Fallout From Japanese Patent On Help Icon

Posted by timothy on Sunday February 6, 2005 @07:39PM from the interesting-times dept.

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.

2 of 372 comments (clear)

Min score:

Reason:

Sort:

Re:It's not the thing, it's the method by Brandybuck · 2005-02-06 19:59 · Score: 5, Insightful

I hate to be the one to defend software patents, because I really despise them, but in this case, as in most others, it's the infringing company that's getting hurt, and not "the people".

p.s. Of course, the people are getting hurt indirectly, as they are thus deprived of a choice in the marketplace.

--
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
It's a shame by RoLi · 2005-02-06 22:19 · Score: 5, Insightful

3 news stories and none of them explains what the patent really is about.
Does anybody know?