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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.
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.
A tile is just a chromeless application window. What's novel about it?
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 :(
When apple sued MS in the 90's MS just turned around claiming prior art and pointed out Xerox among others.
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.
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
You forgot the M$ in your quip.
I went through the patent. I will not claim there is anything of value in there. But they actually describe a full architecture of a system with asynchronous event, bandwidth limitations, dynamic refresh rates, multi device displays. They actually did something, they are not trolling. This is one of the most reasonnable patent I read in a long time.
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."
From TFA, the SurfCast design looks more like Windows 1.0 than WP7. Plus, the existence of '403 is mentioned on page 2 of '632. Therefore '403 must have been considered (don't laugh) when '632 was being assessed.
Without reading the full patents (I have only one life on Earth), I'm not going to say if SurfCast is a troll. However, their website doesn't inspire confidence.
No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun
Especially, if as the article indicates:
If they actually referenced this patent in their own filing, they can't exactly argue they didn't know about it.
Of course, the nuances of patents makes it awfully difficult for a layperson to know if the resultant thing infringes or not. But it would hardly be the first time Microsoft has looked at someone else's stuff and said "hey, let's make something like that".
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
The only products they offer are patents, not practicing, not using, not producing anything. Web page has a fishing rod in the picture. This must be the epitome of patent trolling.
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.
Dunno, I used dockapps on windowmaker well before they granted the patent to Microsoft.
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.
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.
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.
It doesn't even matter how valid the patent is, really (although given it is software and... well, a tile display is not novel no matter how you dress it up), what really makes a troll a troll is that they have no products. Surfcast has none, and from what I understand, never did. Therefore, they are patent trolls.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
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
It seems to be the same thing and it's a novel way of doing things.
Exactly, it's not like it is similar to an airplane dashboard, right? And did anyone notice the timing? Coinciding a lawsuit with an OS release, that's not suspicious at all, tsk tsk tsk...
Ezekiel 23:20
Among other things, I find it humorous ( for some definition of humorous ) that in Figure 1 they show "Tiles" of Outlook Express and Explorer.
Maybe novel 80s. Pretty sure you could achieve this effect with TWM.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
Their website does seem to be something of a "we were here all along doing this for ages, no really" sort of quick knock up... I'm leaning towards troll but then again the patent system is getting ridiculous.
A big moneyed corporation is investing loads of money in a product that uses it. That's what's so novel. It's value increased.
Makes me wonder how long it will take, before patents start hurting our society so much, we'll devolve into monkeys, finger paint and throw feces at one another, the only thing to do, because everything else is patented.
Windows 7 + Metro = More bloated, in my opinion.
Tiled applications windows date back to at least 1981 with Xerox Star. And there is plenty of prior art for applications that aggregate information.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
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?
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.
What do you call the ad tiles then?
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"
A tablet is just a rectangle with rounded corners. What's so novel about it?
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.
in 1989, ~11 years before this patent was granted.
I call prior art.
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
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.
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).
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)
They cannot sue unless there is a shipping product. You can't sue for vaporware.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
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.
Methinks Windows Phone 7 has been around for a while, now...
My sig can beat up your sig.
And linux has app stores... I mean repositories.
So that the live tiles are not longer perfect squares.
It's irrelevant if the people who implemented it knew nothing about the patent.
If Microsoft as a legal entity referenced someone else's patent in their own filing, they can't then say they knew nothing about it.
At which point their only recourse is to get the patent invalidated, prove theirs is different enough to not infringe, or license it. Saying "oh, the developers didn't know that" wouldn't work -- Microsoft has already legally admitted they knew about it.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
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...
They cannot sue unless there is a shipping product. You can't sue for vaporware.
Now we just need to make it so you can't sue unless you have a shipping product. You shouldn't be able to sue with vaporware.
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
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
annoying
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
Yes it is....it's Xbox Live!!! :-P
...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.
I'm not sure that's actually true ... otherwise all of those lawsuits from patent trolls would be tossed out immediately, wouldn't they?
I was under the impression that once you have the patent, you "own" the rights to the invention.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Oh my god an app store?! That's like the worst offenses against humanity ever!
Because all their patents are long expired and thus have no standing to sue?
Tiled applications windows date back to at least 1981 with Xerox Star. And there is plenty of prior art for applications that aggregate information.
Surfcast patent includes pulling information from the internet. Kind of hard to do in 1981. Maybe the Xerox Star did that with Compuserve and AOL, but even if it did, it wouldn't have included real time updates as neither of those systems had that capability in 1981.
And yet that wasn't why Microsoft won. They won based on a license grant given to them in a contract signed with Apple.
The only products they offer are patents, not practicing, not using, not producing anything. Web page has a fishing rod in the picture. This must be the epitome of patent trolling.
You could apply that to most engineering and architect firms, too. They don't really produce anything either, just designs.
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?
It seems to be the same thing and it's a novel way of doing things.
Exactly, it's not like it is similar to an airplane dashboard, right? And did anyone notice the timing? Coinciding a lawsuit with an OS release, that's not suspicious at all, tsk tsk tsk...
Until Microsoft actually released Windows 8, it would be hard to claim damages. It's not infringing until you release a product.
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.
It doesn't even matter how valid the patent is, really (although given it is software and... well, a tile display is not novel no matter how you dress it up), what really makes a troll a troll is that they have no products. Surfcast has none, and from what I understand, never did. Therefore, they are patent trolls.
Actually, a tile display doing everything that the patent states and details the mechanisms for probably was pretty novel back in 2000 then it was first applied for. As for Surfcast not having any products to sell, that isn't unusual either. Many technical businesses are based on designs - architects, engineers, etc. They don't sell products, either. Then there are businesses that are in the service industry that also don't sell products, but definitely have patents. Selling a product has nothing to do with having a patent. I'm pretty sure there are all types of patents for, say the aerospace industry, that will never actually be manufactured and sold, but that doesn't mean they aren't valid or somebody else can use them in their own design.
Maybe novel 80s. Pretty sure you could achieve this effect with TWM.
Pretty sure you can't. You need to read the actual patent. It is pretty involved and much more than simply displaying tiles on a screen.
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?
That's pretty shameless.
2011: "Our web-based cloud-service live-stream cloud-content service integrator integrates your cloud-based service-streamers with your web-service aggregator!"
2012: "TILES TILES TILES TILES TILES TILES ILES TILES TILES TILES TILES TILES ILES TILES TILES TILES TILES TILES ILES TILES TILES TILES TILES TILES!!!!!"
You define remote as internet, I define remote as not on the local machine, which of us is right?
The Xerox Star had network capability, it certainly could have pulled data from another computer
Normal people worry me!
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
And it's not like it's similar to my X desktop with xtop, monitoring resource usage on remote machines, and xbiff, and all that crap neatly tiled in the top corner of the screen?
Back in the 1980s.
Ah, but of course, my X workstation was completely different because it was in a pizzabox. Therefore these guys are geniuses and groundbreakingly inventive.
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
No, that completely destroys the only good that patents do have. The little guy can invent something brilliant, and patent it, and then go hunting for a company with the necessary manufacturing facilities. Your way, as soon as the first company he approaches that rejects him, they can build it without him, and he can do nothing about it.
What we need to change is the current non-enforcement of the obviousness clause. 90+% of patents nowadays are *blindingly obvious* to those sufficiently skilled in the field. Patent examiners are skilled in nothing apart from earning a paycheck from stamping "approved" on a form.
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863