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

This infringes on my 1992 patent... on trees

[Anonymous Coward]

I patented trees in general in 1992. I'm going to sue.

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

[brxndxn]

I patented dirt.. Want to apply for a license? Without my dirt license, you can grow no trees.

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

[multisync]

Without my dirt license, you can grow no trees.

Ever hear of hydroponics?

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

[Tablizer]

Reminds me of a old joke:

One day a group of Darwinian scientists got together and decided that man had come a long way and no longer needed God. So they picked one Darwinian to go and tell Him that they were done with Him.

The Darwinian walked up to God and said, "God, we've decided that we no
longer need you. We're to the point that we can clone people and do many miraculous things, so why don't you just get lost."

God listened very patiently and kindly to the man. After the Darwinian was done talking, God said, "Very well, how about this? Let's say we have a man-making contest." To which the Darwinian happily agreed.

God added, "Now, we're going to do this just like I did back in the old
days with Adam."

The Darwinian said, "Sure, no problem" and bent down and grabbed himself a handful of dirt.

God interrupted, saying, "Hold it. You go get your OWN dirt!!"
           

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

[negRo_slim]

I patented trees in general in 1992. I'm going to sue.

That's kind of an interesting point here, they were granted the patent in '97 but I fail to recall any lawsuits over such a thing... Much ado about nothing?

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

[Yvan256]

If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. - Carl Sagan

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

[Tablizer]

If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. - Carl Sagan

Hell of a way to frighten away potential wives. No wonder nerds have problems in that area. It's like the dating couple admiring horses galloping in the sunshine, when the geeky guy turns to the girl and says, "You know, the purpose of a horse's tail is to keep flies off of its anus." Date over.
   

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

[jonbryce]

Yes they do.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonsai

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.

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

[smilindog2000]

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.

Why do people link ad-laden patent sites?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can get patent results ad-free from Google or straight from the USPTO.

Re:Why do people link ad-laden patent sites?

[TheRaven64]

Maybe because they own the site? Put up patent on ad-filled site, link to Slashdot with 'M$ is teh Evil' summary, and profit without the need of resorting to ??? anywhere in your business plan.

Re:Why do people link ad-laden patent sites?

[Tablizer]

I notice that many of the flowchart illustrations are purely linear; no branches or loops. Why bother with a flowchart for such? Just do a text step list of the common kind:

1. Collect panties
2. Make a web-site about collected panties
3. Put Google Ads on it
4. Profit!

(List for illustration purposes only. Profits not guaranteed. Collecting panties risks lawsuits and may pose an environmental hazard.)
   

Re:Why do people link ad-laden patent sites?

[ksd1337]

You forgot the "???". (I own the patent to it, so you'll have to pay me for it.)

Re:Why do people link ad-laden patent sites?

[mcrbids]

(... Collecting panties risks lawsuits and may pose an environmental hazard.)

Man, oh man. What kind of chix do you DATE!?!?!?

Slashdot's in trouble

[Tablizer]

Hell, its vague enough to cover slashdot's hierarchical nesting message view. Pay up, slashy!

Midnight Commander and Ztree

[myspace-cn]

Thank god for mc and ztree

Re:Midnight Commander and Ztree

[Mark19960]

Xtree Gold preceded this by a long time, IIRC.
I have a copy in my attic that I had from the mid 80s

There is just tons of prior art for this patent.

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.

Norton Commander in the '80s

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Nice...

[Jaysyn]

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

Prior art anyone?

[ncog]

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.

Re:Prior art anyone?

[TheRaven64]

Did you even glance at the patent? My guess is that the submitter owns the ad-infested site hosting the linked copy of the patent, because there's no other motivation for posting it. The patent in question covers a very specific mechanism for extending the Explorer shell, not for tree views in general, or even tree views of filesystems. It's describing a mechanism whereby a hierarchical filesystem viewer can delegate the ability to display documents to other modules (e.g. a Word Viewer COM control).

Re:Prior art anyone?

[tepples]

It's describing a mechanism whereby a hierarchical filesystem viewer can delegate the ability to display documents to other modules (e.g. a Word Viewer COM control).

Let's see.

Claim 1 refers to a file system browser that allows mounting non-file objects into the same namespace as the file system. UNIX did all this, and its "registry" was called /etc/fstab.

Claim 3 ("a first window for viewing a selected part of the name space and a second window for viewing in more detail an object") describes the approach taken in Mac OS since 1.0, whose Finder had the "Get Info" window.

But some of the claims are specific and possibly novel. Claim 6: "the non-file system objects include printer objects representing printers." Mac OS from the time of the patent did not have drag-and-drop for printer configuration; instead, it used a desk accessory called the Chooser.

Re:Prior art anyone?

[CastrTroy]

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.

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:Family Tree..

[Tablizer]

Surely a family tree would be considered prior art?

Then why can't I use a mouse to drag my mother-in-law to the recycle bin?
       

Not just any tree

[Ken_g6]

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.

Question Regarding Prior Art

[neokushan]

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?

Re:Question Regarding Prior Art

[The Empiricist]

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?

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.

UNIX

[DrYak]

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.