GraphOn Patents Remote Windows Apps Over X

LocalLinuxLobbyist wrote in to point us to this clever patent that apparently says GraphOn owns what VNC has done forever: the displaying and using of Windows apps over X. Oh, don't forget that this is the same GraphOn that is making Linux the Official OS of China.

Comments

patent my ass

[splinter]

this patent business is getting rediculous.

Can anyone say 'prior art'?

[Technik~]

Can anyone say 'prior art'?

Re:Can anyone say 'prior art'?

[Anonymous Coward]

no..

Re:Can anyone say 'prior art'?

[SoftwareJanitor]

The problem is that the people at the patent office seem to know so little about the subject matter that they are issuing patents on that they don't seem to be aware of what prior art is out there (even stuff covered by prior - sometimes expired - patents). They also don't seem to know enough about the subject matter even to be able to decide that certain patents should be disallowed because they are for something that is obvious.

Unfortunately, the patent office's attitude seems to be to rubber stamp just about anything that crosses their desks these days that has the correct paperwork and $$$ attached to it, especially if it is for a big corporation. The assumption appears to be 'let the courts sort it out'.

Re:Can anyone say 'prior art'?

[gorilla]

I think the 'obviousness' defense is more appropriate in this case.

A system running an X server can display clients either running on the same system, or running on another system. This has been true for many years.

A MS Windows system, with appropriate software, run an X server, and display clients running on another system.

It doesn't take much brains to work out that with appropriate software, it should be possible to do the opposite, to run a client on the MS Windows system and display it on the X server.

Once you've decided to do it, how would you do it? Hooking into the display API's seems pretty obvious to me, pretend to be an accelerated graphics card, and you're away.

Of course, this is the patent office which granted a patent on the xor cursor hack, something which has been independently invented thousands of times because it's so obvious.

Patents just don't fit well with software. Use copyright to protect your programs is appropriate, it stops someone from taking your work and selling it as their own. Using a patent prevents some from selling their own work, even if the patent owner doesn't have any intention of making similar software.

Re:Can anyone say 'prior art'?

[Daniel]

No, I can't. As a matter of fact, I have a disability which prevents me from uttering the words. The doctor says there's no hope, but I could get a job for the USPTO.

Daniel

Re:Can anyone say 'prior art'?

[Royster]

Rather, the US Patent Office has recognized that, given the funding they have from the Republican controlled Congress, they don't have the staff with sufficient expertise to review prior art in this area. They have consciously decided to let the courts sort it out.

Re:Can anyone say 'prior art'?

[ford42]

Unfortunately, the patent office's attitude seems to be to rubber stamp just about anything that crosses their desks these days that has the correct paperwork and $$$ attached to it, especially if it is for a big corporation.

Well, it's not quite that simple. I actually know a patent examiner -- a friend of mine who has been working there for about 3 months now. Not too long ago, I asked him why there were so many clueless idiotic patents coming out of there. He gave me two reasons.

The first reason is actually the reason that many of the people here have guessed: Lack of funding. The Patent Office cannot pay enough to attract real talent. Jobs examining computer-related patents start at $38K/year. So the people they do attract tend to be relatively clueles. (My friend is an exception, of course. :^) )

By way of example of the above, consider the following: My friend spends nearly half of his time at work goofing off: Reading the web, playing games, etc. And he is getting nearly twice as much done as the average examiner in his group...

The second reason, though, is actually the reason he gives more credence to. Quotas. Each patent examiner has to make a particular quota. Scoring goes roughly like this: One "point" for a first action on a patent application, one "point" for approving a patent, one "point" for denying a patent.

First action means, well, the first thing any examiner does. Give it a once-over and make sure it isn't written too broadly, or that it doesn't have any gaping holes in it. Usually first action is (or should be) to turn it down... Patent writers are greedy, and are actively trying to get the patent to cover as much as possible, of course.

However, turning it down at first is not a solid denial. If first action is to turn it away, when it comes back, it could be assigned to another examiner. Thus, there is actually motivation to approve an action on first action, thus scoring double, as it were. According to my friend, examiners who are hard-pressed to meet their quota will often do this. It is true that their manager has to look over the approved patent, but often this seems to be a rubber-stamp operation.

So there you have it... It actually isn't financial motivation on the part of the PTO as a whole... but rather on the part of individual examiners, who would rather not lose their jobs. Until the Office either changes this system or increases their salaries, we are likely to see many more ludicrous patents being issued. There's no motivation to do the job right (aside from the examiner's own ethics).

Note: I do not work for the Office, and my understanding of the procedures may be flawed; however, this is how it was explained to me.

Re:Can anyone say 'prior art'?

[SoftwareJanitor]

Oh please. You want to blame incompetence and/or apathy on the part of the patent office on the Republicans? I don't see very many Democrats trying to make funding levels for the patent office into a campaign issue. I somehow doubt that we'd see much different action from the patent office if the Democrats controlled congress. And if the Democrats regain control of congress (which is a possibility) after the next elections, I will be surprised if we see a sudden increase in funding of the patent office. Even if there was a big increase in their budget, I am not at all convinced that it would make a big difference in the quality of research they seem to be doing.

What makes you think that this is a partisan issue in the first place?

Re:Can anyone say 'prior art'?

[Anonymous Coward]

Citrix have been doing this for many years now (WinFrame, MetaFrame). There is no way in hell this could survive a prior art test.

Re:Can anyone say 'prior art'?

[SoftwareJanitor]

Well, from your description, it sounds more like the patent office is spending their money poorly rather than they are underfunded. If they paid half as many examiners twice as much money each as they do now, they should be able to get well qualified and dilligent people who should be able to get better than twice the work done.

Unfortunately, this type of inefficiency seems epidemic in government.

Re:Can anyone say 'prior art'?

[ford42]

*nod* Yes, now that I think of it that way, you are right. Fewer people, more money to each...

With regards to my friend, I feel I should defend him a bit... He's not particularly interested in the Patent Office, as I understand him. It's a job, and he'll do what he does well, but he's not got inclination to strive harder on the patents than is really necessary.

It's kind of amusing, actually. He told me not too long ago that he had a new officemate, who turns out to be a real go-getter. So he has stepped up his rate of work to match (and, I admit, has said he no longer goofs off half the time. It's down to a quarter). The two of them together are outperforming the rest of their group combined (another six people or so, I believe).

Another indication of the problems the Office has been having with the quality of people is their attitude towards law school. For a while, the Office offered to pay for law school for their examiners... then they realised they were losing all their best examiners to law firms. So they stopped it. Then they couldn't get good talent, so they had to start offering it as a benefit again!

Re:Can anyone say 'prior art'?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hire more people outside USA, damn it

Get people from Australia, $38k usd is like 50k here. Im sure lots of people would JUMP at the chance.

2. Fix the damn funding by charging companies such as IBM MICROSOFT etc.. $250,000 PER PATENT, they CAN AFFORD IT, god damn stupid patent office.

GET A CLUE, GET NEW MANAGEMENT

GO IPO

Re:Can anyone say 'prior art'?

[SoftwareJanitor]

I wasn't meaning to slight your friend, if he can goof off 1/2 the time and still do double average, then more power to him. It is kinda a sad statement about some of the other people that work there. Either they are really bottom of the barrel or they are just totally unmotivated.

It really sounds to me like their quota system is just incredibly poorly designed. That and the general lack of motivation sounds like they have poor management. Your point about their educational policies are another point in that direction. It is a good indication that they don't do enough to reward people _after_ they get the education to retain them. Unfortunately, bad management is too common in government.

Re:Can anyone say 'prior art'?

[Anonymous Coward]

yabba dabba doo - posted from palm emulator

This just in...

[bconway]

I've obtained a patent on the one-foot-followed-by-another walking method, as no one has yet to do so. Anyone seen using this method between the hours of 11:30 AM and 1 PM in a public area with be charged an exorbitant license fee, lest they be sued. Thank you for your cooperation in this matter.

Re:This just in...

[Mr_Plow]

You can make a killing by suing Honda. They are trying to capitalize on your invention. Of course, the rest of us are using your method in a not-for-profit context.
---------------------------------------- ------------------

So?

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's see them try to use it.

typical slashdot patent discussion

[Anonymous Coward]

(insert 100 or so lame-ass "I patented breathing so you all owe me money" jokes here)

Re:typical slashdot patent discussion

[Effugas]

Ahem. Typical Slashdot Discussion:

10% "I patented the obvious" jokes
70% "Oh, isn't this exactly like this technical solution deployed years ago on this platform using this technology for that purpose"...

Slashdot is probably one of the most effective places for prior art discovery ever found. The general rule is, if Slashdot sees your patent, nobody is going to respect you in the morning.

Yours Truly,

Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com

Re:typical slashdot patent discussion

[Anonymous Coward]

I patented that comment..pay up

Re:typical slashdot patent discussion

[lorimer]

...and 20% "First Post!"

Re:typical slashdot patent discussion

[Bad Mojo]

"The general rule is, if Slashdot sees your patent, nobody is going to respect you in the
morning."

So .. is showing your `patent' to /. like sleeping around?



Bad Mojo

Re:typical slashdot patent discussion

[Louziffer]

So .. is showing your `patent' to /. like sleeping around?

It's more like dropping the soap in a prison shower than sleeping around. ;)

Re:typical slashdot patent discussion

[Bad Mojo]

Good point. ;)


Bad Mojo

geez ....

[taniwha]

Faralon was doing this for macs 10 years ago (not over X but the moral equivalent).

Sundry PC emulators running on Suns have been doing this too over X - for at least 5 years. These bozos don't have a leg to stand on - other than having hoodwinked the patent examiner about the state of the art

(OK - to be fair, they could have been incredibly ignorant of the state of the art when they filed their patent)

Re:geez ....

[Anonymous Coward]

It looks like this patent wasn't for viewing a remote display on X Windows, but for displaying and using a single specific application.

Funny how those patents have to be worded just right...

Re:geez ....

[Anonymous Coward]

Too many posters on Slashdot shoot first, and don't bother even to investigate later. And for some reason the most salacious posts seem to get higher ratings than the calmer comments.

Re the instant post I'm replying to, you might want to check Sun's web site for a clue on just how many years Graphon has been licensing its technology to Sun and serving as its primary contractor for thin-client systems. I know it's been quite a few years.

The fact that folks don't like software patents (and I'm one of them) doesn't mean that every software patent lacks a good faith, legal basis. But that seems to be the automatic, knee jerk assumption here.

As a lawyer, I know that it takes a heck of a lot of study and research to come to any kind of informed opinion on the validity of an intellectual property claim. And lawyers who do this kind of work tend to be up front with their clients both about the validity of their claim and the likelihood that the claim will embroil them in ruinously expensive litigation, which is one heck of a disincentive for making patent claims that are doubtful, particularly for small companies like Graphon.

Check out their financials. Graphon isn't even profitable yet. Does anyone seriously believe they're going to make a patent claim that spits squarely in the eye of Microsoft's forthcoming Terminal Server without an iron-clad right they know will stand up? That would be akin to corporate suicide, and I don't think Graphon management is that dumb.

For example, they also announced this morning that they just put on their board IBM's former VP in charge of intellectual property and licensing. I suspect that Graphon has done their homework both on their innovation and on their legal rights, or they would not be attracting a director with that kind of experience (I've checked; Graphon's directors get stock options).

So why don't the hotheads simmer down until they have some facts to work with, or could the moderators at least rate them down to where I can read some useful information without wading through the crap? I'm about ready to stop reading Slashdot because of this problem, but I don't think the hotheads are representative of the vast majority of Slashdot's readers.

pem@televar.com
http://www.qwkscreen.com/WPLinuxLinks.html

Re:geez ....

[taniwha]

read my "Let me add ...." followup above (I was originally responding to the original /. article which didn't include a link to the actual patent) in my follow up I beleive I make the point that there is enough prior art (from the late 80s prior to the patent's '94 date) to successfully argue that the GraphOn patent is obvious to anyone familiar with other work (ie Timbuctu and X) in the field (in 1994).

I don't beleive that companies do as much research about prior art as they should - I think that for many companies the prevaling attitude is along the lines of "first we'll get the patent then we'll deal from a point of power" - and I don't beleive that the patent office has the resources or expertise to research prior art (esp. prior art that hasn't already been patented and isn't in the patent office's files) and to keep the companies honest.

