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Red Hat Enlists Community Help To Fight Patent Trolls
Stickster writes "Back in 2007, IP Innovation filed a lawsuit against Red Hat and Novell. IP Innovation is a subsidiary of Acacia Technologies. You may have heard of them — they're reported to be the most litigious patent troll in the USA, meaning they produce nothing of value other than money from those whom they sue (or threaten to sue) over patent issues. They're alleging infringement of patents on a user interface that has multiple workspaces. Hard to say just what they mean (which is often a problem in software patents), but it sounds a lot like functionality that pretty much all programmers and consumers use. That patent was filed back on March 25, 1987 by some folks at Xerox/PARC, which means that prior art dated before then is helpful — and art dated before March 25, 1986 is the most useful. (That means art found in a Linux distribution may not help, seeing as how Linus Torvalds first began the Linux kernel in 1991.) Red Hat has invited the community to join in the fight against the patent trolls by identifying prior art. They are coordinating efforts through the Post Issue Peer to Patent site, which is administered by the Center for Patent Innovations at the New York Law School, in conjunction with the US Patent and Trademark Office."
...in 1985. Next question!
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
I am not going to fix the broken patent system of america.
came out in 1985, and switched between multiple applications/workspaces. I know there were MS-DOS utilties to switch between workspaces, too, just can't remember any names.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
it was from 1984/1985.
http://www.ip-innovation.info/
http://www.acaciatechnologies.com/
They may want to patent the slashdot effect next, so an example of the prior art may be necessary.
Quarterdeck Desq and Desqview (1985).
There's a subtle, but possibly important, distinction between Apple's Switcher, DESQview and the AmigaOS mentioned by an earlier poster. The patent is said to apply to "multiple workspaces." Switcher and DESQview switched between workspaces. Although the underlying OS only supported a single application in a workspace, a workspace could also contain things like Macintosh Desk Accessories. AmigaOS supported multiple applications running in a single workspace.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
For this kind of issues, make sure folks at Groklaw get to know fast. They are the only folks I know that will dig up facts fast. In the Novell/SCO case, One guy provided evidence dating back to 1971! By the way, SCO appears to have lost that case. Amazing.
I'd think both the BeOS interface and Desqview/X might've qualified as well. Finding the "Microsoft link" is sort of a joke. They're a big technology company that's been around for decades. How many ex-Microsoft people are floating around? It's not like they're sending stealth agents out to infiltrate the industry. That's a little too "CoS-like", isn't it?
it was from 1984/1985
ran two programs, used a hot key to swap between them
Surely virtual terminals (TTYs 0—7 and onwards, switchable using control and Fx) count as workspaces, and have been around since Xenix (the forerunner to SCO UNIX) in 1980-85ish?
If it's a truly graphical thing they're after, the Amiga is an example of prior art IIRC. However, it's such an obvious idea that it shouldn't be patentable, and the fact America's patent system is so broken is truly depressing.
Those using pirated Tinysoft signatures(TM) are a real threat to society and should all be thrown in jail.
...for those who remember...
That's where the claims come in. The claims represent the boundaries of the "property" to which the patent lays claim. Forget about the abstract, forget about the detailed description - read the claims, and then use the specification to help you understand what the claims are talking about. Interpret the claims as broadly as is reasonable, given what the specification says.
The claims are shown here, and yes, there are a lot of them and they will make your head explode. Stick to the independent claims at first (the ones that don't say, for example, "The system of claim 1, wherein...").
The trouble with prior art on this one is that the patent is so old. It was issued at the end of 1991, and it just expired in the past couple of months. Some Slashdotters weren't even born yet when this patent was issued, much less filed. Plus, you're not arguing invalidity of a patent issued to some fly-by-night company that develops crap and files applications on it - this was Xerox, and they typically have/had their shit together.
In any case, good luck to the defendants on this one.
Was just searching for the date:
"DESQview was released in July 1985, four months before Microsoft introduced the first version of Windows. It was widely thought to be the first program to bring multitasking and windowing capabilities to DOS, but in fact there was a predecessor, IBM's failed TopView, released in 1984, from which DESQview inherited the popup menu."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DESQview
From the the entry for TopView:
"TopView ran in real mode on any x86 processor and could run well-behaved MS-DOS programs in windows. "
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TopView
So I guess there's plenty of prior art.
Of course, there's MVS also which came out in 1974 IIRC...not sure if that counts, tho.
... they're done, for all intents and purposes. Whether the reason is fatigue, health issues, or a new full-time job, it appears that PJ is no longer championing legal issues (on-line, at least). A shame, really, since the last few years has seen some of the finest collaborative work on the web, in an area where education and research is sorely needed.
