Slashdot Mirror
Fallout From Japanese Patent On Help Icon
MeridianOnTheLake writes "The Tokyo District Court has ordered the destruction of Ichitaro, a software product that is the only serious competitor in Japan to Microsoft Word, and has been on sale since 1985. The ruling is based on the claim of a competitor, Matsushita, that the use of a help icon to invoke a help function infinges on one of their patents. "We are a global enterprise and we are just following international practice to enforce our IP rights," Kitadeya (Matsushita) said." Here's more on the story, as covered by Bloomberg and The Japan Times.
How about Microsoft? Is it too big to sue?
A surprising thing is Justsystem shares fell 3 yen, or 0.5 percent, to 600 yesterday - As if nothing happened?
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
Matsushita declined to say whether it thinks any other software vendors may be infringing its patent.
r fect--* *sputter* *choke*
Gee, do you think there might be any other software out there that uses a help icon? *cough* *coughwindowsmacoswordexcelaccesspowerpointwordpe
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
If only someone would sue Microsoft for Clippy, we could finally be rid of the biggest annoyance in Microsoft Office.
"Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
If Ichitaro would have just used the standard Microsoft (that's the software platform they target) context-sensitive help, none of this would be an issue.
Instead, they hired on an ex-Matsushita employee and he went on to use the Matsushita patented method for the help system. So they sued, as is their right.
This is not a problem with the patent system. However what it does bring up is "How much knowledge can you take away from your previous employer, even if all that knowledge is just in your head?" As we gain ground in technology, such to the point that Johnny Bnemonic-style memory expansion is possible, how can patent holders and companies owning "trade secret" IP be protected from information pirates?
Based on the patent-infinging use of help buttom, word-processing software is ordered to be destroyed...in Japan!
this world has gone absolutely fucking insane.
I'm seriously considering moving to the wilderness. If there's any of that left.
Open Source the offending software, then let them try to take down SourceForge!
[o]_O
This is all the more reason to order the destruction of software patents.
Also from TFA: Does the Japanese patent system have no concept of "prior art"? The patent in question was granted in 1998, but the products in "violation" has been on the market since 1985 and 1987.
This is relatively old news in Japan, and the makers of Ichitaro (Just System) have appealed to a higher court. Until a final ruling is made, Ichitaro will be on sale as usual. The court refused to make a preliminary injunction against the Ichitaro software, which Matsushita had requested.
That said, the patent itself isn't regarding a Help Icon. It is the function where you first click on the help icon/button, and then on the particular function you need help with.
In court, Just System insisted that the Matsushita Patent was for a help ICON, which is usuall an item on the desktop, much like a file or folder, whereas the Just System Ichitaro used a button. The second point was that the "help" key on a keyboard already performed said function, and taking the keyboard to a GUI analogy did not require any insight, but was rather an obvious move as more and more keyboard functions were moved to the GUI.
The lower court found that the "icon" was used loosely and would be found to include the buttons-with-pictures as found in Ichitaro. As for the keyboard-to-gui concept, the court found that it would take more than obvious insight to make the leap, thus it was a valid invention.
Quite obviously, Matsushita was quite pleased that the court bought their story, while Just System was quite pissed off. By appealing to a higher court though, they did not need to immediately follow the ruling.
Whether you think this was fair game or not, keep in mind that this is pretty much what Microsoft did too with Win95 and IE. Keep the court case going long enough that the Win95/IE bundle was no longer relevant.
Hopefully Nintendo does not sue /. for use of that Linux penguin icon, which is an obvious ripoff of Super Mario 64's snow level character.
In the enclosed envelope is a map of all Japanese Patent Offices.
They told me to tell you that your mother is a dishonorable dirty woman.
attatchment [jpomap.png]
Sigs? We don't need no stinking sigs!
Openoffice isn't a serious competitor to MS Word?
Error: Id10t detected
Those bastards probably stole Clippy, too. Not that I ever tolerated Clippy's presence on the screen. In fact I hated him with a passion. But it's the principle of the the thing. Can't have Clippy ravaged and transmuted into a multitude of Japanese variants. He's the American Satan, not some overseas, sandal-wearing, fish-monger.