Re:geez ....

[Anonymous Coward]

that IBM guy on the board, has just made #1 on the "list", the rest of the board, #2 through n, and you buddy, have just made #n+1.

live it up..... for now

Re:geez ....

[Dwonis]

I'm sorry, but there are *no* good software patents after the first year. Period.
--------
"I already have all the latest software."

Re:geez ....

[Anonymous Coward]

That's exactly what WINE does. And Quarterback Software used to sell a X11 program for Windows 3.1 which did the same thing.

Not all Linux Companies nice guys

[FreeUser]

Two Points

- when exactly was VMC released? With any luck at all it can provide prior art to get this patent nullified

- this looks like the first case I can think of where a Linux company (if it can be described as such) may have earned themselves a serious boycott of their product.

Re:Not all Linux Companies nice guys

[claird]

The question, "when exactly was VMC released?" has the usual several answers. You can pick a year between 1993 and 1996. This page points to more detailed references.

Heh, great timing

[Kintanon]

I just decided on VNC as the remote admin solution for the 150+ users in our little company here. Will I now be sued into the ground? >:)
Even though VNC isn't the fastest around (NetOP remote Admin is EXTREMELY Fast and Smooth) it was free, which was a blow in its favor. And since extreme high performance isn't really an issue it won out in the long run. I hope they beat the crap out of GraphOn in this and continue their excellent work.

Kintanon

VNC doesn't use the X Protocol

[Buttercup]

VNC doesn't display Windows apps using X. It transfers a dumb compressed framebuffer using VNC's own protocol. Windows apps displayed over X would be much (much!) faster than VNC.

MJP

Re:VNC doesn't use the X Protocol

[Anonymous Coward]

Screw that - it's been done, even using the X protocol. See Citrix. NTrigue, Tektronix, Microsoft, et al.

Re:VNC doesn't use the X Protocol

[darkwiz]

That depends on how you are defining "displaying." Skipping the lecture about how X works, unless they are talking about seriously hacking into windows source code and/or rewriting major parts of the operating system ( ala Citrix ), displaying winapps remotely would be MINIMALLY faster than VNC [say if what they/you are talking about is something like a virtual framebuffer for an individual app, dumped over the network]. Windows apps _REALLY_ running over the X protocol would involve a LOT more OS hacking than I think they could reasonably conceive of doing.

Re:VNC doesn't use the X Protocol

[Buttercup]

displaying winapps remotely would be MINIMALLY faster than VNC [say if what they/you are talking about is something like a virtual framebuffer for an individual app, dumped over the network].

That's what VNC is.

Windows apps _REALLY_ running over the X protocol would involve a LOT more OS hacking than I think they could reasonably conceive of doing.

Regardless, Tektronix's WinDD and Insignia Solutions' NTrigue do it. It's not an "OS hacking" issue; it's a matter of API-level redirection.

MJP

Re:VNC doesn't use the X Protocol

[ricOS/2]

Now you have me wondering... would it be as "simple" as writing a video driver for Windows that translates its calls into X calls over the network? -- Richard Thrapp richardt@rice.edu

Re:VNC doesn't use the X Protocol

[iffygeezer]

NTrigue can use 'X' directly. One of the options is to start an NTrigue client on the NT box and redirect the display to an X server, just like starting any X app under Unix, you can even use the Java X server that they wrote to display the client in a browser. This was all standard stuff under NTrigue, however on WinDD the X options were an extra cost. The Unix workstations don't need any special client code to do this, unlike the ICA clients required for Windows workstations.

Re:VNC doesn't use the X Protocol

[darkwiz]

No, what I meant is an "individual" app, not the entire desktop. Which is still different from running it over the X protocol where the local window manager and X server are handling the details of the interface, and passing messages about such back to the remote app. There is no way to just patch in and catch everything without significantly rewriting os code ( or running the program within a virtual environment). You can't just catch graphics code and magically make it [not] appear on the host machine and appear on the client machine and call that X protocol. That is a virtual framebuffer approach because NOTHING is taken care of locally ( other than tricks like copy rect that VNC uses).

Re:VNC doesn't use the X Protocol

[darkwiz]

Actually I've wondered the same thing. The problem is the extent to which you want it to behave like X. Again, the entire desktop would be that simple (a video driver), but you couldn't use that approach for a single app (considerably more complicated). Theoretically, you could run that process in a virtual environment that fools it into thinking it is running on a screen when it is really running in a framebuffer. Just hope the process doesn't go looking for a real desktop (like a drag and drop).

If you wanted it to translate in to X protocols, you'd have to be offloading the graphics processing to another machine (for example, I'm typing this up and reading slashdot on a Decstation 5000/25[an old dog] with netscape4.0 running remotely. The graphics scroll essentially instantaneously even though the copy of netscape is running on another machine [with probably 200 other users running processes] several busy switches and a router away. There is no way in hell this program is running on a framebuffer dumping raw or compressed images that far with this little latency).

Organized complaint to US Patent Office?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there an organized movement to submit a complaint to the US Patent office about all these STUPID patents? Anyone have a URL? Anyone interested in organizing this? It's time the US Patent office learnt a little something about computers, and stopped giving away these ridiculous affronts to common sense patents.

Re:Organized complaint to US Patent Office?

[Anonymous Coward]

You have to write them through the USPS. They only take comments about their web site via email. The web site says that they're not yet set up to handle electronic correspondence.

Re:Organized complaint to US Patent Office?

[Anonymous Coward]

I imagine that's because they allowed someone to patent email from a webpage ;-)

Re:Organized complaint to US Patent Office?

[SpacePunk]

actually, it would go farther to contact Representatives and Senators and just watch them disspear under a flood of mail. They are the ones that can legislate change in the Patent Office.

Prior Art?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hasn't Hummingbird been doing this for years now with its exceed product?

Re:Prior Art?

[acroyear]

Hummingbird's the other way around.

Hummingbird displays X applications on a Windows box. This takes Windows apps, running "natively" on a Windows machine, and re-routes their display to an X server.

Heck, talk about "Prior Art" -- www.x.org had a demo screen shot of this sort of thing back in 1992 when X11R6 was first being released.

Re:Prior Art?

[mmontour]

IIRC that's a Windows X-server, to display Unix programs on a Windows desktop (the other direction from what these guys seem to be claiming).

However, Insigina Solutions' "NTrigue" is a modified version of Citrix Winframe, which does send a remote Windows desktop over the X protocol (not ICA). Let me just pull it up... Copyright notices say 1996, and I think we've been using it since mid-1997.

Re:Prior Art?

[Cramer]

Well, err, uhm... *cough* Thin-X *cough* (That's the closest link I can find. I guess their PR department hasn't been saying much.)

I think SCO has something like this too.

Re:Prior Art?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think so.. Isn't that the other way around? Isn't exceed an X server for Windows? so you can display X apps?

What these people are talking about is displaying Windows applications to an X server.
(a-la, an MS RDP - X11 protocol translator).

IT seems funny that this can be patented.. they are two protocols... one is open, one isn't... many many people would have done this already if they could get the specs to MS RDP.

What it actually says

[Denor]

I know, I read the summary and choked. I'm not even that big an X programmer, but even I know that it's been done before. Until I re-read the article:

GraphOn Corporation ... has acquired a U.S. patent for the remote display of Microsoft Windows applications on UNIX(R) and Linux(R) desktops with X Windows(R).

Formatting mine, of course. The only thing that's close to this that I can think of is WINE, and it's not exclusively for remote display. I won't say it's not obvious it could be done (it is, after all what the X protocol is for) but it's at least something that hasn't been done to a large extent.

Re:What it actually says

[Nicholas Schumacher]

WINE may not be exclusively for remote display - but I personally have been using it for such for well over a year
(I use Agent for my newsreader - and having it run under WINE off of my linux box means I can run it from anywhere I have access to X Windows)


-Nick

Prior Art

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe that Network Computing Devices (Nasdaq:NCDI) developed software to do this in 1994 or thereabouts. AFAIK they never sold the software because they decided at the time that it was not practical, but they did write the software, and I imagine they probably beta tested it with various potential customers. If somebody wanted to pursue prior art in this case, they should probably contact NCD.

Re:Prior Art

[Anonymous Coward]

Another prior art would be Desqview/X. This package basically translated Windows GDI calls in X calls. This was around way back in 92/93 or so.

Re:Prior Art

[Anonymous Coward]

NCD's software was purchase by Citrix which has a unix integration service as part of Windows Terminal Server to due exactly what the patented product does. The writer of the article is mis-informed about patents since if you can display to X using your own method that does not depend on work from the patented product, you can apply for your own patent (2 cycle and 4 cycle engines are separate patents).

Re:Prior Art

[Anonymous Coward]

I think quarterdeck was doing this 5 years back with desqview/X.

One problem ....

[taniwha]

It seems that to get a bogus patent nullified you have to go to court ......

I'd like to see

• a division of the patent office that does post-facto reviews of patents as follow ups from public comment (so we can all email someone and have it actually have some effect) - maybe just a place where you can mail prior-art examples to
• the ability for judges to require legal costs to be paid by someone who has such a bogus patent and then sues someone when obvious prior art is available - esp. if the defendant points it out at the very beginning of precedings - this might discourage people knuckling under just to save the legal bills (esp. important for us low paid open source people)

Re:One problem ....

[Boiled Frog]

I'd like to see ... the ability for judges to require legal costs to be paid by someone who has such a bogus patent and then sues someone when obvious prior art is available

This is currently how the Canadian legal system works. Not just in patent cases but in all civil cases. The legal costs are all borne by the loser of the case. I am not sure if lawyer fees are included in this but court costs are.

Re:One problem ....

[vectro]

It is my understanding that in all civil cases (which a patent lawsuit would fall under), if the plaintiff wins, then they are entitled to recovery of legal fees from the defendant, but if the defendant wins they can only recover legal fees if the lawsuit can be proven frivelous.

My father is a lawyer and I recall him telling me about this several years ago; I believe this is correct but check with a lawyer yourself before you take action.

Re:One problem ....

[ConceptJunkie]

I've always thought that is a good solution, but for one problem. If a little guy has a case, no matter how rock-solid, I think he would have a disincentive to bring it to court because if he gets a nitwit judge or jury (depending on the type of case) be could be totally screwed on top of losing.

The problem is that when you you put checks in to protect us from the megacorps and their megabucks, you still end up hurting the little guys. If you try to protect the little guys, you end up having every nutcake on the planet suing every big company it can find and we all pay higher prices because of the legal costs or settlement costs.

How do you legislate common sense?

Re:One problem ....

[Anonymous Coward]

a division of the patent office that does post-facto reviews of patents as follow ups from public comment (so we can all email someone and have it actually have some effect) - maybe just a place where you can mail prior-art examples to

Um, the patent office already has such a system. Anyone can Request a Reexamination and submit examples of prior art along with the request. (It's not it's own department, but other than that it's the same idea.)

There's one issue: the fee for filing a Request for Reexamination is $2520. I can hear the cries now: "abolish the fee! It's too much!" However, I think the fee in general is a good thing. Think of what would happen without it: you'd have 50 Requests for Reexaminations for every patent granted. And not just for the stupid ones either, but EvilMegaCorp would file a Request for Reexamination on every one of their competetors' patents they didn't like, no matter how good or bad the patents were to begin with. Patent examiners are already overworked to begin with; opening up a flood of Requests for Reexamination would hardly help matters.

Instead, I would propose the following: your $2520 (or most of it) is refunded to you if the patent (or some of its claims) is invalidated upon reexamination. If the patent holds up, you're out the full fee.

Re:One problem ....

[taniwha]

Instead, I would propose the following: your $2520 (or most of it) is refunded to you if the patent (or some of its claims) is invalidated upon reexamination. If the patent holds up, you're out the full fee.

An excelent idea! - though I'd still argue for the ability of a public deluge of some patent office e-mail box to also be a trigger - I think that the patent office has to hold itself responsible for the times that it screws up - after all they're the ones who are supposed to judge prior art etc even though we know that they really don't have the time or resources to handle all of it.

Re:One problem ....

[Anonymous Coward]

But, $2520 is nothing to EvilMegaCorp. Fees like that only stop small business, charities, and individuals.

Does VNC export individual applications?

