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Microsoft Sues Salesforce.com Over Patents
WrongSizeGlass writes "CNET is reporting that Microsoft is suing Salesforce.com in Seattle federal court, claiming it infringes on nine patents. Two of the patents in question are a 'system and method for providing and displaying a Web page having an embedded menu' and a 'method and system for stacking toolbars in a computer display.'" Microsoft says it first notified Salesforce more than a year ago about the alleged infringement.
Looking for the MSFT agenda here. Are salesforce.com people going after microsoft sales reps? Has the saleforce.com people brought too much competition to MSFT? What gives?
The're just pissed that SalesForce is using FireFox in all there screen shots.
One angle I could see on this: Sure, everyone might want to make their webpages look this way. But if you rip off the exact code MS is using, change some variables, and get caught, well hey, looky here, we patented that beyotch.
Just a vague idea though.
Nah, that would be copyright infringement.
StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
I consider myself a pretty calm person. I don't get riled up about much. I've never been one to throw a game controller, to punch a pillow to vent frustration. I see stupid things and I don't like them, I talk about how stupid they are, but that's as far as it goes. I'm about as easy going as they come.
And yet every time I see a story about the activities supported by the US Patent and Trade Office, I want to lift the nearest piece of electronics and dash it against a distant wall.
Once again a Slashdot patent story is posted with reference to the titles of the patents. Patent titles are legally meaningless. The patentee doesn't even have to supply one; the Patent Office will write one for you if you leave it out. What matters are the claims read in light of the specification.
Anyway, from the complaint, the patents in question are:
7,251,653
5,742,768
5,644,737
6,263,352
6,122,558
6,542,164
6,281,879
5,845,077 (the leading 5 was left off in the complaint, but this is the right patent)
5,941,947
The '768 patent was originally assigned to Silicon Graphics. It was one of several SGI patents assigned to Microsoft in 2002 as part of a $62.5 million deal.
Some of the patents are related. The '164 patent, for example, was the result of a continuation application based on the application that eventually became the '879 patent.
Anyone looking at these from a prior art perspective should bear in mind that the patents have quite early priority dates. Most of them seem to date from the mid-90s. The '164 and '879 patents, for example, stretch back to June 16, 1994.
First Apple turns patent troll on HTC, now it's MSFT's turn? I thought these two were kinda well behaved and used patents only as a defensive measure, guess I was wrong.
This space for rent.
I remember a few years back when Bill Gates said that Microsoft had been sued over patents, but never sued anyone else. They insisted that like IBM and other big companies, they had massive patent portfolios just to protect themselves. But then they sued TomTom over FAT patents and now this. What happened to Microsoft doesn't believe in suing over patents? Is this indicative of Gates handing the reigns over to Ballmer, the guy who threatened to sue anyone running Linux?
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Guess I better go register to vote so I can hopefully get jury duty for this. lol
Be seeing you...
Microsoft, like most other companies, has indeed had it's share of "innovation", popular opinion not withstanding.
It's easy to find things that are "kind of like" a new invention, that can be said for every single product in existence. It's just fun to do it for Microsoft.
Can you name a single software invention by anyone else that was truly unique? Anyone? Bueler? I guarantee anything you name can find something that is "kind of like" something else. That's how invention works, and that's why patents always have a list of references to other patents which the new patent draws upon. Unfortunately, you can't list things that aren't previously patented.
A short list of things which Microsoft has innovated (off the top of my head, without even googling) in would include (whether you like the ideas or not)
The Ribbon
Photosynth
COM (originally OLE)
Internet Explorer Protected Mode
If you google around, you find lots of tongue in cheek and sarcastic comments, and comments like yours that say point blank that microsoft has never innovated anything. It's certainly true they've bought a lot of their technology, but not all of it and even when you consider technology they bought, they've often improved it with their own new technology (IE Protected Mode, for instance).
Also, Microsoft certainly has their share of bad technology they've implemented. ActiveX, for instance. Whether it's a good idea or not, it's still a novel idea (no, plug-ins weren't novel, but auto-installing them, and creating a generic model that could be used by more than just web browsers was).
So in reality, comments like your really are just hyperbole. It's simply not true that Microsoft has never created anything novel. Hell, Clippy anyone?