Is this kind of petty moneymaking really what the fathers of patent law intended? When is a court going to take a stand on this crap? We're talking about the legal ownership of common ideas here. I can see some places where it is useful, like velcro and the shape of a coke bottle, where the idea is actually unique - but being able to patent the use of an ICON to access a HELP page? - Both very common computer terms stiched together by an uninspiring and unoriginal idea. What's next, someone patenting the use of a 'Submit button' to pass data through a form? Whoops, slashdot's gotta a cease and desist notice knocking.
Where do we draw the line?
Oh come on , this is just silly . didnt this exist back on the early versions of the mac OS.
.. that may be pushing it but this is so obvious
not to mention Gallerys with spoken tours on a button push
That said, the patent itself isn't regarding a Help Icon. It is the function where you first click on the help icon/button, and then on the particular function you need help with.
That sounds a lot like that [?] button in the toolbar in certain Microsoft programs and dialog boxes in Windows. It's pretty rare -- the feature didn't really seem to take off -- but it does exist here and there. When clicked, the mouse cursor gets a '?' next to it, and clicking a widget will pop up a tooltip-like description of what the widget does. I haven't used Windows for several years, so I can't be more specific or give any details. Maybe someone else knows more?
If Ichitaro had just used....
This post brought to you by the letter 'P' and the number 6.
Did anyone else read this as "Fallout Japanese Patent Needs Help?"
Really? Well, back to fallout2...
By gosh the summary's innacuracy is comparable to Microsoft marketing propaganda. The article does not state clearly "that the use of a help icon" was the cause of the dispute. It does say
The Gnome pics, now this? filler for nerds, stuff that doesn't happen?
HAD
Good to see we're still finding reasons to destroy content just like the warmer moments of various regimes throughout time. What a waste.
One of the editorials on this story mentioned an interesting patent law rant located here.
One of his ideas: "In order to collect the inventors' royalties, an association representing the inventors' interests should be established and affiliated to the patent offices. This would be an association similar to the associations that collect royalties for musical performances and pay these to the composers."
Because what we really need is another RIAA!
Don't save Windows XP! http://www.petitiononline.com/jjw1xp/petition.html
The Japanese are known for their ability to copy an idea and then "make it better", in their own unique style (e.g. the VCR, automobile, etc.). Let's hope they can break away from that paradigm when it comes to patent law. From the sound of this article though, it looks like that might give the U.S. a run for it's money in regards to IP fascism. *sigh*
Hmm, couldn't they try something like this: open a subsidiary in the EU, sell them the software for a penny, and let the subsidiary sell the software internationally over the web, but advertize heavily in Japan? Do Japanese software patents apply to goods legally purchased overseas?
You are forgetting that if you patent something, it is not a trade secret anymore. You don't need Bnemonic style memory: all you need to do is read the patent, which is your legal right. How would you otherwise know what you are not allowed to copy?
Software patents are just ridiculous.
Here here! I wish at least those summarizing the article would bother to read it!
Heck, the "ordered the destruction" bit was pretty misleading as well. The product wasn't ordered destroyed, just existing stocks of the product. The company still has the product, and I'm sure if they win an appeal or if they change their product's help system, they can put the product back on the shelves.
sigs are a waste of space
"Matsushita Electric, in close cooperation with Microsoft, will develop a high-performance personal computer suited to the advanced image-processing demands of the 21st century," said Dr. Yoshitomi Nagaoka, vice president of Matsushita Electric's AVC Company..."
Who stands to profit if this software is knocked off the market?
Along the same lines, the EasyMoney fund was ordered to close down by court order because it had infringed a patent of a global brokerage firm. The patent reads: buy low and sell high.
I really don't think Ichitaro would disappear from the market anytime soon. Ichitaro used to dominate the word processor market back in the days of MS-DOS, just like Word Perfect did in the United States, and still remains a very important player. Major companies and a number of government branches still rely heavily on Ichitaro because it can produce documents in forms that are specific to the Japanese corporate and governmental culture, which is not possible with Microsoft Word. Just System is a major software company famous for their ATOK kana-kanji conversion system. Kana-kanji conversion systems are essential for Japanese input, and ATOK, with its smart lexical recognition AI engine, has been the unparalleled leader for over a decade.