[synaptic]

I've used VNC a little and afaik it just transmits the whole remote screen.

Does this thing do something different and display one window without all the win32 interface junk?

VNC Rules!

[Lord Nougat]

Okay, so vnc is a bit slow, but it works! We've been using it here at out medium sized company for about a year now! That seems like proof enough to me that GrafOff or whatever LOSES (do not pass go, do not collect $200)!!

Re:VNC Rules!

[Anonymous Coward]

VNC is one of the best programs I've ever used for remote control. It's great for work and stuff. As for the lameass patent, it won't fly :) Screw these software patents :-)

Duh? Can you say WinFrame?

[bored]

Citrix WinFrame

Re:Duh? Can you say WinFrame?

[Anonymous Coward]

Damm right.. been using it a work forever.

Re:Duh? Can you say WinFrame?

[Anonymous Coward]

WinFrame uses a methodology similar to VNC, in that it uses a custom protocol, NOT the X protocol...

Re:Duh? Can you say WinFrame?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not entirely true. If I start the winframe or metaframe client on one machine and export the display to another or and Xterminal I am violating this patent.

...

[Signal 11]

Minneapolis,MN -- In a suprising show of force today, over 35,000 linux users in the Twin Cities turned out to protest what they believe is unfair use of intellectual property. Several members were arrested for indecency after, quote: "using a higher grade of toilet paper to show them we care". The situation has piqued several news sites, including a "nerds for news" site owned by bendover.net(NASDAQ: BOVR). However, not everybody is upset about it. The Montana Freemen, a radical right militia organization announced that they now had, quote: "plenty of things to do". Microsoft spokesmen were not available for comment, although several burned ties were found at the site of the demonstration, as well as a "crud puppy".

--

Re:...

[Anonymous Coward]

How surreal.

just vnc?

[frantzdb]

that sounds like VMware does the same thing.... wine too for that matter...

Re:just vnc?

[ghazban]

Heard of PC anywhere? It does basically the same thing... remote usage/admin of a computer.. Definitely not like wine nor vmware.

Bring on the lawyers

[Anonymous Coward]

According to the article what they've done is: "acquired a U.S. patent for the remote display of Microsoft Windows applications on UNIX(R) and Linux(R) desktops with X Windows(R)."

If the technology VNC has was available before the GraphOn solution doesn't that make their patent null and void?

Any patent lawyers care to comment?

Re:Bring on the lawyers

[Anonymous Coward]

Any patent lawyers care to comment?

Yes, and only for the low, low fee of $325.00 per hour.

Graphon uses their own "RapidX" protocol

[MrGuru]

Graphon doesn't use X11 per se, they use their own proprietary "RapidX" protocol. Their virtual framebuffer (GoGlobal) is nothing more than a Xvfb/Xfree86_VNC like X11 display. They haven't modified a darned thing. So what's so new here?

Prior art? Citrix has been doing this since OS/2 days with their "ICA" protocol. WinFrame predates anything Graphon has. Anyone remember running "WinDD" sessions with Winframe? This was pure X11 XDM sessions directly from the Winframe server. So what is new?

Graphon bought the "J-Bridge" technology from Corel, which seems to be little more than a heavily hooked standard NT Server distro (GDI hooks, etc). The big problem with their model: only supported applications than have been tested with J-Bridge will work. Sure you save that nasty Microsoft client license inherent to TSE, but the available applications are severely limited.

Does this mean Microsoft needs to pay for their T.120 hack "RDP" protocol?

Proprietary protocols are anti-OpenSource. If Citrix would open their ICA protocol to the public at large, they would reap HUGE rewards from the industry as a whole. Until something like this happens, the only "standard" seems to be RFB ala VNC.

Here's the patent.

[curtisg]

This appears to be the patent in question:

http://www.patents.ibm.com/detai ls?pn=US05831609__

Re:Here's the patent.

[Jeff Mahoney]

This patent (I only read the summary) looks like a description of The X Window System as a concept!

-Jeff

WWIII will be an IP war.

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, this pattern of patenting and copyrighting everything and suing anyone that even looks suspicious and who often can't afford the $$$ and lawyers to defend himself, is getting worse and worse. It cannot go on like this much longer. It's all gonna come to a head sooner or later and some sweeping ruling will then be made one way or the other and boatloads if former IP materials will be set free or we'll all need live-in lawyers to tell us what buttons we are allowed to push in out own homes and what we may and may not do wuth the computer and the VCR/DVD player.

Re:WWIII will be an IP war.

[Anonymous Coward]

What we need to do is start our own massive electronic war upon anyone who does crack ass patents like this. Imagine Graphon getting millions of electronice attacks on their network a day effectively paralysing them until they revoke the patent. Attacks could include ruining CEO's and other (legal) executives credit lines, bank accounts. Beleive me once a CEO or lawyer has been put throught the hell of an identity theft punishment due to an action of their own they will be more then reluctant to pursue any more bougs patents.

deskview

[overlord]

I have done this in 1992 using deskview by
quarterdeck, and windows 3.1 and it works.....

OverLord

Re:deskview

[GrenDel Fuego]

I believe desqview did the exact opposite. It let you view X applications in DOS, which this lets you run windows applications on X.

Re:deskview

[Phexro]

No, Desqview/X allowed you to both run X clients from *NIX boxen, and display dos apps on an X display. Not sure if it worked with Windows stuff or not.

Re:deskview

[IntlHarvester]

Normal Desqview supported Windows 3.1 in "Standard" (not Protected) mode. Not sure about Desqview/X either.
--

Re:deskview

[Anonymous Coward]

I never used the product, as I couldn't afford it at the time, and couldn't find it when I could, but I did see a demo of it and get to play with it. It was _very_ cool, and I'd still love to buy a copy. It could handle both DOS and Windows Apps. I used to have some documentation they gave out at a demo I attended, unfortunatly I think all that stuff got tossed a couple moves ago :^(

Re:deskview

[IntlHarvester]

As a DOS multitasker, Desqview was indeed cool, but realize that it was intended to be a poor man's OS/2.

Nowdays, if for some reason you are a power DOS user, you're probably better off with the real thing.
--

Prior Art Question (sort of off topic)

[DanaL]

Whenever a stupid/nasty/annoying (and there do seem to be a lot of them!) article gets posted on /. there is usually discussion about Prior Art, so I have a question (being a dumb Canadian who knows nothing about the patent system, let alone the american one):

If someone has a Prior Art case, is the patent null and void, or does the patent get passed to the folks who have the PA?

Dana

Re:Prior Art Question (sort of off topic)

[acroyear]

If there is a patent on the Prior Art, that patent is upheld and the new patent is discarded.

If there is no patent on the prior art, the patent becomes null and void and the concept can not be furthur patented in ANY FORM as far as I know. The knowledge effectively becomes unpatentable (though it may remain copyrightable).

The problem is it is up to a victim of the patent (either the company/author of the prior art, or someone whose use of the prior art is restricted by the new patent) to file the lawsuit and challange the patent. Then they have to PROVE the prior art, which usually still requires the original author to submit why this new patent violates his prior art; the defendents then get to try to prove that it doesn't.

fun stuff, 'eh?

and note: the clerk who issued the patent stays out of the whole thing -- THAT'S the reason so many stupid patents are issued. If a clerk rejects one, HE has to appear in court to defend his rejection. You think a clerk is gonna waste his own time on something he gives less than a shit about? I don't think so. Issue the patent and stay out of the way is the only thing patent clerks can do, or THEY go to court.

The biggest problem w/ the patent system is there is no recourse back to the PTO on invalid patents. And its too expensive in court and w/ attourneys to challange one on its own, much less get one high enough in the court system to get the PTO affected by anything.

Re:Prior Art Question (sort of off topic)

[youngsd]

If a court finds that prior art covers what is claimed in a patent, the patent is invalidated. No one gets any patent rights as a result, instead patent rights disappear.

-Steve

Re:Prior Art Question (sort of off topic)

[Anonymous Coward]

Nitpick: when a patent is challenged, either by a Request for Reexamination or in court, it stands or falls one claim at a time. Very often some claims will be upheld while others are invalidated. It's not an all-or-nothing thing for the patent as a whole. (For each individual claim, though, it is an all-or-nothing thing.)

The biggest problem w/ the patent system is there is no recourse back to the PTO on invalid patents

Bzzzt, thank you for playing. Read up on Requests for Reexamination.

Patent number?

[emag]

Anyone have a link to the patent or the patent number? The only link patents.ibm.com has for GraphOn is US5274794 issued in 1993 titled "Method and apparatus for transferring coordinate data between a host computer and display device", which might or might not cover it. Certainly predates most popular acceptance of Linux, and the file date of Jan 22, 1991 seems a little early.

cytrix anyone

[ncmusic]

there is a company called cytrix or maybe that is the name of the software.
Anyway we are using it at NCSU to use software like Word, Excel etc from a remove server...

www.cytrix.com they should raise hell

It's not like VNC

[Daffy Duck]

I think this is the patent in question. Graphon "acquired" it from Exodus.

From what I can see, this system turns an individual Windows app into an actual X client, as opposed to VNC which simply gives you a virtual display of the whole Windows desktop in an X-window.

Not sure about "prior art" considerations as they apply to VNC, though. The filing date on the patent is 1995.

Destruction of Computing

[Anonymous Coward]

Welcome to the inevitable destruction of computing as we know it. Also, welcome to a future where the U.S. is no longer the powerhouse of innovation and software development. Whether or not this patent would hold up in court, the fact remains that an independent software developer cannot typically afford the legal costs to defend himself, therefore "cease and desist" is usually the only option. Fortunately, US patents do not apply in other countries, so in nations where corporations do not control the government (not yet at least) you'll still be able to use/develop VNC. It is important that American linux enthusiasts become more active in protesting the US Patent Office, before it becomes illegal to use linux in the US.

& when 30 lawyers across nation sue you, what then

[Anonymous Coward]

Can yor afford the $$$ to defend yourself from an IP lawsuit?

Can you afford the time (maybe years) off work and away from your family to defend yourself from an IP lawsuit?

Can you afford to "win" such a lawsuit?

Folks, this is why IP law is bad. Even when the suing entity is outright wrong, the little guy being sued may be destroyed financially in the process, even if he "wins". Time can't ever be recovered and legal fees very rarely if at all.

Meat of Patent

[the eric conspiracy]

First Claim:

We claim:

1. A method for running an application as an X-Client so as to enable the application to be displayed with an X-Windows manager, the method comprising the steps of:

launching a "WINDOWS/NT" session;
invoking an application from within the "WINDOWS/NT" session;
monitoring output messages that are sent from the application; determining that one of the monitored output messages is a graphical user interface command; and when the monitored output message is a graphical user interface command, enabling an X-Windows manager program to act on the command, and informing the "WINDOWS/NT" device driver of results of the command that was acted on by the X-Windows manager program, wherein the enabling step includes converting the graphical user interface command from a "WINDOWS/NT" format into a format that is recognized by X-Windows manager program to enable the X-Windows manager program to act on the command.

Re:Meat of Patent

[Anonymous Coward]

Leaving aside the fact that there is no such thing as "X-Windows", this seems to be nothing more than a subset of Wine. It translates NT application calls to something an X window manager can understand. What Wine does with the "managed" option.

They're at Comdex

[kramer]

Yes, that's right these Jokers are at Comdex, why don't some of the Slashdotters drop on by to tell them what a bunch of twits you think they are.

From the Graphon.com web page:

> Join us November 15-19 Comdex Fall '99 Las Vegas, Nevada

> Microsoft Partners Pavilion Booth # 121 in L5142

Re:They're at Comdex

[Anonymous Coward]

Whynot start a small demonstration? Form up at the andover booth and demonstrate all the way over to the GraphOn Booth?

Another GraphOn patent

[markus]

A search on IBM's patent server did not yield any results for this patent, but it revealed another patent that GraphOn holds. While I haven't bothered examining the algorithm in great depth, it looks very much as if they have a patent on using a generalized version of BASE64 encoding to transmit graphics coordinates. The core claim seems to cover a way to dynamically determine the optimal encoding. None of this looks very innovative or unique to me (I am actually quite sure I have used similar techniques before, only not to implement graphics coordinates but some completely different type of data); it yet again shows that the USPTO lacks the experience to really evaluate patent claims. GraphOn might even be right that there is no prior art for this very specific claim, but that is not so much because the solution is new and non-obvious, but rather because nobody else has bothered tackling this particular problem before. So effectively, the USPTO has now started granting patents on the merrit of being the first one to recognize a new problem/market niche. This gives a whole new twist to the evils of allowing software patents.