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Laugh all you want, but office has had a number of innovative ideas, whether you like them or not. Assistants (ie. the universally despised clippy), The Ribbon, OLE integration of different kinds of docuemnts within a single document, OLE Automation control (Yes, we all know about ARexx capable word processors on the Amiga, but that was really only a tiny fraction of the capabilities that OLE automation exposes).. hell, Word was the first word processor to provide live spell-checking with the red squigglies.. (again, whether you like it or not.. lots of people do like the feature, lots don't).
Don't you think it's just as dishonest to claim there is no innovation when there is, as claming more innovation than there is?
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Nope. No way have Microsoft ever applied common sense. You'll never make money from that patent.
Laugh all you want, but office has had a number of innovative ideas, whether you like them or not. Assistants (ie. the universally despised clippy),
in a word processor which they were not the original authors for, which was the first use of a piece of clipart for a function other word processors already had in help panes, status bars, tool tips or pop-ups... (wow, that's innovation... someone else's idea - with a piece of clipart)
The Ribbon
Which still confuses users of older versions of Office to this day by the way it can take what was a simple, easy to use interface and mangle it - and which other word processors did a long time ago in a better fashion by simply hiding and showing the appropriate toolbars for the task at hand...
OLE integration of different kinds of docuemnts within a single document
...which was an idea long since in existence in the Xerox Star systems...
OLE Automation control (Yes, we all know about ARexx capable word processors on the Amiga, but that was really only a tiny fraction of the capabilities that OLE automation exposes)
While on the other hand, REXX enabled word processors had even greater capabilities than OLE automation, as did various competitor products in the Windows and non-Windows marketplace marketplace... and even in the areas where OLE Automation shone, it also caused a bunch of security issues due to it's poor implementation with no thoughts of the consequences caused by it's design (but thats a topic for a different discussion).
.. hell, Word was the first word processor to provide live spell-checking with the red squigglies..
As long as you discount various TSRs for word processors as old as the DOS (non-Windows) age version of word processors, a variety of other implementations on non-PC systems, and the fact that Microsoft introduced it in Word 95, almost 20 years after a team for IBM came up with the concept and 8 years after Spellbound came out with that functionality you tout as having been a Microsoft innovation.
Other than those points, I guess you are right! Either that, or you bought into Microsoft's propaganda (errr... marketing, I mean).
StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
I proved you wrong on a bunch of these above... but let's go at it again.
The Ribbon
Already covered in my last post - done better by others before. Or do you think the fact that they call it "The Ribbon" is the innovation part of mangling an idea others already had?
Photosynth
They funded a University of Washington project which became a MS Live Labs project. Their other related "innovations" were acquired by a company called SeaDragon and various others. So, even the ones that are innovative werent innovated by Microsoft.
COM (originally OLE)
Covered above... Xerox Star (and others) and for COM implementation (ie: more than just OLE), it was to catch up with IBM and OS/2, the Mac and numerous other non-PC based implementations.
Internet Explorer Protected Mode
Even if they were first, it doesnt count because it would actually have to work first. And there are already exploits that can bypass IE in protected mode on operating systems (Vista onwards) that support it. That aside, various programs did this far better than Microsoft's implementation before Microsoft licensed various technologies for it and wrote the rest. One such is a package from a big software firewall company (I'll give you a hint...ZA). That aside, Chrome manages it better than IE and Vista/Win7 - even without all the added work that Microsoft did to Windows itself to enable this feature in IE.
So... where were we? Oh yeah... I remember. Microsoft MAY have innovated something, but you cant think of anything. Well, here's one. Edlin.
StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
Saying it does not prove it. Show me the prior art. Bear in mind that merely being a tabbed toolbar doesn't make it the same thing. The Ribbon's functionality is what makes it innovative, not the fact that it has tabs.
Regarding Photosynth, All new ideas are based on research of others. Newton said something about standing on the shoulders of giants, doesn't make his work any less innovative. Photosynth, as a product, was highly innovative.
Are you fucking kidding me? OS/2 was created by Microsoft and IBM together. Microosft wrote nearly all of OS/2 up until OS/2 1.3, and COM and OLE goes back to 1987, the same year OS/2 was released *WITHOUT A GUI OF ANY KIND*.
Wow, you are ignorant of history. Wow, that's just plain stupid.
And Xeros Star had nothing like COM or OLE. It's object embedding technolgy was entirely different.
Now you're just being stupid. Of course it works. Just because it can't protect from every possible exploit doesn't make it useless or "non working". By that argument, just because someone can root a unix box, that means all of it's security doesn't work.
Wow, I just can't believe what passes for logic these days.
