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Will Flash Be Taken Off The Shelf?
bugninja writes "According to an article at News.com, Adobe wins 2.8M from Macromedia today for using some patented interface stuff in Flash. But this isn't the end, further legal battles could require that Flash be removed from Macromedia's list of "products for sale". We may not all be Flash lovers, but is it right to take a good product away from so many people who really do like it just because another company's product isn't taking over the market like they hoped it would?"
Update: 05/03 13:29 GMT by J : Speaking of Flash, yesterday eEye discovered
a very serious security hole
in the version of Flash distributed with most copies of Windows. Go
download
the fixed release.
Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to be the case. The patent is over "tabbed palettes", a type of user interface design. So it's not an invention, just a ludicrous software patent.
Many years ago, Apple tried to sue Microsoft for copyright infringement over their user-interface. Had they (ab)used the patent system instead, they might have won, and there would be no Windows.
Apple sues Microsoft over "the close button in the upper corner of the window."
What's next, the icon? Are the tabs in Mozilla in violation? The concept of "tabs" in "windows" no matter if you call them "palettes" or not, was part of the Windows API as long as I can remember.
Flash is a tool. Many (perhaps all) tools can be abused. Saying that Flash is bad because too many monkeys use it in ways that are totally inappropriate is like saying e-mail is bad because too many monkeys use it for spam (i.e., a way that is totally inappropriate).
No Laughing Allowed!
This is the equivalent of a car company patenting their cup holders and suing any other manufacturer who put them in. Who's the real loser in the end? As Macromedia CEO Rob Burgess points out, "Ultimately, it is our customers, and particularly our mutual customers, that will be harmed." Yup, half of us wind up with burnt, coffee-stained crotches.
So what, now no software developer can include tabbed palettes? Wouldn't it be nice if Adobe said "Hey, Macromedia, you've used one of our ideas, but that's alright, we'll use one of your ideas, and both our products will be the better for it." No more can people stand on the shoulders of giants. Today, you have to stand on your tiptoes. Either that, or knock everyone else down.
Well Adobe, for 2.8m, you've impeded the progress of software development, created enemies, and left your customers with a bad taste in their mouths. And you know what? I bet a lot of people will feel a lot less bad about pirating your software after this. I hope it was worth it.
c-hack.com |
Oops, they've already done just that.
I wonder how this would affect Flash MX. It doesn't feature the UI elements that Adobe claims to have invented. (And thank the gods for that, I hate tabbed palettes as much as most of you Slashdotters hate the Flash plugin itself.) Would Macromedia only have to pull Flash versions 5 and earlier off the shelves?
What a waste of resources such lawsuits are. Companies squabbling like children, running complaining to mommy and daddy every time one of them has any kind of problem. Grow up or go to bed without any supper, I say!
. A key part of having a patent is defending it. If Adobe fails to defend their patents, they'll lose them.
Bzzzt. Try again. This is true for Trademarks but not Patents or Copyright.
Maybe I would if a program could produce SVG and JavaScript to do the same stuff as Flash, and as good as Flash. Also a new plug-in would be needed.
Not likely to happen anytime soon, if ever. Plus if it did, Flash would still be better in most ways.
From Adobe's FAQ at http://www.adobe.com/adobefacts/faq.html#Q11 they are not claiming to have a patent on all tabbed palettes but only on those that can be customized, separated, and reorganized by users. Also for all those who say Adobe is claiming a patent in tabs in general check out Question 17 on the FAQ. Lastly check out the pictures that Adobe has on the site showing the problems...I bet the court took on look at those and had a lot of questions. Daniel BTW Now whether this patent should have been issued is a whole different matter and I am sure that others will cover it.
There is a tendency, especially in the OSS/FSF world, to under-estimate the significance of innovations in software. While I am largely against the current patent system, my dislikes for it revolve around the duration of patents, and the inability of clerks to apply or monitor the requirements for innovation.
