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Red Hat Enlists Community Help To Fight Patent Trolls

Posted by Soulskill on from the strength-in-numbers dept.

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."

6 of 166 comments (clear)

  1. Amiga 1000... by Andy_R · · Score: 4, Informative

    ...in 1985. Next question!

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    1. Re:Amiga 1000... by DG · · Score: 4, Informative

      Yup. And you could grab the titlebar of a screen and drag it down, and it would reveal the workspace behind it, upscaled to the resolution of the forward screen.

      One of my favourite "blow friends away" demos was to pull a screen halfway down with F18 Interceptor running behind it, and then type in a word processor (or whatever) in the forward screen with no slowdown in either the game or the application.

      That computer had its quirks, but it was powerful way beyond its time.

      DG

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    2. Re:Amiga 1000... by CodeBuster · · Score: 4, Informative

      The people over at toastytech have a GUI timeline with screenshots of various OS desktops from different years; including one of the Amiga 1000, a computer which was available in 1985 for the rather princely sum of $1,595 dollars, running a "user interface that has multiple workspaces".

  2. Re:Sorry, but... by ptx0 · · Score: 5, Informative

    But patents are awesome! More fun to abuse than tor.

  3. MS-DOS by msauve · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

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  4. Haven't we had this since VTs? by jrothwell97 · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

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