Slashdot Mirror
Corel Sued For Software Patent Infringement
petchema writes "Corel is been sued by Advanced Software for software patent infringement.
The contention feature is the side-by-side file comparison found in Wordperfect. "
Yeah because nobody did that before.
Update: 07/07 02:50 by CT : originally this story linked through to advancedsw.com- this
company is in Colorado and has nothing to do with the Advanced Software
from California that was doin' the suin'. Sorry about the confusion.
From a quick glance, it appears that the re-issue patent is invalid. This issue is very complicated, but the principle should be very clear.
One of the key conditions of a re-issue patent is that the scope of its claims cannot be enlarged, no matter how minor it may seem, if the reissue application is filed more than two years after the patent was issued.
The original patent, U.S. Pat. No. 4,807,182, was issued on Feb. 21, 1989. The reissue patent application Ser. No. 07/881,478, was filed May 11, 1992. Thus, the two-year bar against claim scope enlargement has run. As a result, the re-issue patent is INVALID.
This provision strictly against claim scope enlargement is enforced. For example, if you change the claim language from "10 to 20 degrees" to "about 10 to 20 degrees". Such a change may not in practice change the scope of the claims (if you consider the doctrine of equivalents), but because it "literally" changed the scope of the claim, the re-issue patent will be, and has always been, held invalid, if the reissue patent was filed more than the two-year statutory grace period. This mistake is not uncommon.
Now, if we read Claim 1 of the reissue patent (because of formatting difficulties, I am using brackets to denote words deleted in the reissued claim, and pairs of dashes to indicate words added):
1. An automated comparison system, comprising:
input means for receiving commands, and for providing electronic signals representing a plurality of characters [including] --representing-- words, --short groups of words or phrases--, and sentences;
memory means coupled to said input means for storing as binary representations at least first and second groups of said characters;
processing means coupled to said memory means and to said input means for detecting and identifying differences between said words--, short groups of words or phrases,-- and sentences in said first and second groups of said characters --when said differences do not consist of a line of text or a group of lines of text and regardless of whether or not the text wraps around an end of a line or a plurality of lines--;
display means coupled to said processing means for providing a display of said differences by --displaying the text with the differences designated within the text lines--.
Because the claim uses "means plus function" language, the scope of the claim is actually much more limited in scope than it appears.
However, the main problem with the reissue patent is the third paragraph: processing means coupled to said memory means and to said input means for detecting and identifying differences between said words--, short groups of words or phrases,-- and sentences in said first and second groups of said characters --when said differences do not consist of a line of text or a group of lines of text and regardless of whether or not the text wraps around an end of a line or a plurality of lines--.
The original claim recites the step of detecting and identifying differences only between the "words" and "sentences". The amended claim in the reissue patent, fortunately for Corel, "extends" the scope to include --short groups of words or phrases--. This matter may seem to be extremely minor. However, based on the courts' record (case decisions abound) to strictly enforce the prohibition against enlarging claim scope in a reissue patent application after the statutory bar has run, it seems that the Plaintiff is doomed to lose. The reissue patent is invalid. The above was my quick thought. When time permits, I will re-visit this issue. Corel is a good company, and we will do everything to help.
Neither of the Apple/Microsoft cases "proved" the point for which they were cited here.
The Apple v. MS case involving Windows addressed a claim for copyright infringement in view of a license agreement. This had nothing to do with any patents.
Apple's patent case against Microsoft (also unrelated to this question) was settled when Steve Jobs rejoined Apple in a cash-for-stock switch.
Don't domplain here. That's a waste of time. The US Patent Office has web email, phone numbers and address. Send them paper mail. They've got some nonsense at the web site how they're not equipped to handle email. Talk here is cheap. I've seen it way too many times as each submarine patent surfaces. Make the Patent Office aware that they can't live in their cozy protected little world anymore. They are the real culprits here. Even by their own poor standards this patent stinks.
Patent offices the world over have become increasingly undemocratic, granting commercial monopolies in some cases worth millions of dollars without public scrutiny. STOP TALKING, ACT! We might not be able to stop them but we can, with social censure, at least make them uncomfortable doing it. A large part of the problem is the culture at the USPTO and elsewhere. Let's change that culture. Nothing you can do? Wrong! You can:
It's up to you. Nobody else but you.
People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.
- Kierkegaard
Posted by Ungrounded Lightning Rod:
I believe he called it "Parallel Text Face"
I'll have to dig out my old copy of
Computer Lib / Dream Machines to see if
it's there. It most certainly was in
the later Literary Machines, and perhaps
in intermediate stuff as well.
I've been reading all sorts of things trying to make up my mind about the nature of intellectual property. One site about IP and computing is BitLaw; it has a lot articles, links, etc. offering different arguements pro and con.
One article that is similar is here. It may have been the same, I need to re-read.
Another article I'm reading is "Patents and Copyrights" by Ayn Rand, originally published in The Objectivist Newsletter (May 1964). She wrote some of the same points I've read from RMS. If you can, then find a copy of the original in the library; there have been problems with the accuracy of some reprints of her work, though not necessarily with this one.