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You show a fundamental lack of knowledge of what you're actually talking about. Assistants weren't simply animated ways to access help text, they could actually analyze what you're doing and supply recommendations. That was innovative. Annoying, but innovative.
You glossed over the "not the first to do it, just the first to use a piece of clipart" part (paraphased)
What part of "Whether you like the idea or not" don't you understand? You or anyone else liking the idea has no bearing on its novelty.
You don't do your argument any justice by making fallacial comments like this.
You skipped the (again paraphrased) "others did it ages before that by selectively hiding toolbars that did or did not apply to the task at hand" part.
The star had document embedding, but it wasn't live document embedding. You couldn't edit documents in place, and you couldn't update the document elsewhere and have it be updated in the embedded document.
Don't confuse "Someone once did something kind of like that" with lack of novelty. It's not just the base concept, it's the entire concept.
Hmmm... sites that seem to have put far more research into the Xerox Star systems disagree.
That's interesting, sicne I can find no reference to any word processor called Spellbound...
Hmmm... have you tried Google? If so, you just didnt dig far enough. It was released by Sector Software in 1987.
And the only reference to a spell checker is the firefox extension, which certainly did not come out 8 years before Word 95.
I'm also suspect of your IBM reference, given that you seem to conflate way too many concepts to believe your arguments. Do you have a reference?
I could just drop a lot of references, but as you've apparently intentionally skipped the important parts of points I have made (as in the first two), why should I bother? Nonetheless, I did give you a few more hints above.
Sure, I am sure Microsoft innovated something... the KIN being one possibly (never seen more than the commercials and a few online reviews, so I am not sure about that one, but it seems a pretty innovative way of integrating many smartphone and other electronic device features in a novel way)... but the stuff you mention does not fit the category. Nor is the "first 32bit PC operating system" claim Microsoft used to make for Windows 95. Or "their" creation of an improved interface for Windows XP (and 95)... oh wait, they licensed that from SDS. Stop believing marketing hype and actually research what you talk about.
StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
An not to forget:
- Clippy and the Windows XP Search Dog
Also I think Microsoft is the main innovator on user annoyance technology.
The only word processor Corel had was WordPerfect, and it did NOT do what the Ribbon does. The fact that you can't actually point out any specific thing, just vague hand waving is evidence enough that you're talking out of your ass.
Regarding COM, you seem to be confusing when a product shipped with when it was created. OS/2 2.0 and OS/2 1.3 were done by IBM yes, and COM was released as a product in 1993 (OLE 2 in 1992), but the actual technology was created by Microsoft in 1987, with white papers written in 1998 and 1990.
COM was not originally a product, but was the basis of OLE 2. It existed for several years before OLE did, and the basic concepts were drawn from whitepapers by Antony Williams in 1998 and 1990.
All of this predated OS/2 2.0 by a great deal, and while betas of OS/2 2.0 were in existence in 1990, the workplace shell and SOM were not.
WPS didn't even appear in betas until sometime around late 1991 (after Windows 3.1 and OLE 2 betas were already shipping)
It's relatively easy to know this because SOM is based on CORBA, and COM and CORBA came out about the same time. CORBA was an RPC based technology while COM was a function dispatch based technology. COM and CORBA came at the same problem from opposite sides, and eventually met in the middle with CORBA moving from distributed objects towards component objects and COM moving from component to distributed.
I point you to this article:
http://www.wincustomize.com/article/81265
In which, it says quite clearly that the reason for OS/2's delay from late 1991 to 1993 was WPS.
This message seems to indicate the first beta that included PWS was late 1991.
http://www.rusbasan.com/Humor/OS2_Dream.html
This infoworld article from July 1991 says that it didn't exist in the beta.
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Ribbon
It's interesting that you bring up the "Ribbon" as there is prior art for it, yet Microsoft is trying for a patentland grab on a relativity common User Interface concept.
"Saying it does not prove it. Show me the prior art."
Borland Delphi - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Borland_Delphi_4_screenshot.png
"Are you fucking kidding me? OS/2 was created by Microsoft and IBM together."
COM (circa 1987) is not new as well - it was just a standard on vtable format, nothing more. There was _no_ OLE in 1987, not even close. One of the first usages of COM, in fact, was MAPI.
OLE and IDispatch came much later, in 1992 developed mainly for office automation. And by that time they were nothing new as well. For example, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amoeba_distributed_operating_system had not just dynamically accessible objects, but _distributed_ dynamically accessible objects.
So sorry, your examples of innovation are stupid.