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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.
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.
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
"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?
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.
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
could anyone provide one where a software patent was indeed a good thing for an inovative feature?
I think the case of spreadsheets, which set precedence for software patents, is a good example of what you're asking. I imagine that software ought to have some of the same qualities of inventing physical things. If an inventor has spent an inordinate amount of time creating something innovative then he or she should be able to reap rewards from it and not have someone come along and rip off their plans and sell it themselves. Inventors should have the option of making a living solely from inventing, otherwise there would be a significant lack of development of technology.
However, many of the software patents that are being introduced that produce such a backlash are such trivial and unimaginative ideas. They actually don't improve technology, but rather hinder its progress, which is the exact opposite of what the whole patent system is meant to achieve. It's supposed to provide incentive for people to innovate, not create bureaucratic obstacles for them.
And there is also the fact that software in it's very essence is different from physical objects. Software can be quickly distributed from just a single copy, while physical inventions have to be manufactured one by one. Software evolves much faster, and subjecting the development of ideas for software to the same slow bureaucratic rules that apply to physical objects can hinder the overall efficiency of the development of software. But whatever the case, people have to be able to focus on creating ideas to improve technology as their main occupation for making a living, and patents are supposed to allow them to do that.
As someone who does a LOT of PC support in addition to my main role as a sysadmin and network designer let me tell you that Clippy (and his often more annoying brothers and sisters) are still alive and well even in Office 2003. YOU may not see them because you or your sysadmin uninstalled him or deactivated him but I can assure you that he's still out there and kicking. Oh yeah and in case you haven't noticed MS SQL Server has a bigger piece of the paid database market then ever. SQL Server 2000 is actually pretty good and from what I've seen of the Beta SQL2005 is going to be even better. It might not be Oracle or DB2 but it's pretty darn good, and it's even affordable =)
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
I'll translate about as much as I can without getting into copyright trouble. The patent includes clicking on one icon displayed somewhere on your console, which attaches a special graphic to your mouse cursor. You then click on another icon or function on your console, and it brings up context-sensitive help. This is specifically distinguished from using context-sensitive help by pressing one special key or icon which is in a constant place, and also from each function embedding an explanation of what it does through other means which do not change the state of the mouse cursor.
The meat of the story is paragraphy #3, although the three screenshots on the front page are understandable even if you don't read Japanese. Due to quirkiness with derivative works law in Japan, tranlating their captions exactly could potentially lead to a lot of trouble. Suffice it to say that the first screenshot shows the offending icon, the second shows the mouse cursor changing as a result of clicking the icon, and the third shows the result of a second click on a generic interface function (an explanation pops up).
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
Um, Windows 95, and maybe earlier, have this feature, as part of the OS.
http://ark42.com/freeimage/ShiftF1help.gif
Morphing Software