Of course, everyone here knows where GNU is; I'm reading their arguments too.
--
Why limit the prior art to software? That'd be like claiming that my widget isn't a violation of your wadget because I made mine out of brass in stead of copper.
In that case, prior art dates back to the middle ages when monks copied (and proofed) documents by hand.
That's the problem with USPTO, they seem to think everything is new if it's done by software.
It has been suggested in various postings that the validity of software process patents, in themselves, is still in question. Indeed, nothing could be further from the truth. After recent Federal Circuit cases, the validity of software inventions as patentable subject matter is no longer even an interesting legal question. The only remaining issue is whether the invention is indeed new and unobvious. For better or worse, the floodgates have been opened.
Since the 1983 Supreme Court case in Diamond v. Diehr (and in practice well before then), software patents have been issued. After recent cases in the Federal Circuit, there no longer remains any doubt from a legal perspective whether this is the case.
One case in particular, AT&T v. Excel Communications, Inc. articulates rather well and unequivocally the Federal Circuit's view on this matter. I highly recommend this case to anyone who would like to consider themselves well-educated on this subject.
The long and short of it is this:
"The Supreme Court has construed 101 broadly, noting that Congress intended statutory subject matter to 'include anything under the sun that is made by man.'"
It is now clear, for better or for worse, that any claim directed to a "practical application of a mathematical algorithm, . . . [by] produc[ing] 'a useful, concrete and tangible result'" is patentable under 35 U.S.C. section 101, provided, of course, that the claim is also directed to an invention that is new, useful and unobvious.
I think you'll find that 'windows' were invented
and patented by Bell Labs (whether the patent
now resides with AT&T or Lucent - I don't know).
I recall using the 'Blit' windowing environment
at Bell Labs in the early '80's. Certainly
before the first Mac and well before MS Windows.
It used a large (portrait) page size green screen
and a large red mouse (a Xerox invention).
As for side by side text comparison's - the 'sdiff' command has been available in Unix for
ages.
[Insert pithy quote here]
Fair enough. But it is important to distinguish between statements of the form "X patent is invalid" and "X patent should be invalid." Anything else is just kiddding yourself.
Just about 7 billion versions of diff do that out there. Jeez. Lawyers.
- - -
Washington,DC -- Legal experts today commended a move by the Xerox to sue the computer industry for flagrant violation of it's patent on "windows". A spokesman for Xerox stated that "We invented the basic GUI that almost all modern computers are based on." Legal experts applauded the move, and some say this could prove a serious threat to the dominant Microsoft corporation.
Slashdot has also reported being sued by CNN news, for violation of it's proprietary look and feel interface to daily news. "Slashdot has intentionally ripped off the idea of using html code to distribute news to the masses, and we will not stand by while they continue to do this."
--
The legal system may be convoluted as hell, but it still works. Corel will defend itself with the "this isn't exactly a unique idea" argument, and any reasonable judge will dismiss the case before it gets anywhere.
This is why companies have legal departments. Bogus lawsuits are a fact of life.
Acutally, Xerox did sue several companies, including Apple. Theylost on the technical issue that they waited too long to sue, and thus through inaction lost their rights.
Corel introduced the "Shadow Cursor" in WP8. MS copied that in Office2K with "Click and Type". The same feature w/ a different name. Does that mean Corel can sue MS?
You can't patent a feature any more than you can patent a "look and feel". Apple vs MS proved that.
JL Culp
Chair, LPSC
Sorry, I've already got a patent on using a network to share data for the purpose of forming a strategic consumer alliance. I would tell you where you could look it up on ibm's site, but its a trade secret.
My $.04 (I value my own opinion)
,sales@advancedsw.com,
To: Hildie Smart
From: David Bullock
Subject: Patent Infringement by Corel
Cc: Jennifer Dulles ,
Greg Schottland
support@advancedsw.com,hr@advancedsw.com
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed
Good Morning!
I wanted to contact you to voice my concern over ASTI's lawsuit against Corel and Reed Elsevier
for infringement over your 1989/1998 patents covering comparing visual comparison of documents on-screen.
While I strongly support the right of an author to copyright a speciifc work, the use of a patent to cover the fundamental *concept* of a software technique is a practice I found unethical and anticompetitive. Because of this conduct, I am unhappily forced to place ASTI and it's products on the list of products and vendors that I boycott.
In my position as the IT director for my company (approximately 75 employees with 7 internal software developers) I am in a position as a decision maker on software purchases. Since many of my professional aquaintences and personal friends are programmers and IT people, I am BCCing them to encourage them to investigate this story for themselves and come to their own conclusions.
What I find especially disturbing is that neither Corel, nor Reed Elsevier are competitors for your line of Software Development tools. Your attack on a non-competing product line forces me to wonder if my employer (now or future) might be the target of a similar attack at some unknown future date. As such I cannot endorse funding a company that behaves in such a manner.
Should you choose to drop this suit in the immediate future (before Reed Elsevier or Corel has to expend any amount of resources to address or defend it) I will be happy to remove you from my list. As a conscientious member of the software community my only recourse is to vote with my wallet.
