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Microsoft Details FOSS Patent Breaches
CptRevelation writes "Microsoft has released more detailed information on the patents supposedly in breach by the open-source community. Despite their accusations of infringement, they state they would rather do licensing deals instead of any legal action. 'Open-source programs step on 235 Microsoft patents, the company said. Free Linux software violates 42 patents. Graphical user interfaces, the way menus and windows look on the screen, breach 65. E-mail programs step on 15, and other programs touch 68 other patents, the company said. The patent figures were first reported by Fortune magazine. Microsoft also said Open Office, an open-source program supported in part by Sun Microsystems Inc., infringes on 45 patents. Sun declined to comment on the allegation.'"
This is still old news. There are no new details in this article that were not already present in the one Slashdot reported on Sunday (the CNN Money article, http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_arc hive/2007/05/28/100033867/index.htm?section=money_ latest)
Unix is simple. It just takes a genius to understand its simplicity. -Dennis Ritchie
Just starting out, but go here
http://twoclick.org/unnamed/
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
They said 'EMail programs', not email itself.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Sorry to keep plugging myself, but I really want this to take off and pling-style sites need users to go
I
twoclick looks at patents in the GUI category:
http://twoclick.org/unnamed/index.php?category=GU
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
Yeah. Microsoft, Look and Feel is not actionable - otherwise Apple would have had your ass years ago. Drop those claims first.
Moving along: detail the rest of 'em, and we'll give a shit. No seriously. You can't just say, "You infringe on 25 of my patents. Can I have my licensing fee now?"
It doesn't work like that.
Of course, the reason MS won't name names is that they want their license fees. They don't want Linux and its related projects going, "Ok, we'll code around that, thanks."
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I didn't see any detail in this article that wasn't in the previous one.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
It doesn't matter if they invented it, only if they patented it. Which is what's wrong with the whole system.
Not true. The U.S. patent system is based on a "first to invent" doctrine, not "first to file."
Applying for a patent often serves as proof that you had indeed invented something at a certain time (at least the filing date), and creates a bit of a barrier for someone else to prove that they invented it earlier (since they'd need to conclusively demonstrate that they had done it before you had), but it's not unheard of or even especially uncommon historically.
That's the whole idea behind 'prior art' in the U.S.: if you can demonstrate that you, or somebody else, had invented something and published it before the person who got the patent for it did, then the patent can be ruled invalid.
There are some (IMO, really poorly thought-out) proposals that would change the U.S. system to a "first to file" one, which is more common throughout the rest of the world, but it hasn't happened yet.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Not in the United States. In the U.S., first-to-invent is the rule, not first-to-file.
Money for nothing, pix for free
You forgot Red Hat which now has some resources.
MS has 155 patents with the word "User Interface" in the title. Have a look:
T O2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-b ool.html&r=0&f=S&l=50&TERM1=Microsoft&FIELD1=ASNM& co1=AND&TERM2=user+interface&FIELD2=TI&d=PTXT
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=P
What sucks is that yesterday they only had 151...
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
Not all patents can be worked around without removing functionality, because some of the patents are either defined in such a way or simply cover such functionality that it can't be done in any other ways than the ones the patent covers.
Probably relevant articles:
Apple Inc. v. Microsoft Corp., 35 F.3d 1435 (9th Cir. 1994), aka the "Look and Feel case" on Wikipedia, and the actual ruling by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
The MIT AI Lab has a fairly good introduction to the basis for the current U.S. software IP system, including what elements are typically protected by copyright and which by patents. (Basically: "Expression" = copyright; "idea/implementation" = patent, "concept" = (hopefully) neither.)
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
examples? Please filter out all examples from when the customers knew specifically what patents were being violated, and how, yet bought the product anyway. Suing the customer in that scenario is defined under civil law.
/.
That's the crux of this, really - because of the lawsuit-happy world we live in, people have gotten the idea that you can actually sue anyone for anything; you can't. You have to cite what civil law was violated, how it was violated, when it was violated, etc.
So yeah - give me an example that remotely compares to this situation. If examples exist, I sincerely would love to see them. Up to now, all I've done is read the Federal Rules for Civil Procedure, and done research. I am certainly not a lawyer, but I'm also not subscribing to the Great FUD Machine. Seems like the fear of FUD is stronger than the FUD itself these days on
Ford can't sue Chevy... Chevy isn't a company, it's a brand. Ford would sue General Motors.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
Hate to prove myself correct, but I found this at the foot of the patent:
In conclusion, the present invention enables users to select elements in a GUI quickly, with minimal processor computations, using an element selection perimeter or "lasso."Laches hardly ever works for patent defense, because, as an affirmative defense, the defendant has to prove it, and the plaintiff can always come up with good excuses for their delay such that they were researching or evaluating the infringement over a very long period of time. So it's usually impossible to prove in US courts.
The Apple vs eMachines dispute was a more straightforward trade dress case than Apple vs Microsoft. It comes from some portions of the Lanham Act that allow trademark-like protections for distinctive design elements of a product.
If you take a look at the eOne, it's pretty blatantly iMac-like; I kinda wonder what their lawyers were thinking when they green-lit that.
At any rate, that suit, like most things that Apple seems to get involved in, was eventually settled out of court, and no precedent resulted. But we can infer that eMachines didn't feel like they were winning, because the eOne disappeared quickly afterwards. (It didn't help that the thing never sold well, either, or that it was offered exclusively through Circuit City.)
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Unfortunately for mono, the parts that could be liable to patent claims are the parts that allow Windows interoperability. Given that interoperability is the chief claim to fame of
From wikipedia:
Toohey was in the Fountainhead, not Atlas Shrugged. You also could have
mentioned that Rand wrote, "You cannot patent an idea,"
So if I install an Aqua theme, then there isn't a problem right?
Come fuckin' on. Any patents that fall in that category would cover any modern OS. Drop down menus and "windows" were around before Windows.
They keep saying Linux. Last I checked nearly any window manager, e-mail client and many other applications that run on Linux run on BSD as well. However they repeat "Linux, Linux, Linux...!" to steer people from Ubuntu Linux, Debian Linux, Slackware Linux. How much more obvious a FUD campaign can they make this?
Show the world your code MS. There has to be a little bits of GPL crawling around in there somewhere.
Look and feel. Give me a break.
No sig for you!!
I Am My Own Worst Enemy