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.
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
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.
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
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
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
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.