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Xerox Sues Google, Yahoo Over Search Patents
gnosygnus writes "Xerox Corp has sued Google, Inc. and Yahoo, Inc., accusing them of infringing the document management company's patents related to Internet search. In a lawsuit filed last Friday in the US District Court in Delaware, Xerox said Google's Web-based services, such as Google Maps, YouTube and AdSense advertising software, as well as Web tools including Yahoo Shopping, infringe patents granted as far back as 2001. Xerox seeks compensation for past infringement and asked the court to halt the companies from further using the technology."
that Google and Yahoo COPIED Xerox???
My guess is that Xerox isn't looking for any big payout, but rather some kind of cross-licensing deal for patents.
My mind works like lightning. One brilliant flash and it is gone.
System for automatically generating queries
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect2=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&d=PALL&RefSrch=yes&Query=PN%2F6778979
Method and apparatus for the integration of information and knowledge
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect2=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&d=PALL&RefSrch=yes&Query=PN%2F6778979
The ironic thing is that, if I understand correct, Google Patent Search (what I used to find these patents) would be in violation of these patents...
Patent law is retarded. You can sit on a patent for 19 years and 11 months. There is no requirement to go after people to keep a patent enforcible. You can patent something and wait for the entire term of the patent for someone to actually invent/commercialize what you have patented, and then sue them at the 11th hour and take as much money from them as the courts will give you.
The exclusion of microsoft is interesting, perhaps MS already has a cross licensing deal with Xerox?
Dear Google, Yahoo, and anyone else who has more money than I do. I would like some of your money. Please give me some money or I will have to sue you for it. Thank you and have a nice day.
mmmm...forbidden donut
I recognize their historical importance in IT, but the past is past. Whoever is calling their shots now is acting like a patent troll. This isn't the first time, either.
Nothing lasts forever but the certainty of change.
They probably tried to actually find something using Bing and decided they wouldn't have a case.
Good times, but how the mighty have fallen these days. I for one miss the idea of a pure research group.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
And once upon a time SCO was a respectable Unix vendor.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
You can sit on a patent for 19 years and 11 months. There is no requirement to go after people to keep a patent enforcible.
Citation needed. Where I come from, they have something called equitable estoppel. In this case, you're looking for laches.
Xerox is notable for failing to commercialise or profit from PARC's accomplishments, including the invention of the gui, laser printing, bit-mapped graphics, the mouse, and Ethernet. It is the most monumental example of dropping the ball that I can think of.
I can: PATENT TROLL.
I know it's in vogue here on Slashdot to scream "Troll!" anytime a patent holder sues for infringement, but "patent troll" really means something distinct from "patent suit."
From the Wiki, a patent troll is someone who:
* Purchases a patent, often from a bankrupt firm, and then sues another company by claiming that one of its products infringes on the purchased patent;
* Enforces patents against purported infringers without itself intending to manufacture the patented product or supply the patented service;
* Enforces patents but has no manufacturing or research base
* Focuses its efforts solely on enforcing patent rights.
* Asserts patent infringement claims against non-copiers or against a large industry that is composed of non-copiers
TFA and TFS are thin on details, so there is no evidence to support the idea that Xerox is doing any one of these.
Both patents I've seen cited as applicable were granted (filed in 2001) in 2004.
Given that they're just suing now, unless there's been extensive negotiation privately that's somehow managed to not leak out at all over 5-6 years (unlikely), Xerox probably won't be able to get any court to enforce shit. It's called laches - you have to actually work to minimize your damages. If you knowingly let infringers make use of your IP so you can sue them when they're worth something, you lose the ability to enforce your patent.
after discovery of infringement (maybe a couple years after the event), they could have attempted to come to an agreement with both entities. Negotiation might have broken down and now the patent holder's last recourse is an infringement suit.
Wouldn't be the first time that series of events occurred, especially when multiple patent-lawyer-loaded parties are involved, and it would create a legitimate delay before filing suit.
Be interesting to see what the details actually were, however.
If there's a better definition of a troll, I don't know what it is...
If a man isn't willing to take some risk for his opinions, either his opinions are no good or he's no good
...They practically invented the GUI.
