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."

Comments

Nice...

[Jaysyn]

I have to give MS kudos for not using this patent offensively.

The implications?

[Gorobei]

Generally, very little. Yes, most low-level things in CS have been patented in some sense (XOR cursors, one-click checkout, run-length image encoding, multi-hash lookup, stacktrace error display strategies.)

In theory, all software development grinds to a halt. In practice, no one gives a damn.

Trying to enforce a very broad software patent usually just gets the entire patent invalidated. Even if you win, you get to play whack-a-mole with a thousand open-source projects. And most software is bespoke stuff within corporations: good luck tracking that down to enforce patent claims.

Unless you are a law firm with the business model of extorting cash for infringment, you lose by going to court. Bad press, skeptical judge (unless you are suing a direct competitor,) workarounds from the peanut gallery provided pro-bono, countersuits from others with overlapping clainms: it gets ugly fast. Better to just cross-license and get on with life.

Re:Midnight Commander and Ztree

[GIL_Dude]

Well reading the claims they aren't talking about a treeview file system anyway; they seem to be talking about the system of non-file namespace extensions similar to how they show "Desktop" as a node at a level where it is not in the FS, and "Network", "Control Panel", etc. that can all show up in their Treeview controls interspersed with file system objects. I don't believe Norton Commander or XTree did that. They also are claiming a system of registering these namespace add-ins. None of that seems like any attempt to patent a simple treeview of the file system.

Re:This infringes on my 1992 patent... on trees

[RobertM1968]

I would expect that no lawsuits would be pending, or ever brought to surface - for a few reasons.

1) They are far from the first to implement such a feature... too much prior art existed

2) One of the companies that made excessive use of "Tree View" was IBM, when they rewrote OS/2's GUI (without MS's involvement) for OS/2 v2 - which far predates both the application date of this patent and the granted date.

I doubt they want to sue IBM for something they (Microsoft) did not come up with.

I also doubt they want to sue anyone else, because doing so would invariably bring IBM into the picture for such reasons (listed in #2 above), as well as force IBM (and others) to bring up the prior existence of such a "structure" which would thus be ground to invalidate Microsoft's patent.

I am sure that IBM did not come up with this idea - but they did implement it long before Microsoft filed for a patent, and I am sure that the OS/2 GUI patents do cover it, and reference prior art as well.

This is a (pandora's) box that I doubt Microsoft wants to open. Instead, I think they will use it (or may have been using it, or may consider to use it) for nothing other than trying to force smaller companies without the legal wherewithal to pay them royalties for a technology they did not create.

Just my opinions.