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Surfcast Sues Microsoft Over Tile Patent
An anonymous reader writes with news of a company suing Microsoft for infringing upon a patent for tiles with live content. From the article: "SurfCast, in a complaint filed yesterday in a U.S. District Court in Maine, said Microsoft infringes one of its four patents — No. 6,724,403 — by 'making, using, selling, and offering to sell devices and software products' covered by SurfCast's patent. That includes mobile devices using the Windows Phone 7 and Windows Phone 8 operating systems as well as PCs using Windows 8/RT."
Apple did it in the 90s
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
so both simple rectangle and rounded rectangle are now patented!
Trust me, I'm an engineer.
After reading the article, I really think that SurfCast is right in suing Microsoft. It seems to be the same thing and it's a novel way of doing things.
Eventually even the big boys will see the insanity of these patents of they feel the bite hard enough.
How long as Windows Phone 7 had tiles? (honest curiosity)
IANAL, but if it's been a while, one might assume that SurfCast has been sitting on the lawsuit, waiting for Microsoft to roll tiles out into more and more products so that they could reach a bigger settlement, though that might have to be weighed against the notion of "not defending one's patents".
Thoughts?
I can see why SurfCasts tiles didn't take off. That's beyond ugly. Since Microsoft referenced SurfCasts patent in their patent, I suspect Microsoft determined that they were different enough to not require a licensing deal.
The Microsoft Live Tiles use data that's been curated for the purpose of a tile. SurfCasts is making little windows onto programs that have no idea their being ran in a little window.
I wish Congress would update the patent laws to expressly prohibit patents covering the presentation and packaging of products to the user which do not rely of fundamental scientific or engineering advances. These merchandising ideas are trendy and tend to occur to many product designers and marketers at about the same time, who employ them in mashup fashion along with a few ideas of their own. None of that should be patentable.
Why doesn't Xerox just sue the crap out of everyone who sells "devices" that except user input and have a gui. Are they still around (outside the copier market)?
Windows to me.
A computerized method of presenting information from a variety of sources on a display device. Specifically the present invention describes a graphical user interface for organizing the simultaneous display of information from a multitude of information sources. In particular, the present invention comprises a graphical user interface which organizes content from a variety of information sources into a grid of tiles, each of which can refresh its content independently of the others. The grid functionality manages the refresh rates of the multiple information sources. The present invention is intended to operate in a platform independent manner.
Seriously?
A) How was this even granted a patent in 2000? It's really obvious, to anyone with a computing degree.
B) How it wasn't picked up on a patent search.
C) Why didn't they sue two years ago when WP7 was released?
Software patents are fundamentally wrong :(
time for Microsoft to admit they are not bigger than law, truth, and the American way.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
I'm going out to patent a user interface with rounded tile corners. Also straighten circle angles and any sort of triangle in a GUI.
A 'singular oddity' is an event that cannot be explained and only happens when you are alone.
Scheudenfreude is not an admirable trait... hopefully you're not passing that on to children.
Glad to see how level headed you are, patent trolls harm everyone.
How is this functionally any different then many Android Widgets? They often display partial information and are clickable to launch a full app?
Or iOS notification numbers, which display partial information about the app while also allowing you to use the icon as a selector?
Or Photoshop file icons, which show an icon version of the current state of the file while also allowing you to use the icon as a selector?
My
In claim one, the word "simultaneously" will diminish their chances of winning.
How are Tiles any different than a Portlet which exists in a Portal?
Why?
You forgot the M$ in your quip.
I'm in favor of anything that harms Windows 8.
You mean MS's least bloated OS in over a decade?
Are you sure?
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
Scheudenfreude is not an admirable trait... hopefully you're not passing that on to children.
Oh, but wouldn't it be just great if he did?
I'm just waiting on someone to violate the patent I filed to put "images that represent programs or their activities" on "computing devices."
I see an out of court settlement, and then getting bought by Microsoft. Or put out of business and then Microsoft buys up the pieces.
Actually I think the basic prior art here is "windowing." And I don't even mean Microsoft Windows; the basic idea of having multiple programs on the screen, all running concurrently but each using only part of the screen, was novel in the late 1960s. "Overlapping" windows, like MS Windows and everything since then, is actually a refinement of that concept. Emacs, for example, just partitions the screen into nested rectangles. Just like "tiles."
