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.

Comments

It's not the thing, it's the method

[Dancin_Santa]

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?

Re:It's not the thing, it's the method

[jd]

IIRC, it depends a lot on how obvious the method is (you're not supposed to be able to patent things that are trivial), whether the solution is in the public domain (you can't patent public knowledge) and when the patent was filed with respect to the alledged copy.

It also depends some on the reason why the patent infringement is coming up now. For example, since the company affected is a competitor to Microsoft, did Microsoft pay Matsushita to launch the lawsuit? IANAL, but there may be a case for appeal, if it turns out that the lawsuit was in bad faith, and/or is an attempt by Microsoft to gain further control of the Japanese office market by paying Matsushita to eliminate the only serious competitor.

In general, the courts tend to frown on being used subversively as the "enforcers" of a protection racket.

I'm not saying that this is what is happening. What I am saying is that there are enough suspicious circumstances to warrant a closer look at this, and that the Japanese courts might be persuadable that this isn't as innocent as it appears.

As for the "what you know" problem - since any work "could" be tainted by any prior experience, it would be impossible for any technical person to be re-hired within the lifetime of any patent they may have come into contact with. AT&T argued a similar line, against the BSDers, arguing that since they'd come into contact with AT&T proprietary knowledge, they were tainted and therefore so was any/all their subsequent work.

This is one reason I don't agree with the existing concept of IP. Nobody could ever have more than one job, and once they quit/leave/get sacked, they could NEVER be re-employed. IMHO, that is not protecting anybody and is clearly excessive.

Therefore, it should not be possible to "taint" work with IP, merely by being exposed to it. There has to be a far more material breach, and one which isn't protected against IP claims in some other way (such as being obvious, public domain, etc).