlap are GoLive, Illustrator, ImageReady (Adobe) and Dreamweaver, Freehand, and Fireworks(Macromedia)). Adobe's biggies are Photoshop and Illustrator. Macromedia isn't really horning in on that turf.

    This is based on nothing, but I think that possibly, Adobe might be making threatening gestures at Macromedia in a potential buy-out. Adobe's got a market cap of $13B, while Macromedia's at $4B. Dunno if ADBE could take the debt required to buy out, but it wouldn't be the first time a big company started hostilities with a lawsuit.

  • So, is Adobe going to go after Microsoft, as well? There are tons of "tabs" in Windows and Office, and even though the patent "doesn't require them," it certainly does seem to cover them. (Just look at the multiple worksheet view in Excel, or a Control Panel window, etc.)

    Personally, I applaud this lawsuit for one simple reason -- it will give Macromedia a chance to set a precedent for actually debunking bunk patents in court! I think more or less any one of us could make a strong case for prior art, so I'm sure Macromedia's lawyers are already drafting an intimidating list of evidence and witnesses.

  • ah, but it's not just look and feel.

    it's look and feel in relation to a functionality.
  • Great to see the patent system at work. Now we the public can understand how all these amazing things would work, since we'd never possibly think of them ourselves.

    Well, in that case, why don't you think of something new and become a billionaire? Of had you had the monstrous misfortune to be born just after all the obivious things had been patented?

    All the things you mention were designed, by designers. They're obvious once you see them (they're designed to be obvious -- that's the whole purpose). They're not obvious when you're sitting down, looking at a list of requirements and trying to make something usable.

    Paper is obvious. Glue is obvious. Post-it Notes are not obvious. People had been gluing pieces of paper to things for centuries before the post-it was invented.

    If you don't like patents, come up with some arguments against them. Don't just pretend that things that nobody in fact did come up with, were things that anybody could have come up with.

  • Flabbed Midgets. (Score:3)

    by Matt2000 ( 29624 ) on Thursday August 10, 2000 @05:37PM (#863864) Homepage

    Most people don't realize that midget obesity is a serious problem and that Adobe is just stepping up here in the best interests of those little people affected. Macromedia has flaunted its use of Flabbed Midgets for a long time now and it's not fair to us or them that they can benefit from Adobe's considerable R&D expense regarding these short, fat people -

    oh wait, what did you say? Trapped gidget? Oh, tabbed widgets. Right.

    Forget it.


    Hotnutz.com [hotnutz.com] - Funny
  • I assume what they mean by tabbed widgets are the tabs that everyone uses in any GUI toolkit

    When you ASSUME, you make an ASS of U and ME, I'm afraid. Malda has done his usual fantastic journalistic job of confusing the generic "tabbed widgets" with "tabbed palettes", where separate tabs can be dragged apart from the parent widget and combined to create a new customised widget. It's his fault more than yours, but in fact the patent is much more sensible and defensible than most.

  • A (admittedly hurried) reading of the patent [ibm.com] (and its claims) indicates that it is rather broad; it seems to cover paged widgets in which you can select things that are consequently propogated to another area of the display. However, the legalese is so abstracted from reality that I can't make heads or tails of it. It seems to apply to more than palette selection, though...

    (BTW, Extrans and Plain Old Text are reversed for me; anyone else see this problem?)
  • Well, if you had actually read the patent, rather than skimming the first line, you'd have seen that it is actually very specific about the kind of selection indicator which is being patented. The title is to indicate that the patent is for a UI device, rather than, say, an electronic masturbation machine (patent 1176342, IIRC). There is no mention of "tabs" because "tab" is too generic and loose a word to ever be part of a patent, but anyone practiced in reading these things can parse it that way.

    IAAFL, and this patent looks pretty kosher. The palette idea was new and non-obvious, the prior art was disclosed and other industry players have respected it. Go Adobe. And my opinion is in no way tainted by my oft-stated desire to find the man who invented Flash and Shockwave and break his arms and legs with breezeblocks.

  • I'd like to suggest that you look up Macromedia's phone number on the web and give them a call. Ask the receptionish for the fax number for the legal department. Copy the above text out and fax it to them (lawyers like faxes). Give it a cover page that says "This Prior Art Invalidates Adobe Tab Patent" in about 48-point text.

    Give them your phone number.

    They'll make short work of the patent and Adobe will come out with egg on their faces - as will the patent office for yet again granting a patent that is not only obvious but which had already been done.

    It's not likely that the right people at Macromedia will see this unless someone makes the effort to put it under their noses. C'mon, be a hero.

  • Look and Feel? (Score:3)

    by ca1v1n ( 135902 ) <snook.guanotronic@com> on Thursday August 10, 2000 @05:39PM (#863873)
    This sounds awfully familiar. It's an interface issue, not a functionality issue. I don't have a problem with trademarking an interface (trademark infringement has to be nearly exact to mean anything in court) but an interface paradigm is another matter entirely. They should sue MS and AOL while they're at it. Plenty of other folks using tabs, too many to name. Of course, Amazon took the one-click patent against their biggest competitor, ignoring all else. It would seem to me like this is very selective targeting for Adobe.
  • Umm.. Maybe you've been locked in a closet since 1989, but she passed away. According to IMDB, 11 years ago.
    --

  • Prior art... (Score:3)

    by pheonix ( 14223 ) <slashdot@i b l o v iate.org> on Friday August 11, 2000 @02:18AM (#863878) Homepage
    Avery has been making manila folders with those litte tabs for years. I think they should sue.

  • Press releases are funny (Score:4)

    by jayhawk88 ( 160512 ) <jayhawk88@gmail.com> on Thursday August 10, 2000 @06:52PM (#863880)
    I always have to laugh at the wording of press releases of any kind. Just a bunch of marketing dweebs trying desperately to make their company sound important.

    "We are taking this action now, after notifying Macromedia on several occasions that its products are infringing our patent. The remedy sought is straightforward -- we ask them to stop infringing our patents," said Bruce Chizen, Adobe's president.

    Those bastards at Macromedia! How could they steal your widget tabs? After the months and months of blood, sweat, and tears your company poured into it! Obviously, ole Bruce is not happy with this turn of events, but those evil Macromedia people left him no choice!

    "Adobe will not be the R&D department for its competitors"

    Damn, Bruce, you sure are one shoot-from-the-hip, no-nonsense kind of guy. I bet right after saying that, Bruce went right back to the grindstone, to go crack some heads and burn the candle at both ends. He is obviously doing this for the good of the stock-holders, and not for the cheap publicity and chance to make millions of dollars in court.

    "Adobe will aggressively enforce its patent portfolio and protect the interests of its stockholders," said Colleen Pouliot, Adobe's senior vice president and general counsel.

    I wonder if Colleen was in the 10th floor executive-only meeting room (with drink bar, stocked mini-fridge and recliner chairs) when she made this statement, or on the private company jet on her way to Aspen? Nice to see Adobe stockholders have a pitbull like Colleen on their side. Wow!

    OK, enough cut-and-past fun. I just had some leftover sarcasm I had to get rid of.
  • ...have little if any legal force. The legal force of a patent is concentrated in its "claims." IANAL but I have studied patent law if only to figure out how to create a game [8m.com] that infringes Nintendo's U.S. Patent 5,265,888 on the game of Dr. Mario.
    <O
    ( \
    XGNOME vs. KDE: the game! [8m.com]
  • Now I'm torn[.]

    Nope, sorry. That's not allowed. It violates Adobe's other patent, on tear-off menus. You'll be hearing from their lawyers in the morning.

  • Unless I'm mistaken, they're referring to the use of tear-away tabbed toolbars. That's kind of a mouthful, but you can get the idea here [macromedia.com].

    If you look at the screenshot, you'll note a floating toolbox with a tab at the top which says "layers". The tab can be dragged onto other toolboxes to create customized versions, or torn off of toolboxes if you prefer to give it a space of its own.

    I don't recall ever having seen one of these in an application besides those belonging to Adobe and Macromedia, although Painter [corel.com] (now owned by Corel [corel.com], formerly by Metatools, and before that by Fractal Design) had something similar.

    Still, it's obvious at this point that Adobe is pretty desperate. Photoshop still reigns supreme for high-end still image editing and pre-production, but Macromedia is kicking their tail all over the place on the web. To be fair, Adobe LiveMotion [adobe.com] looks like a pretty nifty tool (I haven't tried it), but at this point Adobe knows that it's playing catch-up, and doesn't much like it.

  • If you actually did sue them (or even had your lawyer file suit against them), then I could see some change in the wind. But empty threats are always faced with laughter.

  • Parasitic Apps (Score:3)

    by jbum ( 121617 ) on Thursday August 10, 2000 @07:00PM (#863887)
    You can have open source, you can have software patents, and you can have large companies. Pick two.

    Consider the following example of what happens when the three are mixed together.

    1) Macromedia comes out with a cool tool with a crappy user interface called Flash.

    2) Macromedia does something pseudo-open source like and generously releases the SWF file format (and some sample code) to the world at large.

    3) Although the specification isn't crystal clear, there's certainly enough information within it for Adobe to come out with an internally labelled "Flash killer" called Live Motion. Live Motion is essentially a Parasitic App. It exists on the good graces of Flash. The only reason it has for living is that it has a better user interface than Flash (which, as already noted, has a stinky interface).

    4) The Parasite (Adobe) after laying its eggs in the brain of its host, then attempts to eat said brains via this very lawsuit, accusing Macromedia of the same Parasitic behavior which it itself has already commited.

    The only difference, as I see it, is that Macromedia gave Adobe an open invitation to eat its brains and Adobe didn't.

  • If Adobe is running scared why are they suing Macromedia for copying their interface. Macromedia knows that once Adobe puts out a flash exporting tool (read: LiveMotion) with the Adobe Interface that their flash tools are as good as dead. It is Macromedia who is running scared...

    Hard to say. From what I understand, there's so much Flash stuff out there because Director knowledge (Director is made by Macromedia) translates so directly into Flash. In which case, making an interface different from Flash/Director would actually be a bad thing for Adobe -- unless they're looking to bring AfterEffects users into Flash.

    - Scott

    ------
    Scott Stevenson
  • The screen shots Adobe posted look pretty similar to the Macromedia products in question. I'm really wondering though, even though they deny it, if they're running scared from Flash, Fireworks and Dreamweaver.

    Flash is certainly signficant, but I don't think Adobe's too scared of it because John Warnock (head of Adobe), keynoted at FlashFoward2000 (or something like that). I don't even consider FireWorks to be on the radar. Photoshop is the standard there. Dreamweaver is making great sides on the Windows side of things, but Adobe hasn't really put out a real web production product yet. They bought GoLive, basically took the existing code and shipped it as Adobe GoLive 4.0. This has done well in the Mac world (mostly because Dreamweaver is a bad Windows port).

    GoLive 5.0, due out any day now, will be the company's first real foray into this space, and may give Macromedia some real static. Check out some key features from the feature list [adobe.com]:
    • WebDAV support
    • SVG Support
    • Very tight Photoshop integration (key!)

    And this is in addition to the native WebObjects support, QuickTime editing, and JavaScript editor/debugger that GoLive has always had.

    This lawsuit doesn't make sense. Adobe is in a good position, they don't need to do this.

    - Scott
    ------
    Scott Stevenson
  • From the article:

    "Adobe will not be the R&D department for its competitors." Okay, so they have the patent, ridiculous as it is. Were they really the first to come up with the tabbed dialog?

    The patent is here [ibm.com]. Very interesting that crap like this is even possible! IBM's patent server also lists patents that reference this one, including:

    • Computer user interface with window title bar icons (IBM)
    • Computer windows management system and method for simulating off-screen document storage and retrieval (HP)
    • User interface system having programmable user interface elements (Apple)
    • System and methods for improved spreadsheet interface with user-familiar objects (Borland)
    • System and method for viewing icon contents on a video display (Wang)
    <sarcasm>Great to see the patent system at work. Now we the public can understand how all these amazing things would work, since we'd never possibly think of them ourselves.</sarcasm>

    Title bar icons? Window management? Document storage and retrival? This is almost funny.

  • It will be interesting, and probably very important, to see how this turns out. So many legal battles are fought out by Big Guy vs. Little Guy, and that's just not a fair fight. Now we can see when happens when this sort of (imho) silliness gets aimed at someone with the money and reputation to defend themselves.


    My mom is not a Karma whore!
  • I assume what they mean by tabbed widgets are the tabs that everyone uses in any GUI toolkit. So why only Macromedia? They could sue Microsoft, the developers of GTK+, Trolltech, Sun, etc, etc, etc... Everyone uses tabs.
    I'm sure they are just scared of Flash and Dreamweaver (which is an AWESOME HTML editor BTW).
    Welp, good luck to Macromedia, hope they can find something to countersue with

    Wasn't the patent system created to HELP innovate* technologies, not sue-everyone-who-uses-my-patent?


    * Innovation is a registered trademark/patent of Microsoft Inc.

    -Brandon

  • Re:screen shots (Score:4)

    by Afterimage ( 44695 ) <nwalls@is m e d i a . org> on Thursday August 10, 2000 @05:45PM (#863899) Homepage
    I disagree. While the interfaces are similar, they are suing as a stall tactic. Adobe is hoping to create fear, uncertainty and doubt in the minds of Macromedia developers and their IT managers.

    "Should I buy Macromedia if we run the risk of having to learn a new interface in six months?" is the question that might be asked.

    As for Flash being dead because Adobe made a new tool, well, Freehand, Dreamweaver, Flash, Director and QuarkXPress are all products that survive (and indeed are better, IMHO) competition with Adobe.

    Adobe came late to the game with ImageReady, was forced to bundle it with Photoshop 5.5 so it would actually ship. Meanwhile, Fireworks integrates nicely with Dreamweaver and Flash. OTOH, Photoshop's web obtimization capability is quite clearly tacked on, not designed from the ground up. Web designers know this. The guys in my office work w/ Macromedia products for precisely this reason.