Sorry for the melancholy off-topic guys. Would that the parent post was correct.
"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." --Senator Carl Schurz (1872)
With a simple poke statement in basic, you can change the graphical workspace to the other screen. Finding a computer that didn't have different workspace pages may be a tougher find.
But isn't there some provision in patent law excluding things that are so obvious that if an "average person" can come up with it without specialized knowledge, it's not covered? Specifically Sect 103: "if the differences between the subject matter sought to be patented and the prior art are such that the subject matter as a whole would have been obvious at the time the invention was made to a person having ordinary skill in the art"
Why isn't that clause being used more to get rid of all these frivolous patents? Wow, I have a computer, and a device that outputs something on a screen. I put them together and use a computer to output something on a screen - give me my patent. Yeah. Or one click shopping - I have a mouse, which is used to point and click and LO AND BEHOLD if you use your mouse to point at something and click, I have a patent on it. Sigh, the waste of court time far outweighs the fees paid to the government for the patent. Perhaps the patent office should be fined every time one of their patents is thrown out.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
X-Window (MIT, 1984)
Apple Lisa (1983)
Windows 1.0 (1985)
If you understand the human rights and expectation of using Abstraction Physics you'll know patents on software are acts of fraud against the human race. And its not like copyrights are not strong enough and even provide longer protection.....
Graphical Environment Manager : that's the answer RedHat is searching after.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphical_Environment_Manager)
This product was used in Ventura Publisher (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ventura_publisher)
Might want to check out prodigy, and compuserve, they were doing interesting things around that time.
The new system is that patents last 20 years from date of filing. The older system, however, was that patents lasted 17 years from the date they were GRANTED, and were secret until granted. Furthermore, companies had the procedural means to delay the process of getting their patent granted by YEARS, if they wanted to. And some companies have done just that.
This was a god send to me back when I ran my bbs. Task switching at it's finest, err.. at least for us dos types.
see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DESQview
Life was hell, then I discovered Linux...
For further information:
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20090105033126835
Screen, it's been around since 87 at least. Not graphical, but it manages workspaces.
The title of the game has escaped me, but I used to load a "USA vs. USSR" game from audio cassette on my
TRS-80 Model-1 back in 1984 or so. The game allowed you to switch back and forth between the USA and the
USSR map, which essentially gives you two independent work area's.
As remote as it may be from today's systems, I think this would be prior art.
To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB
APL, 70's vintage, let you switch workspace (and referred to them as such)
Around 1985 there were a lot of tools for switching tasks or workspaces. Virtual terminals in Unix and other mini and mainframes. Software Carousel from Softlogic. Digital Research's GEM. Topview. DESQview. And then there were TSRs like Sidekick and a million others that arguably gave the ability to work in multiple workspaces.
We sold a lot of Quarterdeck's DESQview back in the mid to late '80's. Lawyers in particular loved to be able to work on more than one document or work on a spreadsheet, dial-up research tool and word processor all at once.
A little in-depth research would be needed but I believe several of these existed in 1985 or earlier even if they weren't broadly in use until a few years later.
Lastly there was Multi User Concurrent DOS (MUCDOS) that would allow multiple entire DOS desktops on one PC or through terminals attached to one PC. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiuser_DOS I worked on projects that used this in 1985.
From reading the patent, it isn't a patent for a "GUI", multiple screens or even multiple windows - all of those predate 1985. What it appears to be is a patent for is what became "Xerox Rooms" - which was eventually offered as a Windows add-on around the early '90s.
From the linked patent:
"The user can invoke a switch between workspaces by selecting a display object called a door, and a back door to the previous workspace is created automatically so that the user is not trapped in a workspace".
It seems an odd patent to try and hit Redhat with, because I can't think of any current GUI that uses anything close to the "Rooms" model. Something close to the "standard" GUI was available on Xerox commercial workstations in around 1985-1986, before this patent was issued (I remember them from college).
The nearest that might qualify as "prior art" that I can think of is the display handling on some minicomputer workstations in the early 1980s (specifically Wang VS, but possibly others). You could just about make a claim for "multiple windows held in memory" and there being a "display object" which took you back the previous workspace. You'd struggle at calling it an "object-based user interface" though.
2007 - 1987 = 20
Patents have a 20 years life time. So, "Back in 2007" means that if this was filled after march 25 2007, the patent was dead by the time they filled.
This qualifies as vexatious litigation.
Beside, You have a limited time to file for infringement. You can't just sit on your patent, wait until the last moment, then sue. You have to prove that you acted within 3 years of finding the patent violation.