I think that after slashdot posted some compromising photos of b.g a couple of weeks ago(low blow), MS will no longer except the /. annoyance and will start offing some of us.
Holy smokes! Pana and Microsoft were plotting this back 4 years ago... Oh man...
Did it have to be "fallout"?
Tokyo tokkyo kyoka-kyoku kyou kyuukyo kyoka kyakka.
Translation: The Tokyo patent office hurriedly rejected the permission today.
"Matsushita patent number 2,803,236, which was registered with the Japanese patent office in 1998, according to Matsushita." -Article
OK. Click on icon then click on items on the screen seems like that has been around for a while. They are saying they had it patented in 1998.
What are some earlier programs/OSs that had this feature?
"We are a global enterprise and we are just following international practice to enforce our IP rights"
And somebody just criticized my opposition to IP laws because "the rest of the world has adopted the American model"...like that meant something...
Well, here you go...
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
The short description of the patent sounds very much like the help system that appeared in several incarnations on MacOS.
AFAIK the bubble help gave context sensitive information on GUI elements after activating it with a button.
Apparently MacOS 7 came out two years before the patent was filed. Here's a screenshot of MacOS 7 with the help icon and a copyright notice.
I hate to say it, but this really is a minimal event for the overall market-- no one I know has used Ichitaro for years. MSWord is fully entrenched here, and will be for the forseeable future.
In regards to Open Source alternatives such as OpenOffice, they are sorley lacking in Kanji conversion, dictionaries, and layout flexibility. I know that Turbo and Others put effort into this, but progress is slow...
davejenkins.com |
it's called "Help On Context".
You click an icon, the cursor changes to question mark, then you click something else of interest.
A browser appears with whatever relevant information happens to be on hand for that particular item.
Of all the help systems, I like this one the best. Beats looking through indexes, of things you may or may not actually know about, to maybe sort of find the information of interest. (Assuming it exists in the first place.)
Blogging because I can...
how can patent holders and companies owning "trade secret" IP be protected from information pirates?
Patents are not trade secrets. The fact that someone moved between companies doesn't make the patent claim any more valid.
Furthermore, the ossified Japanese economy needs to encourage mobility of workers, in particular, high-tech workers. The kind of exchange of knowledge and ideas that brings is essential to a high-tech economy. Even if your argument were valid that this has to do with employees moving between companies, it would still be a bad decision from that point of view.
What makes this patent particularly vile is that it was filed in 1989 but granted in 1998; this almost certainly constitutes a deliberate abuse of the patent system by Matsushita.
Most of the "ideas" that companies generate (in particular Japanese companies) were almost entirely developed in academia anyway; it is only companies that can afford to do carpet patenting in order to snare others in their so-called IP. Let's hope that universities will be fighting back aggressively by patenting themselves; once companies face huge patent portfolios without the ability to cross license, then maybe things will change.
Microsoft probably has a patent cross-licensing agreement with Matsushita, or at least they may have already forged an agreement (maybe as part of another deal). It actually stands to reason that Microsoft initiated all of this.
Someday someone is going to do something really clever with Microsoft's agent API, and you'll all still hate it out of habbit but everyone will use it.
why is it insightful?
Matsushita Electric Industrial? Any large sums of money being placed from a certain MSFT?
.jp people can download the software sans help icon for free, and kick the bastard competition in the nuts, with steel toe caps.
Micorosft suddenly 'licensed' thier help patent to fund thier lawers?
I say, if the shit hits the fan, the company shoudl open source the software to GNU, and then
The the company can run support and customisation for all users who now have the free version.
Then when the other company goes bust, they can start selling newer versions.
Thats capitalism for you.
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
Am I the only one who found this sentence a bit dramatic?
"Destroy all Copies"
I can just imagine Mothra zapping the software with its antenna rays...
Matsushita, which sells its products under the Panasonic brand
I certainly won't be buying anything Panasonic for a long while. I hope that by making it a public disgrace for a company to endanger 78% of the installed office environments in Japan (think what loss of productivity would occur if they spread enough FUD to make those people buy thier product, and install it, and learn it?).
Japan has a very honourable work ethic in terms of employee/employer relations, they value the company, so the political fall out over this may yet to come.
