Can Lotus Notes R3 Prior Art Save The Browser?

theodp writes "Apparently stunned by the implications of Eolas vs Microsoft, Ray Ozzie of Lotus Notes and Groove fame offers up Notes R3 as prior art for the notorious Eolas patent. To bolster his argument, Ozzie used the Notes R3 feature set to recreate a scenario close to what was described in the patent. After the hard part of putting together a Notes R3 computing environment that included MS-DOS 6.22, Windows for Workgroups 3.11, and a circa-1993 copy of Excel 5.0 obtained from eBay, it only took Ozzie about 15 minutes to knock out a demo without any programming using the out-of-the-box UI of Notes and Excel."

Comments

Trial is over

[anagama]

Only in a limited number of circumstances would a case be re-opened to present newly discovered evidence. The fact finding stage of this case is over. I doubt this information will be of any use now.

Re:Trial is over

[rdean400]

And this should be one of those circumstances. If newly discovered evidence clearly undermines the core of the plaintiff's case, then it must be reconsidered.

Re:Trial is over

[MisterFancypants]

Only in a limited number of circumstances would a case be re-opened to present newly discovered evidence. The fact finding stage of this case is over. I doubt this information will be of any use now.

You clearly forgot the IANAL part. This is a civil case, Microsoft can easily appeal. This isn't a criminal murder case...

Re:not very good "prior art"

[MisterFancypants]

You don't understand the issue, do you? I guess the people who modded you up don't either.

The whole patent was based around the idea of plugins. His methodology was to build a plugin, exactly as described in the patent, that fits into Notes architecture. He didn't modify the Notes base-code at all. This is perfectly legitimate.

Re:Frivolous McDonald's lawsuit WASN'T

[Phong]

I had a similar initial reaction to the hot-coffee suit (especially given the media coverage), but when I looked deeper, I discovered that there was more to the case than someone winning a "frivolous lawsuit". Summary: the coffee wasn't just hot (like we'd make it at home) it was so scalding hot that it caused 3rd degree burns. McDonalds knew that people had suffered 3rd degree burns before, and had refused to do anything about it (and yes, they required their restaurants to maintain the coffee at 185 degrees F). Also, the lady involved attempted to settle the case for a very reasonable sum (given the hospitalization and skin grafting), but McDonalds said no.

For a good summary of the case, check out this page. Read the whole thing for a good summary of all the mitigating facts that make this a totally non-frivolous lawsuit.

Re:not very good "prior art"

[qtp]

if a copy of a Notes app that used that particular technique way back when could be found, it'd be a different story.

That is exactly what he did:

After the hard part of putting together a Notes R3 computing environment that included MS-DOS 6.22, Windows for Workgroups 3.11, and a circa-1993 copy of Excel 5.0 obtained from eBay, it only took Ozzie about 15 minutes to knock out a demo without any programming using the out-of-the-box UI of Notes and Excel.

and from Mr. Ozzie's article:

First, let me describe the environment that we recreated. Since the filing date on the patent is October 17, 1994, I sought to obtain software that was clearly shipping to end-users before that date. I set about to assemble the following software to assist in the demonstration: Microsoft MS-DOS 6.22, Microsoft Windows for Workgroups 3.11, Microsoft Excel 5.0, and Lotus Notes 3.0. In my personal archives, I happened to be in possession of DOS, Windows, and a freshly shrink-wrapped copy of Notes. I selected Microsoft Excel 5 because information on the Web indicated that it shipped 12/14/93, and I easily obtained a shrink-wrapped copy via eBay in a matter of days.

I first used VMware Workstation 4 to create a virtual machine environment roughly comparable to that of the era. Then, I installed MS-DOS 6.22 within that virtual machine, as well as Windows for Workgroups 3.11. Finally, I installed Excel 5.0 and Notes 3.0. I chose WFW because I felt it to be very important to create a configuration that could be used as a "client/server" network environment between multiple virtual machines. As such, I installed both the Notes 3.0 client and server programs, and set about to creating the demonstration herein.

I strongly dislike software patents (I dislike patents, period), but that's no excuse to be sloppy in attacking one.

I too dislike sloppy refutation of unfair claims, although I don't believe in the "baby out w/bathwater" school of dealing with the current patent crisis (it is a crisis), and as long as I'm dealing in cliche's today, I also think that one should follow one's own advice.

expiration

[vlad_petric]

The only good thing about such patents is that they expire in 20 years, and you only have 1 year after you publish the idea to apply for a patent. So ancient stuff is fortunately rulled out.

Re:I agree

[dvdeug]

Let's kill all these plugins, and have support for open standards within the browser. If SVG, DOM, and CSS2 were implemented fully and perfectly, we wouldn't need proprietary formats like Flash at all, and accessibility would be improved.

Have you ever heard of DjVu? It's a graphics format for scanned documents, that does amazing levels of compression - 10 Megapixel B&W scans in 30k, for example. It's not something that everyone needs, or that has been around long enough for it to be hardcoded into everyone's browser. But there's no way you can replicate it using "proper standards". So those of us who want to use it, can, without worrying about it being a "proper standard" or built-in to every browser on Earth.

Re:Sad

[Ieshan]

I actually went to highschool with his son. He's married and things.

Here is how to kill flash under Windows:

[Snaller]

Obviously it won't help you see pages what REQUIRE you to use Flash, but if you use MSIE and don't wanna see all those Flash commercials all over the place, this bit will prevent Flash from loading.
tart regedit, find

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
Software
Microsoft
Interne t Explorer
ActiveX Compatibility
{D27CDB6E-AE6D-11CF-96B8-4445535400 00}

And add as a dword:

"Compatibility Flags"= 1024

This sets the "Kill bit" for Flash, meaning that MSIE won't install it if it isn't installed, and wont load it if it already is installed.
(if you don't have the {D27CDB6E-AE6D-11CF-96B8-444553540000} bit, then add it - but be sure to get all the numbers right. One digit wrong and you are casting a curse on something else)

If you don't trust the magic of others, don't click the button Luke *G*

Usual caveats reply; if you machine blows up, your harddrive fries, your wife leaves you... tough luck buddy ;)