Thank you for taking the time to read this.
Dave Bullock
http://www.bullnet.com
Actually, Xerox was trying to sell off their Star technology for more than 6 months before Apple came along and offered them some money for it. It was offered to about a dozen other companies that I know of, since I was with one of them. We were given a demo of the Star about a week before Apple, but computers weren't our line of work.
You can find the details in several of the books written about silicon valley, the best details are in book titled something like "How Xerox created and then lost the PC revolution". Apple offered them about 2 million dollars, and 175,000 shares of apple stock. Then they also grabbed a handful of engineers, which was not a nice thing, but typical in the valley. Two years later after the Mac came out, that stock made the research division of PARC the most profitable unit inside of Xerox for the year.
So you can trash this myth, apple didn't steal the Star design, they bought it entirely, for a tiny bit of money and stock.
the AC
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
Section 101 of the Cright Act says...
"Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful
PROCESS, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter..... may obtain a patent...."
I don't like it either folks. Notwithstanding the merits of this particular claim, software patents are justified by the term 'process' where process means "art or method, and includes a new use of a known process, machine, manufacture, compositions of matter, or material."
Case law is not going to change that language.
The trend in patent law is toward broader interpretation of process not narrower.
And I challenge any of you to justify copyright at the extent of patent. You really think copyright is better? Try a 70 yr monopoly vs. a 20 yr monopoly. That's right 70. That applies to Mickey Mouse and Mickeysoft.
What you are all really upset about are intellectual property monopolies. Guess what?
They are in Art. I of the US Constitution.
You need a strong lobby. Guess who is going to be strongest in the lobby? BG.
Lawyers did not screw this whole system up. The system did. A lawyer can sue you, a lawyer can defend you.
At a minimum the hacker community needs a rallying point on the legal front. Put yer heads together and make is so #1!
Patents on things that are not manufactured ( ie: words , algorithms , software , music etc ... )are strictly prohibited by the Act that created the Patent office ( all of these may be copyrighted , not patented ) . The Patent office has WIDELY interpreted a ruling by a court that judged that just because a company was using a computer to control the process of rubber manufacture did not mean that the patent on the PROCESS was invalid .
If you can find it at MIT ( I lost the URL and am trying to retriev it ) there is an arguement that software patents are already strictly illegal ( arguements for the removal of software patents in general ) and they go on to point out some of the unbelievably simple algorithms ( like using an XOR operation to change the color of graphics that move over one another )
have already been patented and some have even held up in court . The Patent Office is simply not staffed to recognize these algorithms for what they are .
Many of these techniques are considered by the people who program them to be so fundamental that they are not even worth documenting in publications . MIT Xfree86 is one who did not publish anything on their use of window buffering until a bit of documentation was needed at a later date . By then someone had already patented the idea of keeping , in memory , the window that was now hidden . MIT lost that one , their failure to publish those details in the documentation resulted in that method not being considered "prior art" .
The upshot of this is that big companies may be able to cross license the patents that they already own with other companies but little guys have nothing to trade , that is they have no way to use rudimentary programming techniques . This is an unbelievably unAmerican practicce that benefits NO ONE but the Lawyers . Big surprise that legal experts are hailing this , huh ?
I think that we need a supreme court ruling to restore the original Patent Laws to their original state ( covering only manufacturing methods of physicall objects ) .
I wonder , If I got to it fast enough , could I patent certain brush strokes and sue artisits ?
Brush types are manufactured .
Your Squire
Squireson
I believe that Gates lost 8 billion a couple of weeks ago so he's now only worth $90 billion. I mean, imagine loosing 8 billion down the back of the sofa :-)
--
Jonathan C. Masters (masters.jonathan.c@brookes.ac.uk)
PGP: www.brookes.ac.uk/~95227860/KEY
"Upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it".
-- Matthew 16, 17-18
http://www.jonmasters.org/
Sometime in 1984, I was playing with a disk hex editor on the Apple ][ that showed comparisons between two files: one on the left, and one on the right side of the monitor. I found this very handy, but hardly considered that a novel feature. I have since seen many examples of comparing files when I was exposed to other computers. Comparing files is a natural need that would be written by any hacker in an evening. Hardly novel.
These patents are not for the idea of displaying two drafts of a document side-by-side. They cover specific algorithms and methods for detecting which blocks are different between two documents, and matching up corresponding blocks between two versions of a document.
This is, as far as I can tell, sufficiently different from the working of UNIX diff that diff wouldn't constitute prior art. I don't have any experience with the offending Corel feature, so I really can't say whether it might infringe on this patent.
It's still not a very impressive patent, and I as sickened by software patents as any coder, but please try to do a little research before spreading misinformation like this (or reacting to it).
The technical details of the patent are essentially that the system uses a hash algorithm on all the lines in the documents and finds hashes which are the same in both documents, which it uses as "anchorpoints" to correlate the two texts.
It then seems to do some grouping of changed lines into words or sentences. The patent also refers to methods for displaying or printing the documents side-by-side with indicators of changes, insertions, deletions, etc.