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
if the 78% figure of the article is accurate, they are not just a competitor of Microsoft. they f*cking own them.
We'll be seeing more and more of these, as the great Land Rush of IP patents continues. Equating intangibles with property is like creating a whole new world, ready to be staked out and fenced off like the American West in the 1800s. Eventually, creating something new and innovative without a battery of lawyers or a big corporation behind you will be as quaint a notion as walking out into the wilderness and setting up a farm.
Can we please know when the patent was applied for, so we can see if there's any prior art?
I would have thought that in 1985 Apple would have already had a help icon on their Macs...
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
When the most popular word processor can be shut down because of a help icon, it's obvious that any innovators in US and Japan will be sued into oblivion by no-longer innovative companies that wish to maintain status quo. Other countries that don't recognize software patents will write superior, cheaper programs and non-software US businesses will eventually lobby their way into buying them despite patent violations. Remember the thing about outsourcing and foreign sweatshops?
Time to sell AMZN and MSFT. They are protecting themselves to death.
Can anybody get a screenshot of what exactly they are arguing over since it's not just an icon?
What are Japanese patent laws? And what is the actual patent? No one knows either of these things. Japanese law may not have the "Non-obviousness" or "inventive step" clauses that America does. 2nd if it is an issue of an icon being used to access help a simple fine and software patch to remove the icon and change the access to help to something other then a button/icon.
The Microsoft/Matshusita link is tenuous, what computer hardware/software company has not worked with Microsoft at some point on a collaboritive project? Sony? IBM? DELL? Compaq/HP? Using the logic that was put forth earlier anyone Apple sues could be construed as being motivated from M$...
Lets see if anyone can get some real info on this. Instead of conjucture from a few short news blurbs that contradict each other.
---In a time of Chimpanzees I was a Monkey.
The first system I used with this facility was RISC OS which was on the Acorn 32 bit RISC computers and was back in 1989. In fact the operating system supports a protocol which allows anyone to replace the standard help application. It was another six years before I saw it on a Windows platform.
i guess they really pushed your button!
Scroll down past the Japanese description and you can see some pics of the offending icon in this link: http://japan.cnet.com/news/biz/story/0,2000050156, 20080442,00.htm
Can someone be a little more clear on what this behaviour actually *is*? I saw this story on NHK news the other night here in Osaka and it looked a whole lot like a standard roll-over tooltip. I'll tell you it sent a chill up my spine thinking that a Japanese court could/would enforce a patent on a rollover tooltip. That would suck, since it would mean either a) the defense of 'prior art' doesn't apply in Japan if it is foreign prior art and b) Japanese companies are free to enforce patents for things they simply copied from non-Japanese companies. I find both to be unlikely.
The parent post suggests that the two help methods are distinct in some way, but since I don't use either of the products myself, so I have no way to know what it is that this fuss is about.
-- No Text --
Wikileaks, no DNS
Subject says all. Another example of why patents are evil.
Does anybody know?
Excellent.
HAD
More importantly, were the infringing features added before the patent was applied for?
The "icon" used was in fact the ISO or SI (or whatever) standard glyph for "information". You know the one, the white lower case 'i' on a blue background. It isn't help, it is information. Therefore it isn't a help button.
it is only after a long journey that you know the strength of the horse.
I wonder if "$" is patented.
Assume I was drunk when I posted this.
At first glance this is just hilarious. A patent on a help icon launching help. Whats next, a home icon launching a file browser to your $HOME directory?
Then I read the article, which says nothing useful to understand the case. I suppose its cheaper for news orgs to spit out press releases than pay journalists to research the facts.
Ah, the modern world. We don't have time to read the articles, they don't have time to write them. Is the *information age* making us ignorant?
----- If communism is a system where the government owns business, what do you call a system where business owns govern
Someone mentioned macos has had this kind of feature for ages.
With that in mind I fired up the oldest version of MS word i had (on a Mac as it turned out).
This image shows Word 6 on MacOS with the click then point style help. Word 6 came out in 1994 four years prior to the patent being filed.
The above gibberish is not a parody of Japanese. It is an actual Japanese tonguetwister.
