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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
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
But patents are awesome! More fun to abuse than tor.
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.
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.
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.
X-Window (MIT, 1984)
Apple Lisa (1983)
Windows 1.0 (1985)
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)
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.
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.
I used to have an Atari with GEM, didn't do multiple workspace. That's what this patent is about.
By "TFA" I mean this: http://www.post-issue.org/user-interface-with-multiple-workspaces-for-sharing-display-system-objects-3
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!"
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