Slashdot Mirror
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."
http://www.google.com/patents?id=uRkgAAAAEBAJ&dq=5689662
provided a navigable file system browser for DOS - tree view of directory in the left pane, list of files in the currently selected directory on the right.
It was a best-selling product, too.
A few years later (but before 1995), IIRC Lotus Notes had a navigational pane in its client. I doubt it was even the first app to use that - it was just sort of common wisdom among UI designers at the time.
Perhaps Slashdot story submitters should have to certify that their understanding of patent law comes from something more than perusing the musing of RMS at the League for Programming Freedom. A short course in claim construction would help in differentiating between broad patents that cover something commonly used and narrow patents that are easy to avoid.
The claims of this patent all include the limitation of a "name space extension" that adds at least one "non-file system object" to the file system display. For example, opening a zip file as a folder is an example of adding a non-file system object. If it was part of the shell, instead of an extension to the shell, then the shell probably would not infringe. The capability of extension by third-party vendors is one of the distinguishing characteristics of Windows Explorer.
There may be prior art that invalidates this patent (after all, prior art can be in any language, any time before invention). But, it would have to be prior art that reads on the narrow scope of this patent, not the bizarre, broad interpretation offered by the submitter and by /. commentators.
This is about file-system trees that also include things that aren't actually in the file system.
You mean things like devfs, procfs, and tmpfs?
That's not just a problem with software patents. In every industry that exists, people patent stuff that others invented (but didn't patent) and have been using for years. I know a few people in the chemical industry, and they say this practice is pretty common. Patent something your competitors are doing, then threaten your competitors clients to not buy from you instead of your competitors, because you own the patent, and they are breaking the law.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
I notice a lot of people tend to make really really really generic patents these days, presumably to give them more control over who they get to sue, but when it comes to Prior art, does just one instance invalidate the whole patent, or does it only invalidate certain aspects of it?
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. - Carl Sagan
prior art from 1986 Plan 9 V 1.0
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
The little known computer language Mumps (Massachusetts General Hospital Utility Multiprogramming System - http://www.cs.uni.edu/~okane) implemented all these claims 30 years earlier. Documentation from that earlier era pretty much shows all the features that M$ appears to be claiming. Another case of M$'s deja vu all over again?
Kevin O'Kane http://www.cs.uni.edu/~okane/
Burroughs (now Unisys) CANDE (command and edit language) had this feature in 1969.