Re:Another GraphOn patent

[pb]

If there's a more general solution, I hope it would invalidate a claim like this.

Otherwise, what you're saying is, I can uuencode a jpeg, but I can't uuencode a data file of complex numbers and ftp it to a machine, or something. (okay, the protocols might not be the same, but...)
---
pb Reply rather than vaguely moderate me.

Re:Another GraphOn patent

[AJWM]

On a quick look at that GraphOn patent I was reminded of the technique that the NAPLPS protocol specifies for transmitting coordinate information (both X,Y coordinates and R,G,B coordinates for color info), where the bits for each value are split up and reshuffled into bytes (most significant bits first) such that the receiving app can ignore all the coordinate bytes after it has received the max resolution it can handle. (That is, each byte includes a few bits of each coordinate.)

The NAPLPS specification predates the patent by a good five or six years.

How may I prior art thee, let me count the ways...

[Greyfox]

Lets see... Hasn't Cygnus been doing this since the 1980's?

I was doing windows apps remotely using wine 5 years ago.

vmware seems to do something like this too.

Someone needs to march down to the Patent Office and take away those fuckers' crack pipes.

Just wondering......

[Traverser]

If most of the modes for transfering information across a network become patented, how much money will the USPTO have to pay to use one of the modes available. According to their site, email coorespondence is "not yet ready". I wonder if it will be a single click through, a redirect, or another application running across the network?

WAY off topic :)

[DanaL]

We'll apologize for Celine, Alanis & Alan when you American pigs apologize for

1) Tom Arnold/Rosanne Barr
2) Microsoft

and

3) Stealing basketball from us

:)

Dana

Re:WAY off topic :)

[DonkPunch]

1) Sorry, we don't even know how that happened.
2) Sorry, it seemed like a good idea at first.

and

3) Doesn't count -- we didn't steal basketball. We just embraced and extended it into a circus of overpaid spoiled brats -- just like we do with most pro sports. You wouldn't want it back at this point, anyway.

We can bitch and moan all we like...

[mrchrist]

but it seems to me that prior art means squat if the patents aren't challenged in court. And most companies seem leery of the idea of a prolonged court battle and possible losses, so they just cough up their lunch money (cough) licensing fee...

IANAL, but it seems to me what we need is something called, say, the "Free Concept Foundation" that challenges frivilous software patents in court. It's gotta be somebody (a) without much to lose in any particular case (ie not owning or marketing a technology based on an infringing concept) and (b) dedicated soley to the task, sort of like the EFF or the ACLU.

Any deep pockets out there that are interested. Anyone? Anyone? Is that you, Bob Young? ESR, you're going on "So You Want To Be A Millionaire" to raise money for this project? Good for you!

Re:We can bitch and moan all we like...

[Foogle]

While that's not a horrible idea, it's certainly far from necessary in this case. Do you know who owns the copyright to VNC? AT&T, that's who. They don't need any "foundation" to take care of them; they're quite capable of defending themselves in court :)

-----------

"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."

A similiar problem in the kernel

[Barn_Owl]

IF any one wants to see another dumb patent case and a patent examiner's view of this check out the latest Kernel Traffic

Hrm.

[Lao-Tzu]

Ignoring the absolute idiocy of this patent is difficult, but after doing so we see that it is somewhat threatening. I know several large coroporations that use X and this method of running applications.. for a home user such as myself, I don't think this would ever impact anything. Can you really see being sued because, say, you use a laptop that can't handle netscape itself but can run an X server? :) But what of the corporate world.. universities perhaps too? Lots of people have used this 'patented' technology for a long time.. technology that wasn't developed by the patenting company in this case. This is bogus. :)

Marshall Phelps

[Anonymous Coward]

GraphOn's website has a press release:

Marshall C. Phelps, Jr. Former IBM Intellectual Property and Licensing VP Joins GraphOn Corp. (GOJO) Board of Directors

It also says:

"Mr. Phelps played a key role in assisting IBM with receiving the largest number of patents in the United States six years in a row."

Looks like we got a celebrity here!

Re:Marshall Phelps

[the eric conspiracy]

Mr. Phelps played a key role in assisting IBM with receiving the largest number of patents in the United States six years in a row."

Looks like we got a celebrity here!

IBM does a hell of a lot of high level hardware R&D. These are the guys whose technology is behind most of the increases in hard disk storage density, pictures of individual atoms in articles in Scientific American, copper chip connectors, and so on. Over the history of corporate R&D at IBM they have one the best records of REAL innovation there is. There patents are generally not two bit losers like Y2K windowing and one-click ordering. Why somebody like this Phelps dude would have anything to do with Graphon escapes me unless it's just because he's a sleezy lawyer type.

Peer review for patents

[mOdQuArK!]

I mentioned this in a previous thread, but now I get a default score of 2 - so I'll mention it again and hope I get some more comments :)

There really ought to be a formalized "peer review" system for patents. It doesn't necessarily have to model the scientific review process (although that's probably a place to start). Preferably, you should be able to take government out of the loop except for maybe the enforcement of the resultant patents.

Anything that can pass the /. "laugh" or "scorn" test (using /. as a typical set of "peers" for software) would probably qualify as innovative - and anything that got a majority "COOL!" reaction would probably be REALLY innovative to the jaded eyes on this forum...

Re:Peer review for patents

[rde]

The problem with peer review is that you'd need a huge number of experts. You're not just looking at prior art, you're looking at practicality. It's a nice idea, and it'd be seriously cool if it worked, but I can't see it happening any time soon.

Anything that can pass the /. "laugh" or "scorn" test (using /. as a typical set of "peers" for software) would probably qualify as innovative
If Klaatu were to return to Earth, send Gort out to destroy New York and then warn us all of impending doom, he still would't pass the slashdot 'scorn' test.

Re:Peer review for patents

[cheeser]

I think there should be a huge fine for dumb patents that have prior art regardless of whether the applicant knew about it. ( They never will have known. ) That would encourage some real research. Or at the very least have a protected pre-patent period so someone can show evidence of prior art. The protected period would have the same protections as a patent for a specified period ( say 3 months ). It ends either in the approval of the patent or the discrediting of the claim. The USPTO is full of . . . um . . . uninformed . . . uh . . . people. The whole system needs an overhaul.

Re:Peer review for patents

[GnrcMan]

Or at the very least have a protected pre-patent period so someone can show evidence of prior art. The protected period would have the same protections as a patent for a specified period ( say 3 months ). It ends either in the approval of the patent or the discrediting of the claim

The problem with that sort of thing is that companies would just delay publicizing the patent until after the probabtionary period is up. Right now we find out about these things only after the patent is granted and the company sends out a press releae. It is very difficult and/or expensive to invalidate the patent at that point (even with prior art).

--GnrcMan--

Re:Peer review for patents

[FreeUser]

Excellent concept! I would go further than removing government from the process, and remove lawyers from the process altogether. Scientific peer review. That which passes is given a patent, that which does not may be appealed to another group operating independently of the first.

Why? To provide a check and balance against any one group of cronies gaining too much power over the patenting process. Right now its a former patent attourney running the patent office, but a group of scientists or engineers with their own agenda would be just as bad, possibly worse, unless some kind of check is in place.

I would also argue that patenting as a whole needs to be revamped in terms of the period of validity (17 years is way too long for most technical patents these days, and I would argue software and algorithmic patents shouldn't be permissible at all).

Re:Peer review for patents

[acroyear]

I suppose it might work -- the real issue isn't "Prior Art" that we gripe about most (though this one seems reflective of it), its the issues of "Obvious", "Innovative", and the biggest issue of "Far Reaching".

Obviousness is one that is a hard call. Some individuals can call things "obvious" willingly, like Ted Nelson and Xanadu who "discovered" (not invented, and he'll stick to that) Hypertext. He definitely feels its an "obvious" thing, once you have screens and words.

Many things are "Obvious" in hindsight after they've been used for 3 years (before we found out somebody had filed a patent on them). "Plug-ins" and the patent that Bob Cringely wrote about are those kind. We'd been using plug ins that interpret languages for years before somebody got a patent on them.

Innovative is always an opinion, particular in its context. MS's use of "innovations" certainly isn't Slashdots...

Far Reaching is the other factor. Just because your technique solves a problem doesn't mean you have the patent on ALL techniques to solve a problem. This is the big issue the PTO needs to be redressed for. The chap who has the "Patent" on "on line shopping", the chap who has the "Patent" on "web-based shopping carts". That's the kind of general garbage that needs to be done away with.

Usually "Far Reaching" is just extending two "Obvious" things together to reach an "obvious" thing, then using legalize to make it sound "non-obvious". The shopping cart metafore is a big one. It takes "tracking a user" and "storing user data", both things done in EVERY web application, and adds a piece of vocabulary to make it sound "innovative and original", then extends that to cover ALL uses of things that match that vocabulary. Definitely the finest example of a piece of crap patent I've ever seen.

but of course, that's just my opinion, and it might not even be my intellectual property...

Re:Peer review for patents

[mOdQuArK!]

I think there should be a huge fine for dumb patents that have prior art regardless of whether the applicant knew about it. (They never will have known.) That would encourage some real research. Or at the very least have a protected pre-patentperiod so someone can show evidence of prior art.

I think this punitive technique will have the effect of preventing small companies & individuals w/o the resources to do this kind of research from filing patents - the only companies with the resources to do this will be large companies, or large "patent research" firms which will cost a lot of money. This would be bad, considering that much of the original motivation for patents was to protect the little guys from the big guys (although it doesn't seem to have worked out that way recently).

Re:Peer review for patents

[mOdQuArK!]

The problem with peer review is that you'd need a huge number of experts. You're not just looking at prior art, you're looking at practicality. It's a nice idea, and it'd be seriously cool if it worked, but I can't see it happening any time soon.

How is this handled under scientific review? I think that the decision making is distributed over a large number of journals & panels of "peers", plus each discovery is further categorized by the various "specialties" of the scientific disciplines. This doesn't seem too unreasonable for a engineering "peer" review system - I'm sure that the various engineering societies for the different industries/disciplines could be instrumental in kickstarting a process like this.

The major hump I could see in implementation would be those members of society who have a vested interest in maintaining the current system (companies with large portfolios & patent lawyers, since a peer-review system would invalidate large sections of the law which they use to declare tiny little changes in wording "innovative").

Re:Peer review for patents

[jwilloug]

The problem with peer review is that you'd need a huge number of experts. You're not just looking at prior art, you're looking at practicality.

The Patent Office ia already supposed to be an expert on every field, that's the problem.

Rather than formal peer-review board, just insert a Request For Comments period, where the patent application is available for public review. If VNC or Citrix had heard about GraphOn's patent before it had been approved, they could have submitted enough "prior art" to make even the most thick-headed patent clerk take notice.

Re:Peer review for patents

[Anonymous Coward]

Or at the very least have a protected pre-patent period so someone can show evidence of prior art. The protected period would have the same protections as a patent for a specified period ( say 3 months ). It ends either in the approval of the patent or the discrediting of the claim.

Actually, this is how most of the world does it. As for the person who posted the problem that companies would just keep their applications secret, the rest of the world solves this by automatically publishing all applications 18 months after they're filed (no, for better or worse, a decision isn't anywhere close to being made by that point.)

If the patent is granted, protection is granted retroactively to the filing date of the patent. (Certainly, this can cause some problems too, but it solves the problem of people stealing the idea when the application is published since the patent hasn't been granted yet.)

Re:Peer review for patents

[Excel]

While conceptually I agree with your philosophy, a particular issue concerns me...what if someone came up with a truly unique idea that would revolutionize life as we know it? I'm afraid peer review may not allow the patent for fear of not being able to compete (or even if they allow the patent some information could be conveniently leaked to the competition). Always assume someone's trying to kick you in the ass until they prove otherwise.

Re:Peer review for patents

[mOdQuArK!]

Actually, the peer review board doesn't have to "leak" information to the competition - just like today's patents, when they've been granted, they get published for EVERYONE to look at. By law, though, if you use the idea described in the patent for non-personal reasons, you have to cut a license with the patent holder.

