Many of Apple's concepts such as icons stacks, parabolic zooming in panels and (most recently) widgets on media centers that they seem to feel are patentable are either unoriginal or just plain trivial.
The widgets on media center patent
The only thing in that patent filing we haven't implemented yet that I can see, though we have certainly already discussed it, is linking widgets to specific remote control buttons. Global shortcuts for widgets is already on our roadmap, though, and that's pretty much the same thing, just not specific to a t.v. remote. Really, it's a beyond trivial feature add.
addendum: so this leaves us in a really annoying situation of having to figure out how to work around this patent, unless Apple decides to be nice about it. That would be a nice change on their part, but I'm not sure I should hold my breath.
I've stayed away from the whole patent world long enough to forget exactly how one goes about alerting the USPTO about prior art ... and I wonder if they'd really even care.
Future society will look back upon us and cluck their tongue at how stupid we were for having let the patent system encroach upon things such as software on the one hand and become so baroque a system as to be generally lacking usefulness on the other. =/
16 comments:
You did see that it was filed in mid-2006, right?
Hi Aaron, just a few points:
- yeah it's stupid
- yeah, you could probably get it overturned if you spent enough time and money
- it's not worth it unless they're suing you over it
- Apple aren't going to sue KDE, there's no money it in and you guys are allies anyway.
- they might trot this out if you sue them over something else.
- I assume you don't plan to do that.
Yeah, the whole system is stupid, but it is what it is and any commercial company that doesn't play the game according to the rules that exist is doing a disservice to their shareholders.
Changing the rules would be a good thing and probably welcomed by almost everyone, including Apple.
Hope you enjoyed linux.conf.au.
Cheers,
Bruce
I don't understand the US patent system as here in Europe software patents aren't allowed. However it appears in the US anyone is allowed to patent anything and then the defendant has to prove prior art? Much like guilty until proven innocent, for example how is stacks any different than the 'Quick file browser' applet that can be added to kicker in kde 3?
fuck patents, fuck m$, fuck apple
VIVA GNU/Linux and KDE!
I can understand how this could demotivate you to work on this idea, but how about sketching it out for other parties to implement for the billions of potential users for which software patents are not a problem?
As they say over here, why piss on our chips just cos you dropped your own?
Aaron,
Here in Brazil we don't have software patents, just like Europe. Dunno about Canada.
I was wondering if developing and hosting it in a software-patent-free country can be a solution for KDE.
USA tends to try to make people believe its laws should be obeyed around the globe, what is evidently false and wrong.
But KDE currently has no patent policy. Being a brazilian citizen and a KDE developer myself, I don't give an rat's @$$ to US sw patents, as they can't bite me, but maybe it's time to have guidelines about this matter.
"Here in Brazil we don't have software patents, just like Europe. Dunno about Canada."
AFAIK, only the USA allows software patents. The US is also the only country with draconian copyright laws that obviously favour big media, so...
OK, first, a small disclaimer: I know I'm going to irritate some who are not in the US (heck, even
some who are...), but....
::getting behind lectern::
With regards to US Patent Law and international jurisdiction, most countries have trade and investment treaties with the United States that make enforcement of trademarks and patents in the US binding in other countries.
Mind you, this does not necessarily mean that the governments that sign these treaties will completely enforce them unless heavily pressured by companies that have "Intellectual Property" at stake through heavy handed pressure on the State Department in Washington.
::leaving lectern::
Now, on to better things... Here's the link to information about the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences:
http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/dcom/bpai/index.html
here in Paraguay no one gives a rat ass to software patents too ;)
Apple has leached too much off the open source community to turn on us with patents and not get devoured.
The second the general public even knows we /exist/, their business model's shot.
If I were you, I wouldn't work around it. The law ought to be on your side, so just carry on ignoring the patent.
No software patents allowed in Europe eh?
http://webshop.ffii.org
http://xrl.us/bfxex
http://xrl.us/bfxez
Not only does the EPO grant software patents, it is so keen on this form of theft that even when an examiner finds prior art and rejects an application, the EPO's appeal boards will overturn that rejection:
http://www.ffii.org.uk/archives/28
(IIRC, the examiner found some IBM stuff describing this 'invention', but not the X consortium's ICCCM.)
"With regards to US Patent Law and international jurisdiction, most countries have trade and investment treaties with the United States that make enforcement of trademarks and patents in the US binding in other countries."
A US patent is valid and enforceable only in the US.
With patents, an unenforced patent is no patent at all. In reality the various big tech companies build up a patent arsenal not in hopes of actually enforcing them, but to ensure Mutually Ensured Destruction should anyone try to use a patent. So we actually have less to fear from an Apple or Microsoft, and more to fear from some small company (a rouge terrorist cell, to continue our nuclear metaphor) that has little to lose.
So hopefully KDE can just hide under Nokia's wing and not have to worry about such silly patents. Undoubtedly Apple is breaking some Nokia patents.
"With patents, an unenforced patent is no patent at all. In reality the various big tech companies build up a patent arsenal not in hopes of actually enforcing them, but to ensure Mutually Ensured Destruction should anyone try to use a patent."
Unfortunately, that is a myth and not what they actually do with their patent portfolios:
http://xrl.us/bfxpc
Patents can also be used to deter users considering adopting FOSS alternatives and in reality, especially at the portfolio level, they are used by the big tech. companies in various ways - direct and indirect - in order to realise as much of their value as possible.
"One hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the most skillful. Seizing the enemy without fighting is the most skillful." -- Sun Tzu.
"I'm not running a litigation shop, I'm running a licensing shop." -- Marshall Phelps, Microsoft VP of IP, father of the "IBM tax", and master of the art of patent war.
Ian Monroe writes, "So hopefully KDE can just hide under Nokia's wing and not have to worry about such silly patents. Undoubtedly Apple is breaking some Nokia patents."
What you're saying here is that it's big companies like Nokia and Apple who get to decide what software developers can work on. That if you stray anywhere near their trivial rephrasings of prior art dressed up as "inventions", they'll sue you into bankruptcy even though those "inventions" have no merit whatsoever.
And if you believe that Nokia would play Lord Protector with KDE, you're deluded. If you take their excuses as to why they don't support stuff like Ogg Vorbis/Theora at face value, it becomes evident that they wouldn't show up in court for anything other than stuff they actually own or for which they have any kind of liability.
If Apple start waving their lawyers at, say, the developers of K3B or KOffice (or insert any other Free Software project), I seriously doubt Nokia would get involved. In fact, there's nothing to stop Nokia from waving their own lawyers at those projects and stating that any supposedly infringed patents just aren't the ones covered by grants in the GPLv3 licensing for Qt.
Of course, the only way to make the madness stop is to reject software, business and user interface patents, and not to pander to extended patentability lobbyists like Nokia, but I suppose some people have to keep joining the dots before they eventually see the big picture in all its glory.
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