So the patent is for blocks of active information in boxes? Filed in 2000? Microsoft was doing this with Active Desktop back in 1997 and I'm sure they weren't the first.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Software patents are BOGUS.
Wow they actually forgot to include the XBox 360's tile system which does the same thing...Still, I can't believe this kind of obvious stuff is still getting getting patented! "Box Ads" have been around for years, I'm shocked they're targeting Microsoft. Google would have made a much bigger target with Google IG, and Google has a lot more $$ than Microsoft at the moment. Also, this Patent was granted in 2004 and Google IG came along shortly there after (2006 or so?)...wow this is ridiculous.
Why?
The ICCCM (from 1985) specifies the icon_window field of the WM_HINTS property. This tells the windowmanager that an application won't display a static pixmap when iconified, it will instead be given a small window which it can animate.
xterm can do this.
Honeslty I haven't read the patent. I've read through about 3 or 4 software patents which have appeared on /. before. The language is dense, nearly impenetrable and horrible repetitive. Neverltheless, every patent I've read through which has appeared has turned out to be completely vapid. I'm fairly disinclined to read more carefully since it is very unrewarding.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
They forgot to list Xbox 360 in their patent suit.
Not sure what version of windows had this last, but I remember being bale to tile all open windows, and they would take up all available screen real-estate. It wasn't a horizontal tile, wasn't a vertical tile, and wasn't a cascade. It may have been arrange, but I remember doing it once with 10 excel windows open on like 640x480, and they each took up so little space you could only see the control bars.
I don't think MS is going to have a problem with this: http://asset0.cbsistatic.com/cnwk.1d/i/tim/2012/10/31/SurfCast_patent_application_610x587.png
-Malakai
A Dragon Lives in my Garage
Among other things, I find it humorous ( for some definition of humorous ) that in Figure 1 they show "Tiles" of Outlook Express and Explorer.
It seems to me we've gone into patenting words again. How is a "Tile" any different from a "Window"? How are any of these any different from a rectangle or a block or anything else. The only thing in this patent that gives it any credibility whatsoever is the grid layout concept, but I'm pretty sure most people do that at least twice a day with postit notes on a whiteboard.
The patent system has turned into a lottery. Think about it: You present a patent which covers X criteria, you pay for your ticket (e.g. filing), then if some company violates your patent you get a mega payout.
It just so happens this time the numbers were: "Tiles", "Grid", "Animated".
Windows 7 + Metro = More bloated, in my opinion.
Patents for software are stupid. Kill yourselves!
When Microsoft was the one doing the suing? Oy, the irony of being flogged with your own club.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
Android widgets don't have to be tiles?
It's schadenfreude....if it makes Windows 8 harder to sell, then MS makes less money on it and might not force this bullshit on us all.
MS employees are forbidden from researching other technologies and patents by other parties when "inventing" something. They build it straight-up, and if their invention collides with another invention that's patented, they have to sort it out through legal.
Likely the folks in MS who designed the Live Tiles didn't know StreamCast had a patent on this tech.
If you have a clock on your desk -- this is your tile that updates automatically. If you have a calendar next to it -- it's a different tile that updates at different intervals. Glue them together and you have an interface with two tiles. Add a light switch -- and you have a control surface tile. Add a radio and you get a large tile that that "displays controls and emits sounds".
How can this be novel? Ah, it's for mobile!
There's no such thing as "illegal download"
Wow, did MS get sold a bunch of mod points?
I've never been overly positive or negative of Microsoft. However, having just installed Windows 8, I can say that it is seriously good. If that kills my geek street cred, then so be it. If you are worried about Windows 8, you should be. This is the first time I've really "liked" an operating system UI.
To me, Tiles are more close to Wii Channels than Android Widgets, etc.
Holy shit, america fuck yeah!
What about all those tiling window managers for Xorg? It means then when I use tiler on OpenMoko phone I am infringing SurfCast patents? What about systems like Oberon from 1985. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oberon_%28operating_system%29 Seriously no prior art? How shit this vague could even get patented?