I used to have an Atari with GEM, didn't do multiple workspace. That's what this patent is about.
Sorry for pointing out the obvious, but I believe y'all should be going to TFA and posting your comments there.
Echoing earlier posts, I used an Amiga, DESQview, GEM, MUC-DOS, etc. in the 80's.
"(That means art found in a Linux distribution may not help, seeing as how Linus Torvalds first began the Linux kernel in 1991.)"
Looks like you fanbois need Unix after all...
Rather than invalidate the patent, we ought to try to find some way to invalidate IP Innovation and Acacia Technologies. Why solve the problem piecemeal? Attack the source of the problem and get rid of any possible patent trolling they could do.
Who's behind those troll companies? How can we dig up something on them and use it to distract or disable them? People like that must have some skeletons in their closets. Let's find them and exploit them.
The Oberon Project started in 1985 and I think it had independent screenspaces from the start. Smalltalk was developed in the early 70's at PARC, and and I'm not sure what the relationship is with the disputed patent, but independent screen space management was a feature.
While UNIX didn't have X-Windows in the early very early 80's, it did have multiple screens, virtual TTY's, and multiple screenspaces. The extensive documentation that came with SystemV rel3.x told how to create applications in C that used independent screen space. All Xenix, Cromix, Esix and Kodak versions included this documetation, and so did the official Bell documentation.
"The mind works quicker than you think!"
It looks like they are trying to argue that they invented the tabbed multiple document selection within an application. With that in mind, what we would be looking for is evidence of an application that supports the editing of multiple documents that predates this patent. Could the venerable emacs claim to have supported multiple files prior to then?
This is my sig.
There was a popular app called "screen" which allowed switching between multiple contexts and workspaces.
I used it all the time to make the best use of (then) limited desktop real estate. In that era, big bitmapped displays were a rare luxury in the marketplace.
The issue date is 1991, and what's the current year? I thought patents lasted 18 years, meaning that the patent expires this year. Why the worry?
This is my sig.
Im sure GrokLaw covered this a year or two ago. Perhaps RedHat should go and trawl through their archives. I'm sure the original XT-PC had multiple text screens built into the video BIOS and that was 1981 ish
Art Makers Just an excuse to show photos of naked women !!
In 1987 I was working at Compugraphic where we were developing an electronic prepress system for a Sun server. Some of us were using X-windows and some of us were using mulitple virtual terminals on a physical terminal. I was using a terminal, running an emacs session with multiple windows, and running separate shell in each. This sounds like multiple workspaces to me.
AmigaDOS had a CLI. It was AmigaOS which included the Workbench GUI.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Digital Research created two products in the 80's, Concurrent CP/M and Concurrent DOS, which had a multi-view aspect to the user interface. You could run 4 text-based applications simultaneously and switch between them using a hotkey. (Alternatively, you could also custom code an XIOS to connect each process to an individual terminal and timeshare, which is something we did at the first place I worked) I'm fairly certain Concurrent CP/M was available prior to this patent being filed.
cat
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Lisa
Of course, I suspect this is why he didn't include Apple in the suit...
Actually, they were quite nice, if expensive machines. And everyone wanted one when they came out, because there was nothing like it in the consumer market. Note - nobody could *afford* one, but god, we all wanted and lusted after these things..
1983
Hi all, note that the Post Issue website http://www.post-issue.org/ is NOT affiliated with USPTO. Cheers!
On these trivial patents, the part that is non-obvious is that you CAN actually get a patent for them, anyone that figures that out is rewarded with a patent. See what they did there, actually pretty clever!
Might make for an interesting slashdot poll, how many workspaces do you use? Would it be a big deal if Red Hat 'turned off' this feature? There would emerge unofficial ways to turn it back on easily applied by geeks, but by officially not having it Red Hat could get around the patent.
Loose lips lose spit.
Amiga not only had multiple apps running in separate windows on one desktop, it could also have apps running on separate "screens," each of which could be pulled down the display to reveal screens stacked behind it. IIRC you would right-click and a button would appear in the upper right to switch to the screen behind it.
How about a file cabinet
When did X's XDM acquire the ability to have multiple logins on a single machine?
I've used it to segregate my work & personal workspaces...
