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Palm/3Com Graffiti A Patent Infringement on Xerox

Posted by Hemos on from the no-more-scribbling dept.

Olmy's Jart writes "According to this article on money.cnn.com, a judge has ruled that graffiti, the one stroke shorthand used on Palm Pilots, infringes a Xerox patent for "unistrokes". Really light on details and no links to betters sites, unfortunately." MSNBC also has the story.

3 of 220 comments (clear)

  1. Graffiti's been around a while by "Zow" · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I wonder when Xerox filed that patent, as Palm (or whatever they were called originally - before 3Com bought them) was selling the software to use graffiti as input on the Apple Newton back in 1994 or so? I think we still have one of the original packages at work.

    -"Zow"

  2. How about prior art of FIFTY YEARS? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I took to grafitti like a fish to water when I bought my first 128k palm around 1997. Why? Believe it or not, my ham radio background.

    I learned Morse code in 1978 from a fine old geezer in Sweden, who amongst other things taught me to write all characters as a single stroke: backwards 3 for "E", a sort of a triangle for "A", and so on - just like graffiti. It was all just to make copying Morse code easier, but it seemed such an easy way to write that I took to it in everyday life.

    Now, I'm not saying that the Xerox or Palm dudes ripped off this idea from Ham Radio geeks. All I mean is that if you're pressed into having to print the standard Latin letters quickly, you are naturally going to end up with something that looks awfully much like the Ham/Morse chicken scratch, or Graffiti, or whatever you want to call it.

  3. Isn't it funny... by catseye_95051 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    How MSNBC has a big story on how one of MS's cheif comeptitors lost a lawsuit whiel everyoen else is running the story that XP lets pirates take over your entoire computer?

    Not.

    MSNBC == MS PR + NBC's journalistic integrity bought and paid for.