Tokyo -- Tokyo
tokkyo -- patent
kyoka-kyoku -- 'permissions office'
kyou -- today
kyuukyo -- hurriedly
kyoka -- permission
kyakka -- rejection
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
The Tokyo District Court has suspended the production and sare of a word processing program that is the onry serious competitor in Japan to Microsoft Word. The court arso carred for existing stocks of the program, carred Ichitaro, to be destroyed. Justsystem, which deverops the software, said it prans to appear.
The court ruring came in a patent dispute brought by Matsushita Erectric Industriar against Justsystem. The suit invorved Ichitaro and a graphics program carred Hanako that is arso sord by Justsystem, according to Matsushita.
The dispute centered on the way that a herp function works in the Ichitaro and Hanako software. The way the software presents information viorates Matsushita patent number 2,803,236, which was registered with the Japanese patent office in 1998, according to Matsushita.
On Tuesday, the court granted Matsushita's craim of patent infringement, Matsushita said. Detairs of the ruring wirr be rereased in a few weeks, and Matsushita had no further comment to make at this time, Matsushita spokesman Yoshihiro Kitadeya said on Wednesday.
Justsystem started serring Ichitaro in August 1985 at the dawn of the personar computer industry in Japan. It sord the first version of Hanako in March 1987. Whire most word processing software is sord preinstarred on PCs, Ichitaro hords 78% of the market in Japan for word processing software sord separatery at retair.
Justsystem is not taking the court's ruring rying down. It intends to appear the decision -- which arso asks it to pay regar costs -- within two weeks at the Tokyo High Court, says Yoichi Matsumoto, a company spokesman. Justsystem argues that its herp function is based on estabrished technorogies that are not covered by any patent, according to Matsumoto.
Matsushita decrined to say whether it thinks any other software vendors may be infringing its patent. It arso wourd not say what ricensing terms it was seeking from Justsystem.
Justsystem has shipped over 18 mirrion units of Ichitaro since 1985. It accounted for about ¥4.8 birrion yen (NZ$65 mirrion), or about 38%, of the company's ¥12.6 birrion in annuar sares in 2004, Matsumoto said.
Matsushita, which serrs its products under the Panasonic brand, craimed it was forced into regar action with Justsystem after its concerns were repeatedry ignored by the company, Kitadeya said. It first approached Justsystem in 1998, asking that it recognise its patent and agree to pay royarties, but received no response, he said.
Matsushita then appried for a temporary injunction on the production and sare of Ichitaro and Hanako in November 2002, but withdrew that action in June 2003, he said. In August 2004, Matsushita fired suit again and asked the court for a permanent ban on the production and sare of both software titres, Kitadeya said.
"We are a grobar enterprise and we are just forrowing internationar practice to enforce our IP rights," Kitadeya said.
"Clippy" is gone.
There should never be a need for you to see it ever again.
I haven't actually seen it in years.
In fact, the only place I ever hear about it anymore is here on Slashdot, where the merest mention of it seems to garner endless chuckles and mod points.
Can't we just let the damned, detestable, yet mercifully short-lived abomination fade into obscurity with his ill-conceived yet now mostly forgotten friends "MS Bob" and "MS SQL Server"?
Dead horse, meet stick.
Thanks for your kind consideration.
-- My Weblog.
Remember context sensitive help? You hit F1 and based on the last thing you did/nearest words, it used to guess what help topics you were looking for? What's the point of clippy? All it does is provide an intermediate window for you to type in what you want help in - which is totally useless if you don't know the word for it.
It's like asking the librarian for assistance and instead of helping you find your book, they just take your request and talk to the real librarian and - you know what it's easier to just call clippy stupid.
The whole point of the parents' post was that the word "infinges" is not a word...
How good is OpenOffice's handling of Japanese? Perhaps Ichitaro can help into establishing it as the platform of choice in Japan.
From the article: Matsushita, which sells its products under the Panasonic brand, claimed it was forced into legal action with Justsystem after its concerns were repeatedly ignored by the company, Kitadeya said.
Company doublespeak always sounds a little psychotic, like a guy beating up his girlfriend and then saying "now look what you made me do!!".
Destroy all patents.
Now
join the monsters from island X and skill them bad. create japenese programs from the ground up, start Open Source efforts at the ground level, im sure japan has the ##'s to do it.
