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Google, Apple, Microsoft Sued Over File Preview
ClaraBow writes with this excerpt from MacWorld:
"A small Indiana company has sued tech heavyweights Microsoft, Apple, and Google, claiming that it holds the patent on a common file preview feature used by browsers and operating systems to show users small snapshots of the files before they are opened. ... Cygnus's owner and president Gregory Swartz developed the technology laid out in the patent while working on IT consulting projects, McAndrews said. The company is looking for 'a reasonable royalty' as well as a court injunction preventing further infringement, he said. ... Cygnus applied for its patent (#7346850) in 2001. It covers a 'System and method for iconic software environment management' and was granted by the US Patent and Trademark Office in March of this year."
The moment where patent trolls battle it out with large corporations is right around the corner. I feel that this is not only the beginning of a shitstorm, but when it's finished - software patents will be made illogical if not illegal in most countries, and people will realize that it was just a marketing scam that big corporations used to squash the little guys, and then differently designed little guys built to take advantage of an unfair law will take down the big corporations at their own game. Its the way of things, until balance is found. Same with licensing software, same with MPAA and RIAA, and other such BS. No unfair advantage cannot be exploited, which is why free enterprise & the internet kicks ass. Value through innovation will always win. Period.
Interestingly if this would pass (which I strongly doubt) and MS, Apple etc. were required to remove the previews - then Gnome, KDE would benefit from that.
It kinda works like this:
1. Idiot sues Apple
2. Apple must remove the previews
1. Idiot sues MS
2. MS must remove the previews
1. Idiot sues Gnome Foundation etc.
2. Gnome, KDE etc. must remove the previews
3. One day later an unofficial patch pops up somewhere
4. Two days later that same patch is wrapped up into RPMs, Debs etc. for one-click install
5. Due to popular demand this patch is continuously maintained
NeXTSTEP 4.0 Alpha; sometimes mis-called Beta on web sites.
The software featured tabs across the screen bottom for various window types. (We cribbed these for Mac OS 8.5 after the merger, as the tabbed window feature.) The Documents tab was a window which presented icons of documents, each of which could be a preview of the actual document, badged to indicate the associated application.
This implementation nicely meets all the claims, but predates the patent application by 5 years. I won't bother going through all the details, but Cygnus is boned. Software patent litigation as a business model is so last decade...
It was originally applied for in 1998
That'd be at least 5 years after Lotus Magellin did it, and IMO, did it better than anything MS or Apple does today.
Lotus dropped Magellin when Windows 3 came along, so most of today's techs don't know about it, but it is still
surprising their legal research overlooked it.
Step 3, 4 and 5 do not involve Canonical, Debian or any other distro.
The DEBs and RPMs could be hosted anywhere and if they sue the hosters then the packages will just move to bittorrent and p2p.
That's the beauty of OSS at work here. You cannot effectively ban a piece of software that many people find useful.
One would think that if you posted a Wikipedia link, you'd at least have had time to read the first sentence of the article: "Fair use is a doctrine in United States copyright law..."
Anyway, patent trolls rarely go after free software projects because they lack the money to dole out a big settlement. The various media standards and many other fairly standard features of Linux distros are patent-encumbered up the wazoo. Some projects actually have some fear of litigation and disable features or distribute source-only (FreeType's bytecode interpreter comes to mind), but that's fairly rare.
you're missing the point. these non-inventions should never have been granted in the first place. that is what needs to be reformed about the current system.
things like file previews are currently patentable, and it's within the patent holder's rights to sue. whether you think it's contrary to the intent of the system or not, it's how the system works. right now the USPTO is wasting millions of dollars of tax payers' money each year by granting patents on trivial/obvious software features, which inevitably leads to frivolous lawsuits by patent trolls--who often win.
just look at the case between Creative and Apple regarding file menus. the only thing that's different this time is that the defendants have much more legal muscle than the claimant (which is a separate problem with the legal system). so even if Cygnus loses this suit, that doesn't mean that when a corporate juggernaut like Apple/Microsoft file similar claims of patent infringement that they will lose.
If only we could find a way to abolish these Copyright and Patent issues we might have progress, which is what copyrights and patents are supposed to provide.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I'm Australian, I now live in Asia (not Japan), have done for a lot of years so I can safely call bullshit on the skilled labour thing. You can buy quality research, manufacturing, and brains anywhere in the world. You may wish to pull your head out of your own anal passage good man. The rest of the world actually can build some pretty shit hot stuff, all on their own.
Don't get me wrong, like I said, I'm from the west and I'm as fucking smart as all hell (It's a joke! I'm not really that smart, bottom two percent, tops), but enough with the arrogance already, the state of the art doesn't just exist in the 'west', it's everywhere.
You really think the American worker is value for money? Here's a clue for you, good value for money is a bunch of low paid men and women (sometimes children) working the sewing machines and industrial fires for 12 hours a day 6 days a week, all for the lofty sum of $150 USD a month. On the backs of all this one can then sell those wares and gain quite a few orders of magnitude back in pure profit. In comparison the American worker is high maintenance and very expensive from an economic perspective.