...and if they'd be able to patent it, we'd still all be running DOS, since Xerox never came out with a GUI product. Such is the power of software patents to drive innovation (into the ground).
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
Except patent trolls file in east Texas, not Delaware. Most patent trolls create a shell office in Texas just so they can file cases there - in fact, I believe setting up shell offices was Texas' biggest growth industries during the recession.
Bear with me..
The problems with patents as they currently stand is they are often used as bullshit tools whihc stifle technology in an attempt to extort or monopolise any technology or idea. What once might have been a useful tool has become a strategic game-piece often crippling American innovation when it was intended to encourage it.
But I don't believe the answer is to abolish the system, or even to make it increasingly difficult to make use of, that would punish legitimate users and patent trolls and legal firms would no doubt find ways to continue around it.
What I'd like to see is it remain almost exactly as it is today, with a few small changes:
It's probably worth noting that software companies which wish to keep their code and related processes black-boxed would still have several options, one obvious option (aside from restrictive licensing and binary only releases) being SAS, where they control the process by keeping access to all relevant code and business systems themselves, only pushing relevant/needed data out to the client front-end. SAS is really the ultimate black-box solution and it protect your property from just about everything but internal abuse (staff, break-ins, social engineering) and network related penetration. And that's nothing new.
Sorry about any grammaros/typos/spellos. I just wanted to get these ideas out while there was still active discussion. Over the past several years I've begun to strongly believe our own enemy (patents - via trolling/hording and other related anti-competitive business practices) are actually our best hope for a sensible business/technology future.
Quack, quack.
Now I'm going to have to sue Xerox for violating my patent for the business process of how to make money from companies using ridiculous patent infringement lawsuits.
because, in order to be reminded of the quote about understanding recursion you must first be reminded of the quote about understanding recursion. and you were.
do not read this line twice.
Well, no - since the GUI would have been patented in the 1970s and at that time the law gave protection for 17 years from the date of publication (and usually took 3 years to get published - current law is 20 years from filing). GUIs didn't really become popular until the late 1980s and that would have been near the end of any patent for it, so it may have delayed the GUI, but not killed it. Some hardware patents Xerox showed off such as the mouse would have already been near end of patent by the 1980s (invented in the 1960s).
I'm not saying software patents don't suck - I don't think people should be able to patent, say, how to do the Navier Stokes equations for fluid dynamics in software and on graphics hardware, which has been done multiple times (and the methods are trivially obvious in some cases - one hardware accelerated patent I saw was essentially implementing an expired software patent in hardware). OTOH, if you INVENTED the Navier Stokes equations, then sure - allow a patent that can apply to software. I also don't think an idea itself should be patentable, either - for instance, I remember Woz talking about when he made characters display on a screen and then later getting sued by a TV manufacturer that had patented the idea - there needs to be some practical plan to implement it.
I get your point, but need to mention that Xerox has been selling laser printers for many, many years. The book Dealers of Lightning claims that their profits from laser printing have easily paid for all of the research done by PARC.
Also, Xerox did not invent the mouse, and has never claimed to have done so.
I would suggest looking into the Ingres/Postgres historical code for prior art - or for that many, any of the pre-1991 database engines. If I remember correctly (from circa 5 years ago - the last time I looked at it) - the postgres code prior to the 1995 adoption by the PostgreSQL group had functionality in it under the first patent and was built during it's period before it became abandonware. I seem to remember similar functionality for text searches in DBase III, but I could be poorly remembering.
As for the second - as the link is not valid - I would examine LISP designs for prior art circa 1956. Other environments since have also had "Method and apparatus for the integration of information and knowledge" - but LISP is one of the original to have this as an architectural component. I believe the 1945 paper used as a prototype for some of LISP design also had this, but I've misplaced the reference. (it's on one of the many, many fine lisp websites *grin*)
Without more definition than a title, any expert system would qualify and much of all the historical research into Artificial Intelligence.
*thinking* - expert systems may also hold prior art against the first patent as well.
IANAL,and I'm rusty as all anything- but I hope it helps someone.
No, object oriented programming was invented in 1967 in Norway. The language was Simula 67. What Xerox came up with was the application of OO to graphical programming.
Did you mean recursion?