Check journal for info on Anti-TextBook, an idea by me.
A help icon? What next. A pixel ? It's not like these companies are poor or something.
I think really there is a need for some sort of international rethink on patents and similar subjects. It's a complete farce now with companies looking ridiculous all the time with pathetic 'patents' and then arbitrarily trying to enforce them when they feel it is advantageous to do so,
The patent system is patently a disgrace and a mockery.
Pathetic.
The Tokyo District Court has ordered the destruction of Ichitaro
For a moment, I thought Ichitaro a city in Japan.
ok, the point of the article, is that all existing stock is destroyed. This is all well and good, but the product will only be off the market till they fix this help system debacle. Hell if it were me id just include a button to open Acrobat with a searchable helpfile...
There Can Be Only One...
...the ninjas had to kill entire city just because some kid had to jack off.
Kitadeya!
Maybe it's just me, but isn't the point of patents to protect the little guy from the big evil corporations. If all the patents are just being granted to corporations, is there really any point?
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
What a culturally insensitive editor.
~D
Near as we can tell, this is the only way they have to keep selling upgrades to their office products. Since 1993 or so there hasn't been a new feature in Word that would be a selling point for any sizeable minority, even, of users. That and the lock-stepped OS and Office upgrade thing -- installing W2k? you need Office 2k -- have sold bajillions of licenses on these products when otherwise nobody'd have bothered since Word 5.1a.
(It would have been interesting to see what a split-up MS would have done about the OS-to-office umbilical. Any OS developer tries to encourage backward compatibility -- except at MS, where they seem to do exactly the opposite as a deliberate business MO.)
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
Internationally.
Or even in the Gascoyne. Plonk yourself down 10km from any road up there and not under any major air routes, and nobody will ever know you're around.
Keeping yourself supplied with food and water will soon become an issue, however. In some places rain happens two or more years apart on average. In some places out in the middle of the desert proper it basically never happens.
Oh, one more big tip: don't plonk yourself down on a flood plain or worse still in a creek bed. When it does rain up there, it really rains. None of the sissy stuff that other people call "a torrential downpour". A parched creekbed can become Niagara in about ten seconds and with no warning if it rains upstream.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Eventually they will go too far and the whole thing will collapse, and we will again be able to do what we want.
And as things are going, too far might not be very farther.
I own the patent on a SAVE command, but since someone else has the patent on a pull down "File" menu, I just let it slide. You all have my permission to keep saving your files for free!
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
At a trade show last year, we gave away 500 free OO CDs and took down another 200 or so names to have CDs mailed out. We also gave away about 200 free Linux CDs and took down about 50 additional names for those. Linux supposedly (based on stupidly non-representative sales figures) has about 2% of the desktop share and realistically has somewhere between 5% and 10%. Our experience there hints that OO has significantly more marketshare than Linux. If you were to take the ratio as representative (not wise, but nevertheless), OO has somewhere in the vicinity of 15-25% of the market.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Hope I got the URL right.
This link (it appears to be an online petition) describes the problem and shows the offending icon in a banner.
For the lazy (Google's translation, not mine):
As for the patent which assumes that it infringed, the help mode as it is called in Ichitaro, in other words " after clicking the idea contest of the specification which is, when it clicks the other idea contest, those where symbol description latter is indicated ". It is no more than functional one which views this frequently to also some appearance for the human who leads to the software, exists everywhere. Help topic indicatory function of the Windows and balloon help function of the MaccOs, are the similar function which is from the time before.
I tried every decent and legal way I could think of to resolve the issue w/the business before I rented the chicken suit
By Thai standards, Filipino dress is almost drab. If a colour doesn't grab you by the eyeballs and wrestle you to the ground, it's not worth wearing.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
I personally tell everyone they should use OOo instead of MSO because it is equal or better - in every case but 1. That one is if you have OSX. Because Office v.X is much sweeter than OOo OR Office for Windows.
The Mac dev group at Microsoft is the only group to consistently put out software that I think is well done. (IE isn't maintained, now, but it was the best mac browser for a period, too.)