Holy fuck USA. Fuck judge, jury, SurCast, Microsoft, US president, US government and mostly US patent office.
in 1989, ~11 years before this patent was granted.
I call prior art.
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
And yet I'm still able to install any software I want on it...
The only purpose of patents is to drive innovation by giving people a financial incentive. Things like drugs, which take decades of R&D and clinical trials, would not be possible without patents or some other way to make developing them profitable. Things like square UI gadgets on a phone should not be patentable. It's not like society would be denied the advent of squares if surfcast or microsoft hadn't researched squares.
There would be no problems with patents if we simply used them correctly and only allowed "true" (i.e. non-obvious and non-trivial) innovations to be patented, and even then adopting reasonable expiration times for patents. We are wasting a good chunk of our GDP litigating that could be spent innovating.
Just reading the prior patents cited by this patent, I can't understand why this isn't prior art or so obvious from prior art that it doesn't warrant patenting. It seems like the patent examiners aren't will to reject stuff like this instead of letting it get fought in the courts. If our leaders truly want to help small business then they need to end crap like this and make patent examiners do their job.
Why do you hate progress?
What about the MotoBlur interface? Especially on the pre-Android phones (I have a Moto Android phone and have disabled all the main-screen tiles, but it sure seems like that is what they were).
"A computerized method of presenting information from a variety of sources on a display device. Specifically the present invention describes a graphical user interface for organizing the simultaneous display of information from a multitude of information sources. In particular, the present invention comprises a graphical user interface which organizes content from a variety of information sources into a grid of tiles, each of which can refresh its content independently of the others. The grid functionality manages the refresh rates of the multiple information sources. The present invention is intended to operate in a platform independent manner."
this is an idiotic patent. Apart from everything else, it is very broad. How difficult is it to design something like this?
So when is the patent regime scheduled to fall again? I thought we had critical mass going a month ago.
Another ridiculous example of stupid patents.
Why do you mistake "change" for "progress"?
As usual, the Slashdot opinions on patents leave something to be desired. From column 4 of the specification, the "information sources" (as used in claim 1 et seq.) are clearly defined to encompass remote sources of information, including web sites, email messages, audio and video streams and so forth accessed via the internet. A lot of the prior art deals with purely local sources of information.
So the question really boils down to how novel and inventive this step is - the dynamic presentation in tiles of remotely accessed information, which is not necessarily accessed on the same schedule. One can argue that the steps are not non-obvious and are not particularly inventive. A court will decide (possibly requiring several iterations, depending how stupid/opinionated the jury foreman is).
I expect there will be well-paid work for a few lawyers before the question is settled.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Sounds the same as html sub frames - been using screens with sub windows that update for ocer a decade. The web did this long bvefore either of them. Maybe I can patent using fingers to point at things. The you could use them to communicate in a visually based language. (*S)
With the name Metro, they were very eager to comply instantly. So maybe this is the end of the metro crap (and not only the end of the name).
Or maybe they wanted to get rid of the name metro with all the negative google hits anyway ... without getting rid of their little experiment, of course.
And linux has app stores... I mean repositories.
So that the live tiles are not longer perfect squares.
Have you actually tried to use Windows 8? I don't think there is anything wrong with it once I replaced the start menu. In fact, it's better than Windows 7.
Seriously, if I go visit friends in Portland, ME...I am so egging the hell out that place.
First off, their website is a POS with next to no content other than "We're a patent troll!"
Second, 2000???
Sorry, frankly, I feel there was prior art for Microsoft Surface tiles. Don't people remember those late 90's websites with all the square tables boxes that kept refreshing and showing updates for stocks and what not.
So the idea was done...it's not novel. Lame...
Seriously, go look at these "screenshots" of product. And tell me how their product was anything different than all the horrible 1990's websites built with frames, that continually refreshed.
