Truth Behind the ClearType/OpenSUSE FUD

Kennon writes "Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols over at Linux Watch clears up the FUD around Tuesday's Slashdot discussion concerning OpenSUSE, ClearType, and patent deals with Microsoft."

Comments

Re:ClearType draws from Apple II, says developer

[Tim Browse]

Technologist Steve Gibson, a software developer and consultant whose claim to fame was inventing the light pen more than a decade ago

From Wikipedia:

The first light pen was used around 1957 on the Lincoln TX-0 computer at the MIT Lincoln Laboratory.

Gibson was born in 1955. That's some fast work!

Microsoft didn't invent this idea.

[ACMENEWSLLC]

Microsoft may have a patent on ClearType, but they didn't invent it. We did the same thing in the Commodore 64 days with regards to fonts in graphics. I clearly recall zooming in on text and seeing different colors in the transition from text to background. I've spent many hundred hours doing graphic arts on the Commodore 64 and have been published.

I guess prior art doesn't apply to patents anymore?

"Sub-pixel font rendering with Free&Clear - Microsoft says they invented their "ClearType" technology, but I quickly and independently "invented" the same thing . . . as had others who came years before. It is very cool, but rather obvious. "

http://www.grc.com/ct/cleartype.htm

Re:They didn't invent clear type, Steve Wozniak di

[Kadin2048]

Well except the sub pixel anti-aliasing they claim as their invention was invented by Steve Wozniak a couple of decades earlier.

I think it was even earlier than that, there were some links in yesterday's discussion to what looks like exactly the same feature, being investigated by Xerox even earlier. The prior art on at least the most general concepts of this (subpixel rendering by switching on individual Red, Green, or Blue color elements in a display) seems pretty damning.

But then again, the prior art against Microsoft's FAT patents was pretty damning too, and it even went through two USPTO reviews that said the patents should be invalidated, but at the 11th hour there was an additional review and suddenly they were "novel and non-obvious" again. Makes you wonder exactly Microsoft has by the short hairs that made a phone call to smooth things over... If they really need these patents, they'll never be overturned regardless of the obviousness of the prior art; the patent system is too thoroughly corrupt.