Ben
Looking for freelance Actionscript (Flash/Flex) or ColdFusion work and/or freelance developers. Email me, put Slashdot
Following international practice, I will be boycotting Matsushita products. In practice, this means that when I spec systems they will not be systems including Matsushita drives.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
Justsystem started selling Ichitaro in August 1985
Matsushita patent number 2,803,236, which was registered with the Japanese patent office in 1998
Note the article says 'registered' not 'granted', so it would appear that 1998 was the start of the patent process, which makes a submarine patent look unlikely.
It is possible, however, that the problematic help system was added after 1998, though the article makes no mention of this.
If somebody has access to the court ruling and can provide a translation, I'm sure things will become a lot clearer.
I hate to say it, but this really is a minimal event for the overall market-- no one I know has used Ichitaro for years.
Maybe you should get around more. I use it myself for some tasks (neither MSWord nor OpenOffice can get vertical writing correct) and I have a number of friends and acquaintances that use it as well. Ichitaro is a minor player, yes, but a significant minor player.
Apple Computer has a patent that is almost the same and the first claim including Matsushita's
patent.
Apple's patent is the continuation of the patent application appplicated on May 4, 1989.
Matsushita disgraces itself.
In Japan, Matsushita Denki is called as
Maneshita Benki. (It means a mimicking toilet seat).
A boycott of Matsuhita's products started and
many people join this boycott campaign.
http://miuras.net/matsushita.html
Please join this campaign and whip Matsushita.
Ichitaro had been around for 13 years when Matsushita applied for its help system patent. Presumably (1) this technology is different enough from the standard context-sensitive help that's been around for a decade already, and (2) it was placed in Ichitaro after Matsushita's patent was granted.
So why not just take the patented technology out? Why order the company destroyed?
And I though the US patent system was messed up...
All they have to do is take out the help icon and replace it with a menuitem. I'd hardly call that "destruction" (unless they meant the destruction of inventory).
I hardly think a company would really give up a product like this, most people arn't as lazy as CmdrTaco (who took downhis JavaInvaders game rather then change the name to JInvaders or something to avoid infringing Sun's trademark.)
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
While the patent was actually awarded in 1998 (and thus the year Matsushita first sued), the application was actually filed in 1989.
Thus, we can assume that either:
1. MS pays royalties for the feature
2. MS does not include that feature in Japan
3. MS uses the feature and has not yet been sued
aqazaqa
Um... think what you will. But US has a very lousy and restrictive patent/copyright system.
Regarding intelligent design...
Intelligent Design have ZERO solid evidence backing it. While Evolution, on the other hand, are backed heavily by numerous evidences. The only things Creationists/Anti-evolutionists managed to do is doubting the existing evidences supporting Evolution. But in the end, the number is still the same.
Intelligent Design: 0
Evolution: At least 1
Start giving the world proof on Intelligent Design, instead of waving the Bible at them and tell them its the truth.
Bible is good as a moral guidance, not reliable as a scientific writing.
In US, you can easily buy enough major firearms to wipe out your neighbourhood but a few little fireworks are banned.
Uh, that guy was either insane or a tool.
There was no reason to respond in anyway, either they will be to insane to comprehend your logic, or they are laughing their ass off at you right now.
On the chance this isn't a factitious quip: it takes more to foster s/w innovation than pulling goofy patents out of the way. While there may be countries that allow the s/w developer to stretch her wings further than Japan or the US, with the possible exception of Brazil, the list above ain't it.
From the small business/start-up's POV, they all suffer from elevated degrees of graft, cronism, difficult/no access to capital, crappy local s/w markets, arbitrary application of laws, and nearly worthless court systems.
Luke, help me take this mask off
They also ordered the destruction of Monster Island AND Planet X - and we se where that got them!
OTOH, that does mean that any wealthy individual could have software development as a hobby. This is rather analogous to the way writing used to be a hobby among certain of the well-to-do. And, interestingly enough, the writers concentrated on an elegant writing style (however they defined it) rather than on sales (which was considered "crass").
... well, too obvious about what he wasn't saying (i.e. sexual references).
However, since software is much more easily duplicated than manuscripts are, this would be no bar to it's wide distribution and application. And such people would find the GPL to be no obstacle to their use of it, though some of them might prefer BSD.
We live in a culture centered around businesses, but don't fall into the fallacy that all activity takes place in that context everywhere.