Besides, there's nothing stopping somebody from publishing their idea w/o peer review - it just means that they won't get the patent & be able to monopolize the idea. You could probably argue that if there was SUCH a good idea, it probably shouldn't be patented anyway.

If that person refuses to publish the idea because they can't get a patent, then we're no worse off than we were before (since we don't even know what the idea was) - and they don't get any benefit from their idea.

Re:Peer review for patents

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not publish on filing?

THAT'S IT! WE BURN THE #@&$ PATENT OFFICE!

[deusx]

This, along with a story about a patent on Y2K 'windowing' I heard last night on NPR (which was also reported earlier here on Slashdot) has got me completely disgusted.

It's about time we get together as an angry mob with pitchforks and torches, and knock over and burn that damn patent office. Why hasn't there been any congressional lobbying or attention on this yet? (Because companies like being able to fence off almost brainlessly obvious solutions and hold other companies hostage? Hello Amazon? Hello Yahoo? Hello-- oh hell, just search for 'patent' on Slashdot!)

I'd rather see no patents whatsoever on anything than this garbage!

Contact your senator

[Joe_NoOne]

I recently heard from my senator about patent issues -- they are revising the patent laws, and from what little I've read it's being rushed through. It's HR 1907 and S.1798. Find out and get involved

Re:Contact your senator

[BrookHarty]

Sounds good, looking it up now, via the Internet.

Re:Contact your senator

[the eric conspiracy]

S. 1798 contains an important clause requiring that the GAO do a study on the 'quality' of patents on business models. This is very important to slashdotters because a large fraction of these business model patents are being generated by internet startups. There was an article on slashdot about one of these recently.

It would be a very good thing if a similar study be done on software patents. Writing your congressman would be a good idea.

Another silly patent

[GnrcMan]

While searching for the patent in question (which someone else found here) I ran across this silly patent. What this fellow (from Intel) seems to be patenting is the remote triggering of a batch application. In other words: computer A sends a message over the network to computer B. Computer B executes a batch task in response. Computer B sends "I'm finished" response back to computer A. This seems to be angled as a way for a central computer(server) to use spare cycles on a client computer as directed by the server. I certainly wouldn't want some server to have the ability to start processes on my computer like that. Scary. Actually, the patent sums this up nicely (you'll want to sit down for this):

Service providers, such as American Online.TM. ("AOL") and Compuserve increasingly must buy more powerful computers to service the additional members and the new content that is constantly being updated. These service providers could save on computer costs if some of the computational requirements of their system could be serviced by remote personal computers owned by private individuals and other independent entities who subscribe to the Internet provider services.



--GnrcMan--

Re:Another silly patent

[copito]

This sounds a lot like how our backup scripts run. The AOL angle is a little scary though.
--

Re:Another silly patent

[peter hoffman]

Focussing on the "Claims" section, isn't this just uux and uuxqt? The manpage for uuxqt on our Sun box here says it was last changed 19 May 1993. Sounds like "prior art" to me!

Re:Another silly patent

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm...How is this any different than communicating to some sort of server through low-level socket programming, RPCs, or even CORBA for that matter? Heck when I was first learning Unix I recall doing a simple client/server program where I had a client send 2 numbers to a server. The server would add the numbers together and and return the result to the client. This was circa 1987...

Re:Another silly patent

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't this the way an IBM OS 370/390 sysplex works?

Re:Another silly patent

[Anonymous Coward]

This is really close to the CDC 6400 architecture, where the PP's enqueue tasks for the main processor to handle. And that's, umm, 1964?

Re:Another silly patent

[Emlyn]

This sounds a lot like what SETI@Home and GIMPS (Great internet search for mersenne primes?) etc are doing.

Patenting this approach (the ability to use user PCs idle time as a poor man's super computer) is a really bad thing; this would give intel a technological strangle hold over the world's largest untapped source of CPU cycles.

Is this really as damned scary as I think it is?

I can see the ad campaign now:

[jdube]

From the people who make the word "Linux" synonymous with a communist country comes Windows: Penguin Style!!! As Bill from Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure would say: VNC in of itself is heinous, dude. Be decent to each other. Whooooaaa... Duuuuude... Cooooool... The fact that now we will have little wars over who owns it is even less rightous, dude! In other words: BLECH.


If you think you know what the hell is really going on you're probably full of shit.

GraphOn sucks.

[TurkishGeek]

GraphOn is a company that's not even worth discussing here. They have some pretty lame remote computing tools (I evaluated them for our company), none of which was really better than VNC for our purposes. They have used Linux name to hype themselves since they showed up last year, and although all of their ads showed Linux as a platform they supported, none of their salespeople seemed to know about.

Why doesn't the Linux community punish the right companies? I mean, companies like XiG which slams Xfree and in general the Open Source community which lets it live, and GraphOn which claims to take advantage of Linux by using it liberally in their adds to hype their product; are much more dangerous and harmful than Microsoft. I guess the combined buying power of Linux users should be significant. Let's assume GraphOn decides to enforce this patent and collect royalties (which is likely-check their site out, they have recently employed the former IBM intellectual property and licensing VP!)and if even ten percent of all working Linux users who are in a decision making position opt not to buy GraphOn products for remote connectivity, I think GraphOn can never take off.

Just my two cents.

Re:GraphOn sucks.

[Foogle]

Well, whether or not they are a good company or not, is irrelevent. Whether or not anyone uses their software or not is also irrelevant. Whether or not said software is even useful is irrelevent. The only thing that is relevent is whether or not their patent is sound.

Fortunately, groups like Slashdot don't make that decision -- courts do. And that's a good thing. As much as I agree with the concensus here about this patent, there are far too many people on /. who think they're lawyers :)

Now, it's interesting to note that AT&T now owns Olivetti Labs, the makers of VNC, so it's not like these GraphOn people are just trampling over the free software community. They're not picking on anybody. We'll see how this plays out.

-----------

"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."

Re:GraphOn sucks.

[TheGreek]

As much as I agree with the concensus here about this patent, there are far too many people on /. who think they're lawyers :)

Yes. I have read many posts where the poster starts off by saying "IANAL" and then goes and sticks his foot in his mouth trying to use alternate meanings of words and half-truths to "prove" his agenda that Everybody Is Out To Get The Open Source Movement.

Don't get me wrong--I like Open Source software; I use it daily to get my work done. I thoroughly detest, however, the zealots that decry anything other than Open Source.

As Chris Rock said, "I love black people, but I HAAAAAAAAAAAAAATE niggas."

patent validity

[MillMan]

We've been seeing lots of absurd patents here in the last several months (since I've been here at least), but how many of these will actually stand up in court? While I have zero faith in our patent system, I have a shred of hope for our justice system, at least in issues like these (on social issues I have zero hope).

The benefit of these patents for large corporations, of course, is that they can sue everyone to hell until their enemies go bankrupt, through the appeal process, similar to what the RIAA did to Diamond, and will probably do to Napster. I think this is where the real threat is.

However GraphOn isn't that big of a company as far as I know, so I doubt they have enough money to beat anyone up with this patent anyway. Even when your patent is valid, patent lawsuits usually boil down to who has the most money. Hmm...perhaps I should rethink my shred of hope for the justice system...

Big sales coming soon...

[Anonymous Coward]

Let them know how we all plan to run out and purchase their products.

Contact Rusty Keller today.

Let me add ....

[taniwha]

As the AC who replied to me pointed out it is a patent that implements GUI emulation at the API call level. In fact the whole thing (other than the X/NT references) basicly describes Faralon's Timbuctu product from the late 80s. I'm also pretty certain I remember someone doing a Mac->X version of this at the API level.

The fun part in the claims is " 3. The method of claim 2 wherein the remote graphical user interface is a graphical user interface known as X. " - that's right they've claimed something based on its name .... not its functionality - call it something else and it doesn't apply ..... I for example use a graphical system called "XFree86" ..... I don't think anyone uses a thing just called "X" - I'm sure lawyers would argue for a loser interpretation of this clause.

Of other interest is Claim 9 where they make a claim over anyone working with an "operating system including X-Windows" - yup if you happen to have X in some form on your disk you may be covered

Whats more important is that to anyone aware of Faralon's work and to the way that X works (ie to someone 'current in their field') this is an obvious thing to do and therefore not novel or patentable

They probably won't sue.

[KnightStalker]

If VNC is actually in violation of this patent (ad I doubt it is) it would be a really bad idea for GraphOn to sue the company that now owns VNC... AT&T. If anybody has deeper pockets than M$... :-)

Is current IP law constitutional?

[Anonymous Colin]

{Standard disclaimers, IANAL and all that}

With all the ridiculous nuisance patents that are being issued these days, I have started wondering about US IP law viz-a-viz the US constitution (where the US goes, there goes the world...). We all know by now that the constitution explicitly permits patent and copyright legislation. It also clearly and unambiguously states the objective of such legislation. Something about encouraging invention and increasing the public good (exact quote, anyone?). Now, large companies get patents so that they can play trading games with everyone else and small companies are bullied out of markets by these nuisance patents, even when they are bogus, small companies being unable to afford a court challenge. Does this not inhibit invention/innovation and directly harm the public as a result? Is this not a violation of the constitution's stated (in the constitution itself) intent and as this is a direct consequence of current IP legislation, does that not make said IP legislation unconstitutional?

If so, should the /. (or other concerned) community launch a collective challenge of the IP legislation - particularly as it applies to software.

Even if a case can be made for software patents per se, is there any conceivable justification for their duration? It seems to me that any large organization can produce a product that works around and avoids any particular patent in at most 2 years. Should that not be the life of a software patent (if you accept that such a patent is justified at all)?

Am I on to anything here, or am I just another poor/deluded/evil M$ propagandist fool?

Re:Is current IP law constitutional?

[Ares]

From the Constitution Article I, Section 8:

"The Congress shall have power ... To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries; ..."

disclaimerIANAL, expecially a patent lawyer. The following is just my opinion/disclaimer

So, the question here is, as you said, whether the progress of science and useful arts is being hindered by current patent/copyright law (I don't buy into IP b.s.).

In order to determine this, a case would have to go before the Supreme Court. We all know what companies with a vast portfolio of patents would do, so its up to the little guys who won't have the resources to take a suit this far. Since the S.C. won't get a chance to touch this one, it's up to Congress to change the law (which, as someone earlier posted may well be under way; I haven't researched it).

Aside from that, you may be on to something.

Broken System?

[powerlord]

IANAPO (I Am Not A Patent Officer) :)

but... from what I understand the people reviewing patent claims have a quota to make.

The quota being non-rejected and completed patent applications per month. In other words, it is in their best interest to let patents just 'go through' and let the courts fix anything later.

Can anyone out there who works in the field either confirm or deny this?


Uhg! (if its true)

Re:Broken System?

[the eric conspiracy]

There is a quota, but it includes a requirement that no more than a certain percentage be accepted.

Re:Broken System?

[Anonymous Coward]

If patents are supposed to promote the pubic good, it's interesting that Humphrey Davey refused to patent his safety lamp *because* his interest was the public good. According to Lee Valley, anyway :)

Re: Wrongo!

[Anonymous Coward]

There have been addons to Winframe based products to allow _native_ X display of X apps for at least 3 years. Tektronix had one for WinDD, and I believe NTrigue did as well.

patent the computer

[RichMan]

Quick someone patent this idea:

A computer:
1. A fabricated device based on a finite automaton with associated storage media for data.
2. The computer includes input and output apparatus for communicating between the storage media, the automaton, and the world.
3. This computer will be capable of performing any conceptual abstract process based on a descriptive algorithm. The method of describing abstract processes for processing by the automaton is called programming.

This revolutionary device will free our thoughts by making any conceivable process simple to capture and automate.

I was going to carry on with this but it just hit me how close all these software patents come to thought and expression control. UUGGHGHH. Especially so when you consider that the mind is a form of finite automaton.

What with companies getting patents for DNA, as soon as we get mind/computer interfaces are some forms of thought going to become illegal?

Citrix, my bad

[Greyfox]

I knew it was something like that/

Patent References

[Christopher B. Brown]

See:

• System for dynamic sharing of local and remote displays by maintaining a list of best-match resources - HP
• Method and system for on demand downloading of module to enable remote control of an application program over a network - Tridia Corporation, Atlanta, GA

The latter might be the patent in question; GraphOn doesn't seem to be inclined to indicat what the patent is...