You consider "tabbed palettes" ludicrous. With the benefit of hindsight, I can hardly disagree ... but were they innovative at the time, before world + dog started using them?
Maybe a better example (unpatented, fortunately): toolbars. Would those be patentable? Are they (were they) innovative? We managed to get through over 20 years of GUI use without the widespread use of toolbars. Anyone know when they first appeared?
Assuming a windowed environment, the use of a title bar with some system buttons can be considered obvious: that has been around since the beginning. But the idioms by which we further break down interfaces and make them accessible are developed over time. Which necessarily implies that there is room for innovation: doing something which is NEW, and not just a variation of what has been done before. And that is patentable.
So we're left with two questions: should such innovation be patentable; and are tabbed palettes new or a variation?
I assert that GUI innovations SHOULD be patentable (although I'd like to see a much shorter duration on all software-related patents). There are individuals and companies which spend a lot of time, effort and money researching GUI concepts, improving ease of use, and generally developing idioms which gives their software an edge ... but then have that idea reused by others in less than a couple of months, because the development cycle is shorter than the research cycle.
From Adobe's site:
As for tabbed palettes ... this is a more difficult one. But first you need to understand the patent. This is not just about a tool dialog with a tab panel in it! The patent is available from Adobe's site, and a set of animations illustrate the infringment.
As you can see ... this patent is about multiple tool dialogs (palettes) which dock together to form tabbed panels within a single dialog. Suddenly the idea is not so obvious anymore. Dockable components which overlap to save space ...? That's not a universal GUI concept; showing and hiding tool windows or popping up dialogs in a stack is a traditional means to handle this problem. Arguably Adobe DID innovate in this instance.
i-name =twylite [http://public.xdi.org/=twylite], see idcommons.net
I think the most useful thing anyone has ever implemented in "Flash" is the "Bypass Flash intro" button...
-- Terry
...and this is coming from someone who just spent several hours learning all about the painful ins & outs of cross-platform/cross-browser Flash player plug-in detection...
/. are confusing the abuse of a general purpose tool (with some flaws that are being corrected) with the "dastardly deeds" done with it.
/. usually respond to attacks on general purpose tools that some people are attacking based on a relatively minor domain of applications that they dislike? (hint: CSS, copyable-CDs, PVRs, reverse-engineering tools...) ...Sigh...
For certain applications, Flash works wonderfully _and_ far better than anything else out there. I am thinking in particular of short animations (with or without limited interaction) that can demonstrate ideas/diagrams/or tell a story.
BTW, I work in educational R&D so I see great examples of this stuff used all the time to complement web-based curricula. Sure, it can't be indexed by a search engine, but it's there to _illuminate_ the ideas stated in the text; i.e. to enhance it, not to replace it.
Sure, Flash can be abused (as many advertisers have done, and designers who want to use it as their entire tookit); However, the Flash-haters on
BTW, how does
Yes, most Flash ads suck. And so do 90% of Flash-heavy sites. This problem won't be corrected by removing a particular tool - the crappy designers will just migrate to SVG/Real/WM/etc. Besides, banning/spitting on something disliked is the RIAA/MPAA way of doing things.
If we're such geeks we should be proposing/creating superior tools that are better focused on what Flash is best at, or improving Flash ourselves. Nope, I guess it's just easier to bitch about it.
...because it doesn't use tabbed palettes. Those were introduced in Flash 5, and replaced in MX by a windowish-docking system. I would wager that Macromedia's decision to change the interface in MX was based far more on the lawsuit than on user feedback.
Adobe is seeking an injunction preventing Macromedia from selling "the infringing software" - which is, like I just said, Flash 5. Notice that Macromedia released Flash MX within the last month, and are now going to be actively phasing out their Flash 5 product and pushing MX instead. Is this good timing just a coincidence? You tell me. So what I'm wondering is what Adobe could possibly do to further harm the Flash product line (besides the $2.8mil in damages, of course).
The original Legend of Zelda in Flash MX: a prototype
Experts agree: everything is fine.