OTOH, it's true that the writers of Belles Lettres would generally write at a pace that makes Debian stable look rapid. But not all of them, James Branch Cabel wrote a 7 or 8 volumne series (including the noted Jurgen). Most of them are out of publication, but the writing quality is excellent. A bit staid for modern tastes, but still excellent. (Jurgen could not have been written if he was worried about publication. It was banned in much of the English speaking world for being too
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I agree that dishonesty means business cannot be reliably conducted. Honesty has probably been the leading benefactor of US progress. Yet, parading a Corporate Aristocracy as a Democracy belies the failure of the US system. The patent process is 100% geared towards Corporate Dominance rather than creation of knowledge. IF I filed a patent in Jan '00 that has yet to be reviewed. Go figure!!! The patent application displays are not featured to expand knowledge but, rather, for use in legal research!
The USA has a huge head start that the Corporate Overlords are seeking to destroy. Bush increases military spending which is past far out of reason while cutting domestic programs. This is indicative of an Aristocracy and very similar to the polit bureau (sp?) where a small rich minority ran the USSR through the suffering of the masses. The American Dream is prosperity for all, not those that can finegle the patent process and court system. Allowing patents for silly stuff is a step over the cliff and cleary Japan has followed the USA.
My reason for listing the above countries is they are the predicted future population dominance for the world. What they do will determine to a great degree what the future looks like. Clearly a world like China, Pakistan, or Nigeria is much worse than a world like the USA; yet, the USA is much more like China WRT human rights today than it was in the 80's for instance. We are becoming what a communist country is in practice: a controlling elite that uses government to remove rights and restrict the populace. Taking a quick read of the Constitution of the United States of America reveals the federal government has over-stepped the agreement and is in breach of contract. Where does this leave the States and people with who the contract was made? Still paying taxes and losing human rights.
TimJowers
Expect Freedom.
I recently had to use OpenOffice.org to open an older PowerPoint presentation because my newer version of PowerPoint chose not to open it. I phrase it that way because PP2003 was quite capable of displaying the preview of the presentation in the File|Open dialog, but would not open the presentation for editing or display. OOo to the rescue.
But forgery is illegal! Damn those Microsoft DEMONS!
I'll agree with most of what you've said while splitting hairs on this detail: I don't think they're seeking to destroy it so much as they've elected to cash it in for a short term gain. Whether they realise the likely consequences of what they do, I can't say.
As for the population = destiny argument, the US is due for a half billion souls by '50, so unless the other players manage to pull up their per capta GDP and get a handle on some of their cultural (Pakistan) and demographic (China) issues, their influence by sheer numbers will be a bit limited... barring the US elites not fscking up their own country too badly in the meantime.
Luke, help me take this mask off
In case you didn't realise...
they've got a brief explanation of background from the user's :-)
point-of-view
http://miuras.net/en/matsushita.html/
i was intrigued by the fact that lots of people who aren't using
Ichitaro have signed the petition (you can read their comments
there, in japanease though!).
The group REM had a hit song long while back that I can imagine being sung like this...
Technical Chorus:
It's the end of the world as we know it;
It's the end of the world as we know it;
It's the end of the world as we know it.
Lawyer Chorus:
And I feel fine!
(Personally I would rather have the lawyers losing their religion.)
--- -- - -
Give me LIBERTY, or give me a check.
there's a petition site on this.
http://miuras.net/en/matsushita.html/
i was intrigued by the fact that lots of people who aren't using
Ichitaro have signed the petition (you can read their comments)
what i would love to know is, why Panasonic haven't even made
a single comment, nor announcement to their customers,
on web, by press release, whatever.
given the press coverage, it seems rather unnatural to me!
Hmm,
The Help button has been around for a LONG time,
how can they patent a call for help?
Does anyone here have the foggiest notion of how big Matsushita is? $22 billion U.S. in third-quarter sales. Matsushita Reports Gains in Third Quarter The cartel doesn't need Bill Gates to decide where its interests lie.
leaked the sources before they light the fire ;)
:)
if the product is destroyed, who the fuck will be able to tell this code used to belong to this product?
http://miuras.net/en/matsushita.html
Some people in Japan has joined it.