How it's different

[slvrsrfr]

The JBridge product is probably more like Monoposoft's Terminal Server than VNC, in that it is multi-user. I'm not positive, but I don't think VNC can have multiple logins to the same NT box running different applications, etc. Winframe was great for this and somewhat better than WBTS, but NT 3.51 won't run all the apps you might need it to. I'm trying to deploy Linux desktops but server the have-to-have Windows app that we require, which will no longer run on Citrix Winframe, and I don't want to go with MS Terminal Server. It's down to JBridge and VMWare for me. Anyone do multi-user VNC?

Re:How it's different

[slvrsrfr]

Oh, and Winframe and WBTS alter the OS/ play with registry tricks and that makes deploying most apps very tricky. Supposedly, JBrige runs as a service on an unaltered NT 4.0 server.

Hey wait a minute...

[Spyder]

Then what's this Exceed icon on my desktop for? It been said a million times, the patent system is over burdened. It's a combination of the sheer breadth of knowlage need to understand so many high tech fields, and a lack of experienced staff (with 5 years of experience one can double one's salary in the private sector). The strategy is to give out the patent and have the courts sort it out in litigation. A great deal of software patents don't qualify under the Previous Works rule: (paraphrased) If anyone, including you has done this before, it is assumed to be common knowlage in the field. Technically if you have an idea for a polymorphic variable decrypting code key block (I'll gpl it if it ever works), you have to patent the idea before you get it working. In practice this is usually not the case. But IMHO the open source model is beginning to show that ideas and information can only be kept by great effort. You stay ahead by getting the next big thing to market faster and better than the compition, by being the only or best ones to get the product to work, or by just selling the development not the software. It makes it hard to fathom for those of us that grew up under the assumption of intellectual property, but it is increasingly evident that those rights only go to those that can afford to defend them. It will cost millions for anyone to get that patent revoked even though it should have never been granted in the first place.

Re: Wrongo!

[Anonymous Coward]

Correct. Tek's version of WinDD emitted X directly, so GraphOn's patent is totally bogus.

"Merge" has been doing this since 1992

[Bunk]

Merge version 3.1.0, released in 1992 for
SCO Unix and USL/Univel SVR4.2, used X windows
to display Windows 3.1. This technology was
shown for Linux at Linux World in San Jose
as "Win4Lin" displaying Windows 95 via X.
(Win4Lin is currently in very limited beta).
Between 1992 and now, all Windows 3.1x and
Windows 9x versions have been supported
to display over a network using the X protocol.

As far as using a lighter weight encoding
for transmission over the network, the SCO "Tarentella" product has been used with Merge
to provide optimal useability for network
connections with limited and/or variable
bandwidth. (Tarentella can do this for any
X client.)

This is _definitely_ covered by prior art

[Knight]

I used to work for a company called Tera Technologies that made a product called EZ-Win that does this exact thing, and yes, it does use the X protocol. This prodcut was created at least two years ago. Someone should slap some sense into the Patent Office. It wouldn't take anyone very long to just do a web search for the appropriate keywords to discover that this was already done.

If you need to point-and-click to administer a machine,

And still more silly patents.

[Anonymous Coward]

MICRO~1 silly patent #1 #5,877,765 AMD silly patent #1 #5,968,170 . AMD patent might not be to silly. Ron Obvious.

Re:And still more silly patents.

[Anonymous Coward]

IDGI. The AMD patent was filed in 1997, when e.g. Linux had been able to do this since 1994 or thereabouts? The patent text uses HP-UX 9 commands in several places, is AMD patenting something that HP has been doing for years?? Reading the abstract, my first thought was, well, duh - that's the way it has always been done - where's the invention?? catman who has buried the password somewhere.

Not to worry... VNC doesn't do that.

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry. Read the patent _claims_. All of the claims use a variation of "hooking" at the application output level to determine when an output must be intercepted or not. VNC doesn't "hook" anything; it looks at the frame buffer on it's own and determines what's changed and what to send over. Thus VNC is "off the hook". :) (of course, others have raised the issue of prior art, and there's that as well). Don't worry, dudes.

Bogus!

[LazLong]

Citrix has been doing this for years, longer than VNC has existed.

Yet another example of the US Patent Office being totally incompetent when it comes to high-tech issues.

WABI?

[pb]

Didn't WABI (and now WINE, of course) basically do this? It's a necessary step in displaying the emulated Windows applications on top of X. I mean, *come on*.

And what about Windows Terminal Server, there's a pretty similar product. Heck, Microsoft could just buy these guys, and have (or bury) X support...

Watch everyone release the same thing, with fragmented X protocols to avoid patenting issues. Patents definitely serve to stifle innovation, not help it.
---
pb Reply rather than vaguely moderate me.

Re: fine for dumb patents

[taniwha]

I mentioned this above ..... but rather than this how about simply allowing the judge to award legal costs (including the cost of the defense's lawyers!) to someone who is sued with one of these patents and prevails with a reasonably provable prior art defence

This would give people who are being sued more incentive to not knuckle under and pay when litigation is going to cost too much even to win, or when you are a little open source company with no such resources.

It would also make companies actually have an incentive to actively research prior art before filing such a suit (or such a patent) - there's little incentive at the moment to do so because just holding such a patent however bogus is a barrier to entry to competitors.

Finally it might grow an industry of lawyers (shudder) who work these sorts of cases and become adept at defending prior-art suits on contingency ..... now that would really deter them :-)

"Forever"?

[Anonymous Coward]

The slashdot article says that GraphOn would own VNC's technique "forever". That's not true. Last time I checked, US patents last for 17 years, and then expire; they are not renewable.

Software patents are bad, and a serious threat to free software, but we don't need to exaggerate the situation by suggesting that patents last forever.

It's basically a wrapper

[Otto]

It looks to be basically a wrapper for a Windows based program, thus turning it into an X-Client. Thus, you can run the sucker anywhere. This, AFAIK, hasn't been done yet, mainly because no-one really cared to. However, You could probably say this is a natural extension of the X-clients in existance on other platforms. You can run an X-Client on a Windows system with an X-server running on that system, this is just reversing it.

It is kinda cool, yet extremely annoying to patent.


---

Reorgainzing patent searches.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Much of the problem is that the patent office has plenty of hooks for searching for prior art among prior patents, but essentially none for searching the open literature and state-of-the-art.

Since software patents are new there's essentially no patented prior art, so everything looks new to them.

What they need is twofold: Patent examiners with education and experience in the software field, and access to a database of unpatented prior art. There are some twitches in that direction from outside, but not enough yet to count on it happening.

The patent office knows it's not doing well. But the system is designed to be driven (and funded) from outside. (They're largely reacting to court decisions and applicants at this point.) This will be an expensive fix. Congress probably won't just hand them the bux to do it themselves - especially if Congress doesn't have a lot of pressure from people wanting it fixed. Even if they do get the bux, how do they hire the skilled heads in competition with the private sector? How do they even hire skilled heads to IDENTIFY what skilled heads they need?

Unfortunately, I don't recall exactly who, if anyone, is working on assembling a database of open prior-art.

Such a database would also be useful to programmers, so they can find out what solutions are already available for their problems and not have to reinvent them constantly. B-) So good candidates for support would be industry associations, volunteers from the free software movement, and educational institutions.

Re:Reorgainzing patent searches.

[Anonymous Coward]

No the problem with the patent office is that you have freaking slack off CIVIL SERVANTS !!!! Ever been to a government run institution? Its a model if slack off 8 to 5'ers. Chances are that you couldnt get then to run any kind of searches even if you mandated it. Did you know that it is almost impossible to fire a civil servant in the US? Aside from sexist or racist behavior, you pratically need an act of congress to get rid of a non functional person. One of the few exceptions to this is the USPS BTW.

Its actually a miracle that the patent office acutally functions at all.

Prior Art?

[ewieling]

As mentioned in the comments, other companies are doing this or have done this. Quarterdeck did this on the early 90's with their DESQview/X product, VNC does it, VMware can do it, pcANYWHERE (I think they have a Java PCAW client), Sun's SunRay(?), I don't know if Citrix has a unix client, but it should be easy to write, in fact, just about any application that allows you to run MS Windows under X (Wabi? WINE?) could do this. Granted, most of these apps simply grab the bitmap and put it in an X Window. PCAW, SunRay, Citrix, and I think DESQView/X, however, intercept the calls to either the graphics driver, or the API calls from the app to MS Windows. --Eric

Re:patent my ass: Genentech do that already.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

B-)

Re:How may I prior art thee, let me count the ways

[Jeff Mahoney]

I don't really see how either of your examples are relevant.

Wine - Runs windows apps *on* a Unix-based system. The fact that they can be displayed remotely is inherited from the fact that they're using X to implement it.

VMWare - Runs windows apps *on* windows using a virtual machine *on* a UNIX-based system. Again - they gain the remote display capability because they're using X.

VNC - Throws the entire desktop around.

Personally - This is almost what I'm looking for in a Windows remote administration package.

What I'd LIKE to have is a single copy of a Windows application running, and be able to have multiple sessions to it. Applications run on the windows "desktop" as usual, but you can hook into them via a remote admin package. I don't want the whole desktop - just the app. The application would never know the difference - almost like carbon copy, but without the entire desktop.

Best of all, I wouldn't need to go a co-worker's office to use their Windows box with Carbon Copy!

-Jeff

How to stop bad patents.

[Morlock Alpha]

As I understand it, the full details of patent applications are published for public scrutiny as part of the application process. If so, then how is it that we are only getting to hear about these patents after they have been granted ?

If we can get at the patents applications earlier, perhaps we should examine the patents for novelty and obviousness. The net, (or maybe just slashdot) certainly has enough eyeballs.

Re:How to stop bad patents.

[Anonymous Coward]

As I understand it, the full details of patent applications are published for public scrutiny as part of the application process.

This is how the rest of the world does it. The U.S., in its infinite folly, does not publish patents until/unless they are granted.

Can we HELP

[Shotgun]

I keep hearing about the 'idiots at the patent office', but I don't understand the attitude. A group of under-paid civil-servants are ordered by Congress and the courts to do the impossible, efficiently judge that which they know nothing about. They have lawyers screaming in their face to let a patent through. When they do, they have the whole (cyber) world laughing at them, but at least the pressure is gone. How many software engineers who know enough about the industry to make reasonable decision would work at the patent office?

Is it possible to release patents for open review before they are granted, or is the process to keep them secret? Could Slashdot offer a forum for patent review? Maybe the patent office could issue RFPAs (Request For Prior Art) on the web. Then Rob et.al. could pull in the abstracts that related somehow to News for Nerds and Stuff That Matters and post them here on Slashdot.

Re:Can we HELP

[Ares]

How many software engineers who know enough about the industry to make reasonable decision would work at the patent office?

None. For the same reasons as the FBI is hard-pressed to get geeks on its staff. They pay about half of what you could get in industry.

The PTO doesn't even need to do an RFPA. All they need to do is post pending applications, like parts of Europe (from what I understand; if I'm wrong, please correct me). We wouldn't need a forum on /. because entities (many times individuals have prior art, too) would be knocking down the doors of the PTO with their prior art to get the pending patent rejected.

At any rate someone should moderate up Shotgun's post.

Re:& when 30 lawyers across nation sue you, what t

[Antonio M.]

By the way may be the time that Graphon discovers that exist people ready to fight a "legal war".
I just mean: they sue me, and so?
I can afford a good legal staff and even if I cannot, exist associations that can.
May be the time to teach to these thiefs that they cannot put their hands over everything, that they cannot rely over the costs of a legal staff.
And after we win their lawsuit we can sue them.
Goodbye,
Antonio

Oh, the irony.

[CaseyB]

1) celin dion (spelling)
2) alannis morsette (spelling)
3) alan thickie (spelling)
4) The Sci-Fi movies "CUBE" and "ESCAPE VELOCITY"

If you're going to call other people dumb, make sure you can spell more than 25% of your sentences correctly.

... and it looks like they mean it!

