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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."
Didn't GEM have something similar? I seem to remember playing with multiple desktops on my uncle's C64 using GEM and some add on program that was sold for it. It has been too many years for me to recall the details, sorry. But I'm betting a lot of these patent trolls could be shot down by the Amiga or the GEM running on C64 or the Atari 800. Both setups really are the bedrock that most GUIs today are built on.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Sorry an 'l' went missing at the end of that reference http://www.atsf.co.uk/dottext/domesday.html
thou discernest my thoughts from afar
Way, Way, Way back when I had a buddy that was a programmer at Pick Systems (PickOS). I don't remember a lot of the details about the system except that they built it up to running on IBM iron. It was a multi-user, Unix (Dick Pick liked to call it "Eunuchs") competitor back in the 70's and beyond, so there may be some prior art to be discovered.
More about Pick at:
http://www.answers.com/topic/pick-system
Also, Jonathan Sisk wrote extensively about PickOS. He's at http://www.jes.com/
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office