( used to have my system rigged to switch between different vt's, so when I wanted to do "work" work, I used vt-7/login, and "personal" work, vt-8/login. Can KDM do this? been awhile... )
Although these particular patent trolls are no stranger to court cases and litigation. Have they gone after any companies are powerful as Novell before ? While Netware is none pretty much a dying beast, Novell have been around a long time and the patent portfolio is one fo the largest and they are also in the patent sharing project with IBM, Sony and others, would it be possible for these as a united group to crush companies like Acacia Technologies ? I am not sure if this is feasable thing by fighting patents with patents ? But Novell on their own have a huge amount of patents and a very very powerful legal team. I am often amazed by the strength of Niovell in these legal battled and waiting to just the right moment to issue a crushing blow to the attackers. While i am not fan of Novells patent agreement with Microsoft it does go to show that the big companies including Microsoft are not in favour the current patent system but it is a neccasary evil to get into. So it would be good to see some of these big patent holding companies actually use the own portfolios as weapons to destroy these patent troll companies and make it such a high risk business for the non producing trolls to get into. If you make it so expensive and of such risk for them there parastitc business of patent trolls wouldn't exist.
I could be wrong on this, as I am no expert in patent law, but isn't there a 7 year limit on patents? This patent has been filled over 20 years ago.
Also, what the hell took them so long to bring a claim up. Not only are all linux distro's bundled with gnome or kde "guilty" of this, but so is mac and there are even some apps in windows that can give you multiple desktops.
Seriously I think there should be some kind of law against patent abuse.
I don't understand why any patent older than February 14, 1989 is still valid. Looking on the web I read about something called a "patent term extension", but I can't find a description of this in plain English.
Maybe someone better versed in this can explain: how is it that a patent from more than 20 years ago is still being used to sue people?
"Linux" kernel is really Minux kernel, so check it out anyway. Minux was around long before linux, and is the entire basis of the kernel used today. Look it up (or hell, just put back the M that L-inus replaced)! Talk about your GPL violations !!
would sending them a phot of a desk large enough to hold more than 2 pieces of A4 help?
seriously "multiple workspaces" essentialy equates to being able to switch between 2 tasks, as far as im aware humans dont spontaneously combust if they dont finish a task they have started
targets, if i could get away with naming thoses two bastard patent trollers, i sure as hell would. Unfortunately, Al Qaeda would see that as only *helping* the USPTO situation...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
The BBC Domesday project in 1986, see http://www.atsf.co.uk/dottext/domesday.htm used doors as a paradigm to move between the different applications.
thou discernest my thoughts from afar
This Windows add-on is Microsoft Bob:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Bob
It uses this concept of rooms and selectable objects like doors, backdoors etc.
http://www.bentuser.com/article.aspx?ID=327&page=2
The text you cited from the patent describes Microsoft Bob in detail!
Prior art could be any MUD or other rpg / adventure game from the 70s and 80s (text or graphics-based).
Let the patent trolls do their thing. Let them bring technological advance to a crashing halt. Let them hold industry and commerce hostage, and jack the price of all services completely out of site. Make the problem completely intolerable. Human being have an inordinate capacity to put up with terrible conditions (in case you have been paying attention to the last 8 years.)
Let the people who've taken a 99.99999% slice of the pie for themselves at everyone else expense do so. When the remaining 340 million American's get up some combination of anger, frustration, and the testicular fortitude necessary to RAMROD permanent fixes through, dealing with these self interested clods once and for all, the system will self adjust.
I'm also thinking it might be worthwhile to have the worst offenders' heads mounted on pikes, complete with plaques with lengthy explanations about how they got there for the benefit of future generations. Maybe a couple RIAA Lawyers and Executives, Bankers, Oil Executives, an Ex-Vice President and his friends from Halliburton, maybe a few Spammers, and for sure a heaping helping of these patent squatters. Fix the entire thing in lucite to preserve the tableau for centuries, and have it on display in D.C. Then build small shrines in every major city providing 24/7 live telepresence of the memorial. Just so that the people of the future understand, that when you give self interested greedy bastards the ability to crash your entire civilization, just so they can add one more golf course to their 7,000 acre, 12 billion dollar estate, we all reap the wind.
Quick question, perhaps for NYCL.
If IP Innov. knew about multiple desktops (say, in gnome and kde) long before the suit was filed, and did nothing until the time was ripe for blood-sucking, wouldn't that cause them to lose on grounds of procedural laches or something?
I would hope so, since you can't "sleep on your rights" from what I've studies.
Glad to see I am not the only one who remembers this program! I used it a great deal myself and I think it applies to this problem pretty well. With Desqview you could run multiple instances of your environment without problem. So, while I was sorting\organizing mail from one BBS I could be dialed into another downloading more programs :-)
Also, there was another program that MIGHT qualify. I cannot quite recall it's specific name but I think it was GEM. It was VERY much like Windows but was most certainly out BEFORE Win3.1. Rumor has it that when it was shown at CES Bill sent his minions over to take copious notes and then very quickly announced they had something better - even showing "demos" that were nothing but put together movies with no code behind them,. GEM quickly died but I know I used it for a Form Filler software package at least - a package that became Perform Pro Filler if I recall. This MIGHT also apply although I think Quarterdeck's Desqview is much better...