[marnerd]

From their home page:

Marshall C. Phelps, Jr. Former IBM Intellectual Property and Licensing VP Joins GraphOn Corp. (GOJO) Board of Directors

If you have a sweeping but controversial patent and you plan to exploit it to the maximum, you could do a lot worse than getting IBM's ex IP honcho on board!

a surprisingly viable solution

[perfecto]

a surprisingly viable solution to all this nonsense is to start ignoring software patents outright. there is no way they can stop all of us. it would be a form of civil disobedience until more reasonable standards are discussed. the system has obviously been abused and it really is time to get this out into the forefront.

another idea would be to start applying for the most outrageous patents you can think of and start suing companies over them. this really needs to end!

"The lie, Mr. Mulder, is most convincingly hidden between two truths."

Soo...

[Daniel]

X has been displaying programs remotely forever, kludges to do this in Windows are all over, (inferior >=) ) X servers for other operating systems are legion, the entire concept of remote display is blatantly obvious to anyone who knows anything about computers, and yet the extension of this concept to displaying Windows programs on X by rerouting API calls is patentable?

Feh. Someone should patent a method of displaying CP/M programs on a BeOS machine :)

Daniel

Re:Soo...

[Anonymous Coward]

Feh. Someone should patent a method of displaying CP/M programs on a BeOS machine :)

That would be called "VT-100" and it might be patented by DEC. At the minimum it's copyrighted and/or trademarked.

Citrix's been doing that for ages though

[Greyfox]

Citrix did that with OS/2 back in the early 90's and started doing it with Windows in the Mid 90's.

Re:Citrix's been doing that for ages though

[Jeff Mahoney]

As far as I know, Citrix allows connectivity from Mac/Windows clients to Windows servers.

I don't think they offer a Linux/*BSD solution.

-Jeff

Re:Citrix's been doing that for ages though

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a Linux client, and clients for most commercial Unices.

especially like them mentioning linux

[Anonymous Coward]

This statement is totally hyping the linux connection for no reason: "GO-Global? is the world's first thin server-based solution for high performance access to UNIX and Linux from any ..." Umm, last i checked linux is UNIX. It's like in their minds UNIX and linux are two different entities!!! It would be more appropriate to just say UNIX, or if they are going to start naming strains of UNIX then they should name all the strains they support. Some companies will go to any length it seems.

Re:especially like them mentioning linux

[Vidar Hokstad]

Unix is a trademark. Linux isn't certified to use the Unix trademark. Hence, Linux is a Unix clone, but not a true Unix.

Then get your lawyers ready...

[victim]

You say you've been doing it for 2 years? This patent's filed date is June 1995. Your prior art must have been a year before that if I recall correctly.

If your product really does implement their patent then you are in violation and the patent holder may ask you to stop your product or pay them royalties on all copies sold.

You may have the honor of spending the $100,000+ to get the patent overturned.

Re:Computers? or ALL patents ridiculous (sp)?

[wass]

From the slashdot headlines of the last few months, most of us are pretty aware of many of the ridiculous (sp) being put forth to the US patent office. However, is this absurdity limited only to software patents?

For example, do people in the auto business patent the idea of a plate on the floorboard, that when depressed, through a clever system of force transfer, opens and closes the throttle valve? Or the use of hollowed-out rubber torii (toruses?) which will not only support an automobile, but when rotated, propel it forward.

I know about the strange genetic patents, but are computers and the human genome the only areas that seem to be exploited by these ridiculous patents?

This isn't quite like VNC

[technos]

GraphOn's patent (and most of their thin client product line) operate much differently than VNC. Where VNC and the like are devoted to making the desktop of a 'server' machine available, this would make a Windows application or an X-app TRANSPARENTLY available from a server. They look, feel, and smell like their local counterpart, regardless of platform. Normally stuff like this is done with several servers, and with significant overhead (an X-server for each user/app) and pain.

Just a note: I don't approve of the USPO handing out software patents. Giving a 'lifetime' (technologically speaking) stranglehold on something is never a good idea.

However, this one might just steal some of the Micros~1's Windows Terminal Server business, so why are we complaining?

DESQview/X as prior art

[garyrich]

sounds almost exactly like what they claim.
It started by virtalizing DOS (text and graphics)
apps into X11 by 1991 and virtualizing win 3.1
apps by intercepting calls at the windows video/
mouse/kbd call level. I recall seeing this
at an internal demo level, could have been
later than late 1992/ early 1993. Don't remember
when we shipped it, certainly before 1995.

garyr

Re:DESQview/X as prior art

[fishbowl]

I actually ran DV/X in 92.
I tried to carry the torch for it being the
"right choice" at Mobil. Unfortunately I was
the only person (on the planet, AFAIK) who
could see the potential of Desqview, much less
DesQview/X with a unix/X11 client/server model.

We ended up with Banyan Vines and Windows 3.1

Re:Firstpost?

[Mentat21]

I wonder if most moderators read the guidelines. Remember you're supposed to focus more on moderating up than down. You wasted two points moderating the replies to the first one down (which already wouldn't be visible to the usual user) instead of bringing forth useful information. (I would find it amusing if you did the same to this one)

That sounds like X-Win32...

[shaldannon]

in reverse.....


Who am I?
Why am here?
Where is the chocolate?

Re:That sounds like X-Win32...

[Drayke]

A little more difficult, though. X-Win32 (also MI/X, eXceed, and probably a few I've missed) is simply an X server, designed to implement X11 (already closely tied to IP networking) over the Windows GDI. The more difficult proposition is intercepting GDI calls (designed to run with a local display) and actually convert those to X calls. It requires implementation at a deeper level, essentially adding a third interface (network in addition to existing hardware and application interfaces) to an existing abstraction, rather than just implementing the abstraction to overlay another abstraction like XWin32 or eXceed (an X server just has the same old network and hardware interfaces).

-Drayke

What about Patents in Canada...???

[absolute]

I live in Canada and I was wondering what kind of effect US patents have here if any...?? And is it possible to get really stupid patents like this one in Canada too...?

Re:What about Patents in Canada...???

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only U.S. patents, but all U.S. laws apply in Canada.
</sarcasm>

You're correct about VNC

[shaldannon]

It can have only one connection to (or from) an NT box.


Who am I?
Why am here?
Where is the chocolate?

Re:& when 30 lawyers across nation sue you, what t

[Anonymous Coward]

Can yor afford the $$$ to defend yourself
from an IP lawsuit?

No but I can afford an 9mm with several extra clips and a silencer, a plane ticked to Sillicon Valley, the cost to find the home addresses of both the CEO, and the memebers of the Legal department, a few hand grenades, and some flares.
Pay a little visit to them one evening, cripple their family members, burn their eyes out with the flares, and let them know exactly why. People start to get the message that this is the price that greedy money sucking bastards will have to pay from now on, and they will change thier ways.

Lets make it personal folks. Yehaw, aint it sweeet

How the system works

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if this patent is flawed , it can cost a huge amount of money to get a patent invalidated. Even if you decided to spend all that money, there is no gurantee you will win since the courts are so unpredictable. People who own questionable patents, if they are smart, will licence them in such a way that it costs less to pay the royalties than it does to go to court. This really isn't a new thing, it just seems to have spun out of control with the boom in high tech.

Let's change our X Severs to Y Servers....

[elric11]

I think that we should all change our X servers to Y severs, thus side stepping the patent all together... [And if they try to patent that, then we still have A,B,C,D,E,F,G,H,I,J,K,L,M,N,O,P,Q,R,S,T,U,V,W & Z to go through before it becomes a problem again.

Re:Let's change our X Severs to Y Servers....

[Trojan]

We've been through W already...

you do owe me money

[Anonymous Coward]

the whore and bugger collection agency will contact you.

RE: Flamebait from clueless

[strobert]

Exactly Software Janitor. If he thinks the Repulicans are bad at padding budgets, man...
(not to say Republicans don't pad budgets, I think all politicians due to some degree)

You hit the point right on. This isn't a partisan issue. I haven't see a party that is really rallying on this issue. Not even from the Liberterians. They may have official statements condeming it (I would be surprised if they didn't) but I haven't seen them pushing the issue.

I have a patent for you...

[benzol]

I would like to patent the act of shoving my foot up the ass of the person that thought of this patent. Anyone else caught shoving a foot up their ass must submit a picture to /. so it can be posted for the purpose of public humiliation.

Dynamically determining optimal encoding

[kevin805]

The idea of determining the optimal encoding is pretty much what the LZW patent is about. In LZW, the code tables change as the data is encoded. There is a website statistics package that writes GIF files without using constant code tables, which can be decompressed with an LZW reader, but are generated without infringing the patent. Or at least, without infringing the patent in some people's opinion. LZW is a perfect example of why software patents should be avoided -- if it had been known to be patented from day one, GIF never would have caught on, and we would have used simpler compression methods, preferring a 10% increase in file size instead of the license fees. This, of course, is the antithesis of the supposed purpose of the patent system, which is to encourage the use of new technology through publication.

GraphON and Sun connection

[Kirby]

Just a bit of trivia - a few years back, Sun was trying to push its ill-fated Javastation network computer. While the project is quite dead now, GraphON was involved with this, and adapted their product for the Javastation's X-view. It worked okay, for the most part - running X entirely remotely, with very little client-side work, is by nature a tricky thing and very dependant on network latency.

This patent would probably be a lot scarier if that had taken off, as they'd have lots of money. There's probably a strong connection between this patent and that project, though.

-- Kirby, who was a contractor at Sun during the Javastation days.

Uh, yeh...

[Anonymous Coward]

Further proof that Canadians are all nazis

Re: fine for dumb patents

[mOdQuArK!]

On the flip side, small companies & individuals will be that more hesitant to defend their patents because they won't be able to afford the upfront cost of the legal battle.

I think that any solution has to treat the large & small equally when judging the "innovativeness" of an invention.

Re:Computers? or ALL patents ridiculous (sp)?

[Jon_S]

For a humorous look at the human genome patent idiocy, take a look here

VNC

[shado]

What they forgot to mention also, is that VNC also can be used in linux without X, it's called svncviewer that uses svgalib

This is just silly

[Brian Knotts]

I hereby patent displaying any Windows program on an LCD screen on Tuesdays!

The whole patent system is increasing resembling the Slashdot "First Post" phenomenon. It's not about ingenuity, invention or originality. It's just about being the first to submit something.

--
Interested in XFMail? New XFMail home page

VNC doesn't use the X Protocol: IT'S PRIOR ART!

[argent]

THIS is true, and this is the critical point.

I have used the software they bought from Exodus. I'm glad it's stilll alive. What Exodus did, and they did this many years ago before VNC existed, was to virtualize GDI and in the virtual GDI translate GDI calls to X calls. NTerprise, Exodus package, makes the Windows application actually run as an X client right on the NT box.

Every other package out there, Citrix and its clones, PCAnywhere, VNC, do screen scraping. They create a virtual screen on the server, render to it, and use various gross hacks to figure out what's changed and transmit it.

NTerprise doesn't do that. You draw a line in GDI, it sends an X message to draw a line. You fill an area, you send a rectangular fill. You draw text, and it draws text.

I can believe they have a product that actually works sufficiently differently from Citrix-style screen scrapers to avoid a prior art claim.

(I won't comment on the obviousness problem, though)

PS: If you reply to this, please cc me in email. I can't bring myself to use Slashdot's crufty user interface that often.

VNC doesn't use the X Protocol

[argent]

See my other message... NTrigue and WinDD don't use the X protocol directly. They work exactly like VNC, just with more effort spent on making it work fast and cleanly.

Windows apps really running over X, that's a different game.

Say this 10 times fast

[gad_zuki!]

I've just aquired the patent on patently stupid patents.

Pat me on the back and thank me later.

Prior Art

[Luke B. Bishop]

Just did something interesting.... Open up the Wine changelog and scroll ALL the way to the bottom...

July _1993_

This patent is filed quite a ways after the initial Wine development started.

I mean, sure, back THEN, Wine really couldn't DO this, but they CERTAINLY knew that that's what they were GOING to do...

Looks like good-ol' Wine comes to the rescue. It translates windows calls to X calls, and allows remote-display to an X server.

Somebody from the Wine team should talk to the FSF about getting this patent fought. I hate software patents, especially stupid ones.

Re:Citrix's does do X

[just someone]

Funny, hooked up to a metaframe server via an x-session to different computer.

