Red Hat Enlists Community Help To Fight Patent Trolls 166
Stickster writes "Back in 2007, IP Innovation filed a lawsuit against Red Hat and Novell. IP Innovation is a subsidiary of Acacia Technologies. You may have heard of them — they're reported to be the most litigious patent troll in the USA, meaning they produce nothing of value other than money from those whom they sue (or threaten to sue) over patent issues. They're alleging infringement of patents on a user interface that has multiple workspaces. Hard to say just what they mean (which is often a problem in software patents), but it sounds a lot like functionality that pretty much all programmers and consumers use. That patent was filed back on March 25, 1987 by some folks at Xerox/PARC, which means that prior art dated before then is helpful — and art dated before March 25, 1986 is the most useful. (That means art found in a Linux distribution may not help, seeing as how Linus Torvalds first began the Linux kernel in 1991.) Red Hat has invited the community to join in the fight against the patent trolls by identifying prior art. They are coordinating efforts through the Post Issue Peer to Patent site, which is administered by the Center for Patent Innovations at the New York Law School, in conjunction with the US Patent and Trademark Office."
Amiga 1000... (Score:5, Informative)
...in 1985. Next question!
Apple's Switcher (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Sorry, but... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Apple's Switcher (Score:2, Informative)
Depending on how you define workspace, Windows1.0 also qualifies as prior art.
Or you can look to the history of the physical facsimile of software "multiple workplaces," the KVM, invented sometime in the early 80s and ubiquitous by the late 80s.
MS-DOS (Score:5, Informative)
There's a subtle, but possibly important, distinction between Apple's Switcher, DESQview and the AmigaOS mentioned by an earlier poster. The patent is said to apply to "multiple workspaces." Switcher and DESQview switched between workspaces. Although the underlying OS only supported a single application in a workspace, a workspace could also contain things like Macintosh Desk Accessories. AmigaOS supported multiple applications running in a single workspace.
Haven't we had this since VTs? (Score:5, Informative)
Surely virtual terminals (TTYs 0—7 and onwards, switchable using control and Fx) count as workspaces, and have been around since Xenix (the forerunner to SCO UNIX) in 1980-85ish?
If it's a truly graphical thing they're after, the Amiga is an example of prior art IIRC. However, it's such an obvious idea that it shouldn't be patentable, and the fact America's patent system is so broken is truly depressing.
Re:Amiga 1000... (Score:3, Informative)
You beat me to it (Score:4, Informative)
Was just searching for the date:
"DESQview was released in July 1985, four months before Microsoft introduced the first version of Windows. It was widely thought to be the first program to bring multitasking and windowing capabilities to DOS, but in fact there was a predecessor, IBM's failed TopView, released in 1984, from which DESQview inherited the popup menu."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DESQview [wikipedia.org]
From the the entry for TopView:
"TopView ran in real mode on any x86 processor and could run well-behaved MS-DOS programs in windows. "
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TopView [wikipedia.org]
So I guess there's plenty of prior art.
Of course, there's MVS also which came out in 1974 IIRC...not sure if that counts, tho.
Re:Amiga 1000... (Score:3, Informative)
Graphical Environment Manager (Score:3, Informative)
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphical_Environment_Manager [wikipedia.org])
This product was used in Ventura Publisher (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ventura_publisher [wikipedia.org])
Old and new patent rules... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Amiga 1000... (Score:5, Informative)
Yup. And you could grab the titlebar of a screen and drag it down, and it would reveal the workspace behind it, upscaled to the resolution of the forward screen.
One of my favourite "blow friends away" demos was to pull a screen halfway down with F18 Interceptor running behind it, and then type in a word processor (or whatever) in the forward screen with no slowdown in either the game or the application.
That computer had its quirks, but it was powerful way beyond its time.
DG
It didn't do multiple workspace (Score:3, Informative)
I used to have an Atari with GEM, didn't do multiple workspace. That's what this patent is about.
Re:Umm... (Score:2, Informative)
By "TFA" I mean this: http://www.post-issue.org/user-interface-with-multiple-workspaces-for-sharing-display-system-objects-3 [post-issue.org]
Oberon and Smalltalk? (Score:3, Informative)
The Oberon Project started in 1985 and I think it had independent screenspaces from the start. Smalltalk was developed in the early 70's at PARC, and and I'm not sure what the relationship is with the disputed patent, but independent screen space management was a feature.
While UNIX didn't have X-Windows in the early very early 80's, it did have multiple screens, virtual TTY's, and multiple screenspaces. The extensive documentation that came with SystemV rel3.x told how to create applications in C that used independent screen space. All Xenix, Cromix, Esix and Kodak versions included this documetation, and so did the official Bell documentation.
Re:Amiga 1000... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:It's Xerox Rooms, surely? (Score:1, Informative)
The game "Ultima" or "Ultimaja" in the early 80's (Apple Lisa) had "time portals" (i.e. "doorways") which jumped you from the primitive time(castles, ships, and dragons" to the "devils time", to the current time with "airplanes", to the future time (space ships to planet X (Separate floppy)). Each time was essentially its own workspace. Each workspace was "object oriented" as the goal was to kill/sail/fly/travel-around "objects". The terrain had land and ocean. Your avatar moved around a Cartesian grid. You also went through a doorway to get into the castles (Separate workspace). You would try to bribe the castle inhabitants for information.
The game "Castle Wolfenstein" also had levels and was out in the early 80's. I think you went through doorways to get from one level to another.
Re:Old and new patent rules... (Score:3, Informative)
Specifically, patents filed before June 8th, 1995 are granted a life of 20 years from earliest U.S. filing to which priority is claimed (excluding provisionals) or 17 years from issue, which ever is longer. After June 8th 1995, patents have a life of 20 years from earliest U.S. filing to which priority is claimed (excluding provisionals).
See also here [wikipedia.org]