How am I gonna watch Osama Bin Laden In a Blender now???
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
That set of animations demonstrating the design overlap would have been a lot smaller if they'd done it in Flash.
Kevin Fox
but were they innovative at the time
Inovative yes, but worthy of a monopoly of 19 years? No.
See the way patents use to work is that a company would disclose a non-obvious method, in return for a temporary monopoly. A tabbed interface is quite obvious, and it's disclosure of it's inner workings does nothing for the public good.
Just by seeing one (tabbed interface), I can duplicate it's effect. I don't need a patent desclosure to figgure it out - so therefore it's a trivial invention, obvious to one skilled in the arts.
I just hope that an OpenSourse/GPL author get a patent on somting vital to the computing field and brings companies like Adobe too it's knees.
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
I assert that GUI innovations SHOULD be patentable (although I'd like to see a much shorter duration on all software-related patents).
When I was a CS undergraduate, I took the designing user interfaces course. As part of the coursework, I designed a voice activated interface (this was at a time when such things didn't exist). Various other students imagined how other interfaces of the future might work. Some of the ideas we came up with were great.
Now, we could have all patented the ideas we came up with, and since then I'm sure some of our patents would have been infringed, and we could have licenced and sued. But would it make sense to do that? What if all undergraduate students did it? New developments in the software world would grind to a halt.
The argument that interface innovations that appear obvious now weren't at the time they were invented is I believe a poor one. A creative person can sit down with a pencil and paper and come up with lots of ideas for possible user interface designs - it's relatively easy for those people who have an inclination for it. You've only got to look at the web sites of some of the more creative web designers to realise that there are many different creative ideas out there for user interfaces. The world would be a poorer place if all these designers patented their ideas and prevented other people from using them.
The interface that is common today for products like Adobe Photoshop is a cumulation of many different ideas from many different individuals and companies. As a company focused on the creative industy, Adobe should be ashamed of itself for this kind of action.
It's happened already, ask Google about it.
The result was that MS said "well if you fuck with us, we'll fuck with you- drop this or we'll
stop making Office for Macintosh."
Apple bowed under the pressure, and nothing really was made of it.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
I agree that 19 years of monopoly is unreasonable, hence my assertion that patents should be allowed, but the duration should be much shorter.
Unfortunately patent law operates on an all-or-nothing principle: a major technological advancement that cost $1 billion and 15 years to achieve receives the same protection as a minor competitive edge which cost $10000 and 3 months.
As for it being obvious ... creative research is like being on the wrong side of a trap door. Its really hard to go through, but anyone on the other side can easily work out the trick. Innovation is often about doing something which is blindingly obvious, but no-one thought of it before.
Often just knowing the result and the fact that it can be accomplished makes it easier to reproduce. Chemistry is a good example: a theoretical compound can be proposed and its potential properties suggested, but determing how to manufacture the compound can be a tough problem. A couple of experts look at it and tell you it simply can't be done. Then someone announces they have create it, and cheaply. The experts reevaluate, knowing they must have missed something: it is possible, with current technology, and inexpensive - given those hints they are a lot closer to a solution.
So, what SHOULD be patentable? Algorithms? RSA is quite obvious to anyone skilled in mathematics ... once they've seen the algorithm. Should the internal combustion engine have been patentable? It was a major technological advancement, it has been the bastion of private transport for the better part of a centuary, but it is arguably just a derivative of a steam piston. Obvious to anyone skilled in mechanics.
I would like to see OSS obtain some patents and fight fire with fire. But it won't happen. No-one in the OSS world is prepared to put development effort into a product which involves patented technology, because of the stigma the community has attached to patents.
i-name =twylite [http://public.xdi.org/=twylite], see idcommons.net
I take it your country has no traffic? Some countries do, you know. Us Americans sometimes like to sip coffee while we are zooming along at 2mph on the way to work.
I hear some people also like to purchase beverages from restaurants for later consumption.