Pointed out to another person that you can run just the metaframe app, and get better performance, but then you lost the damn directory paths, because the admin has not set them up in samba the same way they are set up in the unix metaframe. Oh well.

GraphOn big in China

[Anonymous Coward]

GraphOn is the official supplier of server computers and software to the People's Republic of China. They have a tremendous cash flow and very deep pockets. They could easily bankrupt any small or medium size company with a lawsuit. If my ass were on the line, I'd just pay the royalty for use of their patent and get on with my business. Life is to short to bitch about nickels and dimes.

Re:& when 30 lawyers across nation sue you, what t

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, in a strange way, your solution makes sense, which is just sad. This is supposed to be a country of law and fairness, where disagreements can be resolved it a peaceful manner.

But what do we do? When the system is so utterly fucked up that an ethical, law-abiding citizen has no defense against the IP tyrants, it forces anyone who wants come out alive to turn into criminals. Sad indeed.

Posting as AC because some might take this post the wrong way and see it as cause to implicate me.

It's an emulation patent, really...

[argent]

As I expected, this is a patent covering the NTerprise product. It describes the translation of WIndows Nt driver calls (GDI calls) directly to X calls. To look for prior art for this patent you want to look at things like WABI and WINE and SoftWindows.

Re:It's an emulation patent, really...

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe there is probably prior art for this in a product called NTrigue, produced by a British company called Insignia, now part of Citrix.

If so, this patent is invalid even if it were legitimate, which IMHO it isn't.

Prior art = TIMBUKTU

[Anonymous Coward]

The mac/windows app called Timbuktu has prior art
patents dating back to 1991 i think.

tsk tsk patent office has gona wacko

Probably useless.

[Mr. Piccolo]

#define PEDANTIC

I think this patent is bogus. Why?

1. Claims 1 and 2 talk about something called an X-windows manager. What is this? To my knowledge there is no such thing as X-Windows, only The X-Window System(TM) which is often wrongly caled X-Windows.

2. Claim 3 talks about a Graphical User Interface called X. Now, I don't know about any GUI named X. I do know about a windowing system named The X Window System(TM) which in its different implementations is called variously X11R6, X11, XFree86, or OpenWindows, but this is merely a _windowing_system_, not a full GUI in and of itself.

3. Finally, in claims 8, the destination operating system is a "graphical operating system." That leaves out Unix and VMS as possible targets becuase they are basically character operating systems. PalmOS, on the other hand, is probably covered provided The X Window System(TM) gets ported to it.

Now, I might be wrong and there might indeed be a software product called X-Windows that features a GUI named X and runs on MacOS, Oberon, BeOS and many other less-popular graphical operating systems. Either way, this patent should be invalid for X11.

The X Window System(TM) is allegedly a trademark of The X Consortium. All Wrongs Reversed.

One on, one off.

[Anonymous Coward]

They need the patent office to do their regular stuff on even days and revolk all their mistakes on off days.

VNC does not use X protocol

[Hard_Code]

VNC does not use the X protocol...it merely sends a remote view of the screen. It uses some algorithms to increase performance and decrease latency, etc., but it does not use X at all. Applications live entirely on the host, and only their graphic presentation on the screen is sent over the wire.

Pay for your own damn patent.

[ottffssent]

If the patent office is unable to properly review patent applications because of a lack of funding, have the corporations filing patents pay to have them reviewed. Patents that is, not THEIR patents per se.

If the patent office properly reviewed every patent, an enormous backlog would inevitably result. This would pressure companies to do something about it because their pet patents would not be reviewed until years after they were filed. The obvious recourse is to pay to have their patents reviewed. This has obvious problems of favoritism, so companies should be given the option of 'donating' money to the USPTO to have patents reviewed. Note, not their own. Corporate donations would be anonymised by being put into a big pool of available cash (by government agents not affiliated with the USPTO). Therefore, the individuals most affected by the lack of sufficient funding (companies that wouldn't get their patents) would provide the necessary funding for purely selfish reasons. Another victory for capitalism. USPTO employees could be paid a reasonable salary and be motivated to do their job well by pay raises and other options (read: treated like real employees), all on the companies' tab.

This would also help the lone entrepreneur (read: person-without-enormous-corporate-financial-backin g). Because the corporate donations would improve the quality of patent review, the entrepreneur would be assured a more fair evaluation of his or her work.

This system combines the central idea of capitalism (you pay what you consider reasonable for a service rendered) with the traditional idea of the patent office (government protection of ideas) while avoiding many of the current flaws in the patent application process (rubber-stamp approval of rediculous patents).

Unforntunately...

[jcr]

The bigger a company is, the *more* likely they are to cave in and pay up on a bullshit patent.

Quite simply, it costs money to defend yourself in cuort, even when you're absolutely right. As long as Graphon's shakedown is cheaper than going to court, AT&T is *very* likely to pay the bastards.

-jcr

VNC might pre-date patent application

[LocalLinuxLobbyist]

When I submitted this story, I mentioned that VMware, VNC, Wine, Wabi, and Citrix Metaframe might all pre-date the patent application. The initial patent application date was June 17, 1994, so VMware looks to be too new, but I just checked the source tree of VNC version 3.3.3 and found 339 files dated April 27, 1994. That's not conclusive, of course (we'd need to see the cvs history), but it at least hints at the fact that VNC existed before the patent application. Wine, Wabi, and Citrix might also pre-date the 6/17/94 date.

Make a difference!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is an email I just sent to graphon:

==============================================
Hi,

Just because no one has ever patented the ability to breathe air, doesn't give me the right to do it. Your latest patenting of a CONCEPT you didn't invent, running remote X programs, is reason enough for me to cease all reviewing of your products and look elsewhere for my X Windowing products. You weren't recently bought out by microsoft, were you?

A former customer,
Your Name Here
Company Name
email@domain.com
==============================================

I think if people are more avid about taking a stand and letting companies know what they think, they will stop.

Defense against Micro$oft? Patent-left?

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Perhaps they patented it to keep Microsoft from cloning it and driving them out of business? Regardless:

Perhaps open source developers might want to try patenting their stuff and licensing the patent with the open source - payment is that you open-source anything that uses it (GPL model). Don't want to open your source? Negotiate a for-pay license with the patent holder. (If he doesn't want to play, like if you're Microsoft, you're S.O.L.)

Analogs of the other open-source licenses are left as an exercise for the reader.

Be sure to write your license so that if you've had to drag them into court (and thus incurred more cost) they can't just open the source to wiggle out, but have to settle for some bux first.

Not scary... For us.

[Adrian Harvey]

AOL would be nuts to use a technique like this, for one simple reason - SECURITY. Anyone who'se cycles are used to used to do work for the service provider has the ability to tamper with the process. They could return junk data, or altered data deliberately to mess with the system. As they weren't AOLs cycles to use anyway, they would have little recourse, and (if it were put to the uses the patent suggests) public content would be affected. A whole new way to crack AOL!!

Patent Claims

[Wanker]

This one is pretty scary. Normally after all the uproar dies down and the claims are read it's not too bad. This one really is.

Claim 1

1. A method for running an application as an X-Client so as to enable the application to be displayed with an X-Windows manager, the method comprising the steps of:

• launching a "WINDOWS/NT" session;

  I.e. starting a copy of Win98 inside VMware

• invoking an application from within the "WINDOWS/NT" session;

  I.e. starting up MS-Word

• monitoring output messages that are sent from the application;

  I.e. X-windows is constantly reading your mouse position

• determining that one of the monitored output messages is a graphical user interface command;

  I.e. you've just clicked your mouse and dragged it over your typo

• and when the monitored output message is a graphical user interface command, enabling an X-Windows manager program to act on the command, and informing the "WINDOWS/NT" device driver of results of the command that was acted on by the X-Windows manager program, wherein the enabling step includes converting the graphical user interface command from a "WINDOWS/NT" format into a format that is recognized by X-Windows manager program to enable the X-Windows manager program to act on the command.

  I.e. MS-Word now realizes that you've highlighted a selection of text.

I have to say of all the dubious patents we've seen floating by recently, this one takes the cake. They just patented running Windows apps. inside X-Windows. Neato.

However, if you don't launch an application from within Windows you're OK. And since IE is part of the operating system and not an application, you can freely browse the web in VMware without violating their patent. ;->

International Pressure?

[Dwonis]

I live in Canada. Other concerned people live outside the US. How can we put pressure on the US patent office (re: this)? Or the US government (re: DMCA)? Or the US court system (re: DOJ vs MS)?

I'm sick and tired of not being able to do things just because I don't live in the US. It affects me, whether or not I live in the US, and therefore I should have a say in what goes on in the US.

I suggested in an earlier post about forming a tech-related trade union over the internet. Read it.
--------
"I already have all the latest software."

Wine????

[jjr]

I heard that you can run a window application under wine and it is treated as a X application how long wine been around?

Re:& when 30 lawyers across nation sue you, what t

[Anonymous Coward]

But what do we do? When the system is so utterly fucked up that an ethical, law-abiding citizen has no defense against the IP tyrants, it forces anyone who wants come out alive to turn into criminals. Sad indeed.

This happened recently. The Los Angeles Riots following the acquittal of the LAPD officers. Rioting, looting, arson, assault, and the police were ordered to do... NOTHING (?!) but stand by and watch. THIS is where the anti-gun philosophy leave you to die. Fortunately for me, I was fully armed and guarded my store from rooftop. When the dust settled, MY store wasn't looted or damaged in any way. God bless the 2nd Amendment.

yeah..

[rbf]

Cool. I'm gonna patent sneezing. Then I'm gonna patent the idea of wiping your butt! Then we'll see how they feel about the rest of those stuipid patents!

Seriouslly now, what do these idiots think they are actually solving with patents?

AT&T owns VNC

[AIXadmin]

Yes, I know they GPL'ed it. But if Graphon is going to sue someone for patent infringment they will most likely go after AT&T. AT&T has deep pockets, and has the potential to hit back preety hard.

Or, can they sue AT&T?


Cheers,
WFE
===========

Re:Faralon...

[Anonymous Coward]

Quarterdeck Software had a competing product which did the same thing...

... but there's still prior art

[charlie]

Back when I was at SCO, SCO acquired IXI. One of IXI's products did exactly that -- effectively turned a windows app into an X client displaying on an X server running on a UNIX box. I saw this thing running (and dammit, I can't remember the product name) in 1993 or 1994 on SCO Open Desktop.

Moreover, it might be worth digging up an old copy of DesqView/X to see if that could be cited as prior art. (Runs an application on a PC that displays remotely on an X server? Check. 1992? Check.)

Prior Art: Ntrigue by Insignia

[defender]

hm...
at my work (CWI) we used to use (and still have) NTrigue from Insignia.
We use it to have people on SGI's and SUN's log in to our NTrigue server, where they are able to run NT 3.5 apps...
MicroSoft stopped the development by Insignia, so unfortunately there is no NT4 version :(

When you run NTtrigue you get your own dedicated NT display, unlike VNC...

--

--
Dutch Linux Users Group

right....

[periscope]

I'm off to patent "A method of human interaction resulting in intense pleasure and possible offspring". Anyone caught having sex without the $20 per time license fee will be sued by this administration.

X Window System

[Christian Smith]

The claims refer to displaying on something called X-Windows. This obviously doesn't apply to me, as my Linux and Solaris box run something called "The X Window System", which specifically ISN'T X-Windows.

Would a technicality like this render the patent invalid for "The X Window System"?

Back Oriface (BO2K) does this as well

[Anonymous Coward]

You can remotely administer Windows from UNIX using BO2K. Apparently even graphic apps.

An organisation to fight stupid patents

[pirkka]

Could one start a not-for-profit organisation to fight down stupid patents?

The organisation could fund itself by demanding money from patent owners to compensate for harm to society. Or something.

A while ago I read here (the best source for accurate info :) ) that a patent applicant has to offer all the prior art to the patent office. Now we all know this is impossible so why not sue them for breaking the rules?

I would happily give a few dollars to start a fund that would use the money to simply sue anyone with a stupid patent, and with any luck the org could soon continue on the winnings of round 1!

--
Pirkka

Moderate up! Review period for patents

[Anonymous Coward]

YES YES YES This is very important. Postal mail to your elected representatives. Call in to the media. Hell, even call the 'king of all media', HS.