Seriously, this shouldn't even go to court....
http://web.archive.org/web/20070420033547/http://www.surfcast.com/images/bloom.jpg
http://web.archive.org/web/20070101195114/http://surfcast.com/images/trading.jpg
http://web.archive.org/web/20070101163517/http://surfcast.com/images/weather.jpg
http://web.archive.org/web/20070126130038/http://www.surfcast.com/images/word_doc.jpg
Alright, let's say it's change, not progress. Why do you think that it's Microsoft that's forcing you to adapt to a new interface? Seeing as how popular iPads are nowadays, do you think it's a dumb move for Microsoft to create an operating system with a revised interface that works great on both desktops/laptops and tablets?
Prior Art
...and add a border with convenient controls, then place it all on an office furniture based metaphor... maybe a copy machine?
Seems to me they are trying to patent AJAX used with a grid based interface.
Please don't sue me. Have my firstborn instead.
Clearly the SurfCast site is a rush job to support this lawsuit, which conveniently comes on the heels of Windows 8's release, despite WP7's live tiles two years ago (and previewed at least a year before that), or Windows 7 gagdets, or Yahoo! Widgets, or Windows 98's live desktop.
And linux has app stores... I mean repositories.
Linux allows you to use any 'app store' you choose. It also doesn't stop you installing any application you choose yourself.
Oh my god an app store?! That's like the worst offenses against humanity ever!
Anyone else notice the large number of forward citations by Microsoft itself? They were clearly on notice of this patent, and Windows Phone and the tiled surface interface pretty clearly does exactly what claim 1 requires. Setting aside arguments of validity, does it really seem like Microsoft is behaving very ethically by doing exactly what the claim requires and not licensing (or outright purchasing) the patent, while they were very much on notice of its existence?
In 2000-2001 we had a system for sale to the restraunt industry that allowed the user to monitored remote locations in real-time. video and point of sale were rendered into various panels. the user would log in, be presented with the store locations they have access for, and would click-drag then desired view onto their panel of choice (which looked like as switched off tv set when not active). the panels could be synchronized and time-manipulated we didn't patent it, but it was available for sale and used by numerous clients. (don't get me started on what happened to the company) I still have some screenshots
And they spent a lot of money through SCO to try and sue Linux and IBM. And got their asses handed to them.
What MS *should* have done with that time and money was to find every patent troll that was going to harm them, and take them out with extreme prejudice.
Now they've been harmed by Eolas, which has opened the door to trolls like this one. MS has been hoisted by their own petard, so to speak. They were *for* software patents, and now they have discovered that you can't swing a dead cat in the tech sector without being sued by someone claiming to own a software method.
Software patents harm innovation and business. They do more harm than good and need to be repealed, for the sake of the economy.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
For now, just because you don't see the writing on the wall does not mean we don't
What are the rules to make your program an app again? Wern't they a bit onerous?
Perhaps you didnt notice it either, but they were attempting to depretiate the desktop mode by removing the start button.
Mark my words, they will push you away from desktop mode (which allows you to install what you want) to the app mode (metro) which does not allow you to install what you want. You may only install aspps from the "app store".
Once they remove the depreciated desktop mode, you WILL NOT BE ABLE TO INSTALL ANYTHING!
There do you see the highlighted writing on the wall yet?
Way back in time when MS and IBM first put out multi-function interfaces on the early PC's, those interfaces were collections fo tiles.
They used character-based graphics rather than pixel-based graphics, but they were most certainly tiles.
I wish I had kept the PCW bluesky issue in the late 80s(?)/early 90s it showed (essentially) a super slim iPad with haptic feedback with video tiles etc.
Of course framed tiles (icons) which updated were in RiscOS as I recall.
Thank you!
Hurry before corporations patent all shapes lets open source them before its too late!
Sigh!
--whacky
...getting to patent all the holes you dig with that shovel so that others can't dig similar type holes.
Why the fuck was this modded troll? It's an honest opinion, and I truly suspect that MS has modpoints.
To balance the books on their software-patent-based extortion of Android OEMs.
"Ahh! I see you're in that indeterminate Schrodinger state where - oh, uh
So if I put a bunch of HTML iframe's in a table grid, I'm violating this patent?
Table-ized A.I.
a revised interface that works great on both desktops/laptops and tablets
That's just it though - does it work great on desktops/laptops? Modern UI's not bad, but I don't see how it's better than the standard desktop/Start Menu combo.
No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun
Then don't use WinRT, use the full Win8.
No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun