Legal Effect Of Patents On User Interface Elements?

cmickelson asks: "Adobe has filed a suit against Macromedia for infringement of Adobe's patent on 'tabbed palettes.' Details available here. What does the Slashdot community think of this? I'm especially concerned with the possible effects of UI patents as it relates to open source software. Is it possible that an open source project could be sued for violation of some company's obscure patent on UI elements? Are developers concerned about this? Should companies even be able to patent something as nebulous as a user interface?" Patenting a "look-and-feel" is about as trite as patenting an idea. Who cares that your UI "looks like" somebody else's. If UI "a" performs better than UI "b", well isn't that what competition is all about?

Comments

Several points

[Kris_J]

• First up, prior art is all too regularly overlooked, that aside...
• If a company really does thing up an entirely new UI metaphore, then maybe they do deserve to benifit financially from it, but the last thing we want is for some really useful UI element that makes life infinitely easier to be restricted. I mean, I've got staff here whinging about the interface design to a database I'm working on. They, obviously, want it to be easier. It's not easier because of technical limitations in the package I'm using - the last thing I'd want is to be able to have no technical problems, but be unable to provide an easy, intuitive interface because it's patented.
• That said, I'm sure there are still plenty of UI element designs that no-one's put together. If a restrictive patent stops an Open Source team from building something one way, perhaps it will force them to come up with something better?
• Lastly, maybe UI elements will become so complicated behind the scenes that rather than relying on a patent for a concept, software houses will be able to sell UI engines to actually implement the designs. That sounds healthier.

Re:Several points

[gorilla]

For UI's, originality is often counterproductive. If a user comes across a new widget they've never seen before, then they've got to spend time working out what they're supposed to do. If every application had it's own set of widgets, then we'd spend a lot of useless time just learning UI's. With re-use of widgets, especially the higher level ones, then we can spend our time learning about the applications instead.

It's not the 'look & feel'

[blameless]

Adobe is not disputing Macromedia's use of tabs. Their claim is built around the fact that the pallettes can be separated & rearranged by grabbing the tabs. Does anybody know of a prior use of this?

Apple look and feel lawsuits

[bgdarnel]

IIRC, Apple was trying to claim that their interface was protected by copyright, a proposition which was rejected by the judge. Here, Adobe has actually recieved a patent, which means the case deals with an entirely different set of laws.