    Consider this, why did Adobe feel compelled to be able to import Flash graphics?

  • yeah, but see, i guess i wasn't clear enough: 1000 people HAVE had this problem. there have been THOUSANDS of exercises in computer program UI design in the past years, and noone came up with this until Adobe did. If anyone had and it had become ubiqituous, then okay, but i think the fact it took so long proves it was original.

    sig:

  • I'd say this is as lame as one-click shopping as they're patenting obvious technology. Hyperlink copyright is even lamer. Just my two cents.

    In all seriousness, does anyone believe Adobe would be suing a non-media/graphics company over the interface? I somehow don't think so. This sounds like another case of flexing muscles to scare competitors.

    And product differentiation? What the heck is the splash screen for?
  • Since I went to work for EchoStar, we've been running into patents galore trying to get a new product out the door.

    - The guys who do the TV Guide channel have a patent on using irregular cells to display information about TV shows.

    - The guys who we're licensing our web browser from have a patent on doing screen magnification by magnifying part of the screen in a separate Window. This patent goes back to the early '90's (92 or 93) but I'm pretty sure both xdvi and gs/gv did it earlier.

    - Someone apparently has a patent on getting time off a computer and displaying it on a TV. I hate to tell you this, but my TI 99/4A did this in 1983.

    - I ran across a story in the Moscow times that some Russian company had patented the bottle and was trying to get breweries to pay royalties. The Russian patent officials were actually indignant that someone should get such a silly patent and were planning on launching an investigation(!)

  • A method for displaying on a computer screen multiple sets of information needed on a recurring basis, comprising the steps of: (1) Establishing an area on the computer screen in which the multiple sets of information are to be displayed, the established area having a maximum size which is substantially less than the entire area of the screen. (2) Providing within the established area a plurality of selection indicators, one for each of the multiple sets of information. (3) Selecting one of the multiple sets of information for display within the established area by pointing to one of the selection indicators within the established area, whereby the selected set of information will be substituted within the established area for the set of information previously being displayed therein. A selected set of information may also be moved out of the selected area by pointing to its selection indicator and dragging it away.

    But the real KICKER is

    Issued/Filed dates:Aug. 13, 1996 / June 23, 1994
  • Hmm, I could set up something that fulfills all the above criteria using just vanilla Mac OS 6 (and probably much earlier, but I can't remeber back that far!). "Some control option, e.g. colour chooser or whatever" could be a folder icon, and "an area on the computer display in which the group of multiple sets of information is to be displayed" is a window containing folder icons.

    AFAIK, I can drag the folders outof the window, nest them, etc. to fulfill all the patent requirments. The only sticking point in the quotes above is the bit about "...second of the multiple sets of information is substituted within the area of the display for the first set of information..." - this would require setting the window positions to overlap exactly, which is possible (if rather pointless).

    Is there anything in the rest of the patent which would rule out this possibly, but slightly ununsual array of folders and icons? If not, it's prior art...

  • I love how the "oh, I've seen this a hundred times before and I'm soooooo bored with it" types come out of the woodwork periodically. Perhaps it got moderated up because not everyone has been hanging around here as long as you. Did you imagine that the entire population of /. signed up simultaneously and has been reading every post ever since? In any community, some humor is going to get repeated. Deal with it and drop this feigned ennui, which is as tiresome as you claim the original joke to be.

  • Can I stop working now? (Score:3)

    by BorlandInsider ( 162429 ) on Thursday August 10, 2000 @05:48PM (#863925)
    I am in the process of finishing up coding a TTabControl and TPageControl for project Kylix [borland.com]. Does this mean I can stop working and go home now?

    -- I'm not a Linux guy but I play one at work. --
  • How can you patent a 'look'? That's all a GUI really is, different ways of visually presenting information, along with some widgets the user can click on to do stuff. It might be possible to protect a really novel UI element under "trade dress" (same thing Apple used to go after iMac rip-off makers), but I doubt it for tabbed palettes.

    And what about the prior art? Other people have been using tabs in UI for a long time. Is the idea of putting them in a palette novel? Hardly.

    What happens if everyone starts patenting UI elements? Every company will have to develop its own, unique UI, and the result will be a total usability mess, with absolutely no UI consistency.

    I'm working on a project for my company which involves tabbed dialogs. Is that covered by the Adobe patent? Or just tabbed palettes?

    This is just making me depressed... Stupid software patents are the perfect example of what happens when both governments and corporations are corrupt (which happens when the populace becomes stupid and apathetic).
  • You're both wrong. Joe, available here [kiarchive.ru], is the greatest text editor ever.

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