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Fallout From Japanese Patent On Help Icon

Posted by timothy on 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.

3 of 372 comments (clear)

  1. Infinges by hereschenes · · Score: -1, Redundant

    Tose supid paent pusers!! Wen wil thy larn??

    --
    More like... nerdular nerdence!
  2. Prior art by GtKincaid · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Oh come on , this is just silly . didnt this exist back on the early versions of the mac OS.

    not to mention Gallerys with spoken tours on a button push .. that may be pushing it but this is so obvious

  3. Re:Obvious Question by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Redundant

    Because this is Slashdot, so it's old news.

    I saw this on the cover of the Japan Times print edition the other day, which means the ruling came down weeks and weeks ago...