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Microsoft's Decade-old Patent On Tree-view Mode!
BhaKi writes "Remember the Tree-View mode in many file management applications? It's shocking to know that this omnipresent feature was patented by Microsoft back in 1995 (granted in 1997). I'm not very sure about the implications, though. The patent is so general that it can be related to many things from tree-mode to virtual filesystems. Check out claim no. 3 of the patent for the most clear part."
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Thank god for mc and ztree
There's so much prior art here it's not funny. For example, Executive Systems first published XTree for DOS (later XTreeGold) in April, 1985. It was the absence of this functionality in MS/DOS that make the functionality so popular. This is just another example of how the software patent system is truly messed up and needs (and hopefully will get) a serious overhaul.
well, considering norton xtree used this in the late 80's, a helluva case can be made for previous use.
stupid IP patents need to just go away. this is retarded.
That's interesting, because a virtually identical view was available in a Wang Laboratories software product called Clearview, released in 1989, which ran on Windows 2.0.
(Clearview was one of a genre of Windows add-ons, HP NewWave being probably the best known, that plastered improved graphics shells or desktop managers on top of Windows).
And Clearview itself was nothing more than an improved version of a directory display that was used in the Wang Laboratories OIS circa 1977. They were logically the same, although visually different because the OIS was constrained by having a character-oriented screen. At least within Wang itself, Clearview's directory display was regarded a spiffy bitmapped graphic version of the OIS's display.
I seriously doubt that Wang was first or even close to first, but Wang was definitely shipping large numbers of commercial products that offered tree views of directories long before 1995.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
This patent isn't just about trees, or even file-system trees (which Microsoft made prior art for with the old Win3.1 File Manager). This is about file-system trees that also include things that aren't actually in the file system. It's about how things like Control Panel and My Network Places can appear in the same Windows Explorer tree with your C: drive.
Hopefully, though, the whole thing is now moot.
(T>t && O(n)--) == sqrt(666)
as a node at a level where it is not in the FS
You know, there is this old family of operating systems dating back from the early 70s, that tend to represent pretty much everything as a file system, even things that aren't necesarily on the disk like processes or more recently USB devices.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Each claim of a patent is presumed valid independently of the validity of the other claims. See 35 U.S.C. Sec. 282. If one claim is invalid, then other claims that include additional or different limitations will still be presumed valid until proven otherwise.
You may have noticed that patent claims themselves form a hierarchy. At the top of the hierarchy are the independent claims. You can recognize them because they do not refer to other claims in the patent. Then there are dependent claims. These are claims that add additional limitations to the claims from which they derive. You can recognize them because they refer to other claims in the patent.
The independent claims, which have the fewest limitations, are the easiest to knock out with prior art references. The dependent claims, especially dependent claims that depend on dependent claims, are the hardest to knock out with prior art references, but are easier to engineer around (all you have to do is ensure that your own implementation does not include one of the limitations or its equivalent; but you still have to be careful because the courts often find weird equivalents when it comes to litigation). Patent practitioners usually draft a variety of independent and dependent claims to make a patent harder to fully invalidate or engineer around.
Because it is hard to knock out all the claims of a patent, defendants in patent litigation often look to ways to attack a patent as a whole. Defendants often accuse the patent applicant of withholding information from the patent office, such as knowledge of prior art or the best mode embodiment of the patent. They may even try to find inventors who were not named on the patent application and license the patent independently from them.
The Windows FileManager goes quite a bit further back then Win 3.11. I first saw it in Win 3.0 and it existed in OS/2 ver 1.1 (which IIRC was '87 or'88) where MS copied it from. (not too bad as they wrote the OS/2 ver1.x FileManager)
Of course this patent isn't just about file systems but also displaying other objects eg the control panel. OS/2 v2 did this in '91 or so.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
I read the patent, and it does not patent tree views. Claim 1 patents adding objects visible in a file viewer, just like files, by registering such objects with the registry. Sounds fairly worthless to me, but Microsoft patents pretty much anything. Claim 3, which does mention tree views, is dependent on claim 1. In no way are simple tree views covered by this patent.
Beer is proof that God loves us, and wants us to be happy.
Thanks for clarifying that. Still OS/2 2.0, released in April 1992, had the ability to display "non file system object". Any (former) OS/2 developer (or user with knowledge of low lever working) will tell you that what you just described it is the main feature which makes the OS/2 workplace shell the best GUI shell ever.
As for handling ZIP: IBM never bothered but it was available to the WPS as third-party extension.
Martin