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEM_OS
Just GEM not good enough! Looks like it was COMDEX not CES duh. This was shown in 1984. Still not sure it applies as well as Quarterdeck's product but perhaps a closer look would be in order..
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
I installed that on lots of 8MHz 286's. It had "doors" as described. Not sure of its release date though.
Borg:"Lawsuits are irrelevant. GPL3 is irrelevant. DRM is good. We understand security... Alert! MS are assimilating us!
... to do what the patent clerks take months!
to
8:19 to 8:25!
Who's better?
Victory to crowdsourcing!
Victory to the hacker community!
Any judges reading this page?
Both of these predate the patent in question. And both were early competitors with Quarterdeck's DesqView. I never used either product but there should be ample evidence of their existence besides the Quarterdeck product.
Hope this helps.
Ididn'tdoitnobodysawmedoityoucan'tproveanything!
I remember having the ability to switch between different LPAR's on an IBM mainframe running MVS. I didn't execute the switch before 1985, but I'm sure the capability would have existed before them.
RTFM is not a radio station.
Concurrent CP/M-86 had the ability to run four windows of gem concurrently. I was the World Troubleshooter for that product and the four Gem display did knock everybodies eyes out. Right around the time of Gem, IBM was doing presentation manager too. Gem was able to run on lots of OSs. there was a CPM version, a Concurrent version, ... I think there was even a Dos version.
I hired on at DRI the day Concurrent was releases and David August went from OEM Systems to Graphics to work on GSX and Gem. Gary's influence was very visible with BIOSs GIOS, XIOS...
DRI almost took over the computer world... They had OS, graphics and languages. Too bad.
Funny you would mention that. After Gary left digital research with tom, they started a company to do the grolier encyclopedia. I worked on that software briefly. They used a vax to master the CD and it took two washing machine sized hard drives to model a CD.
I really miss those days. Porting Concurrent to non-ibm compatible machines was some of the most challenging work I did in my whole life. Every system was a major debugging challenge and those several years were the hardest and the most satisfying. The best of all was the port I did in japan for the IBM 5550. I did the whole port in one month despite hostile conditions. On day 30 I demonstrated the 5550 with four quadrants each running a different GSX application. Also four copies of wordstar running at once. Debugging interrupt code with paperclip soldered to the irq pin of the interrupt controller and watching it with a logic probe. I really miss those challenges. Taking a lifeless heap of hardware and making it stand up and perform was the life.
I've got a troll-slaying knife! It's got a +9 against trolls!
I had two instrumentation approaches for debugging asynchronous events.
First: send 1 letter at a time out an aysnc port to another computer that captured it. Different letter for each event. After collection, dump the data into a file and run another program that would expand the 1 letter codes into a single line of text. Usually that would give some kind of clue as to what was stepping on what.
Second: same thing but use a ring buffer in RAM. At a certain point, I ran across a problem where the interrupts of shoving characters out the async port would change the timing of the system enough to mask the problem. That one I had to do by hand as the system was usually toast, so no way to dump the event trace to a file.
I miss those good old days too. My path took me toward using the logic analyzer to debug the hardware guys' circuits. They just didn't understand things like why we needed them to latch the interrupt request signal and creating additional status registers and stuff like that. I ended up being able to keep the soldering iron I used back in those days, and I still use it on occasion.
The floppies we used on that system had a sector interleave of 4 to maintain backward compatibility with a time when the computers were so slow they couldn't keep up with the floppy spinning. I rewrote the floppy BIOS to read sectors out of order (or actually, in the order they appeared on the disk), so one track was read in a single revolution. The boss cursed me for wasting time like that, but I really just couldn't tolerate waiting sooooo long to back files up to floppy. He later thanked me.
I started working with those guys when I was 17. We made multiprocessor CP/M systems, back before there were ethernet cards available for the PC, and Novell had not even hit the scene yet. Those guys really taught me a lot.
cat
I can tell from your story you were right there in the same head space I was. Only some of us knew enough to red the track in one revolution. That was quite a trick and made the difference between a great driver and a lousy one. I worked with multiprocessor CP/M guys also. We may have known each other. Were you in silicon valley? Your posting really took me back.
Its not the matter of IF, its the matter of WHEN a Linux distribution will get caught for IP infringement. (please notice the word distribution)
Software patents are nasty and you can easily infringe. Open Source software comes from all across the world, and you never know if the infringement was 'deliberately done', mistakenly done or it just happened.
Now burn me!