Patent Lawsuit Filed Against Red Hat and Novell

[spinynorman]

IP Innovation LLC has just filed a patent infringement claim against Red Hat and Novell. It was filed October 9 in Texas. Where else? The patent troll magnet state. The patent relates to a User interface with multiple workspaces for sharing display system objects.

 

And now let's play, where's Microsoft? You know, like where's Waldo? Betcha he's in the tree's leaves somewhere if we look close enough. We had our first hint when Steve Ballmer said in his speech the other day that he figured other folks besides Microsoft would want Red Hat and FOSS to pay them for their patents. Remember? Is he a prophet or merely well informed? Or is there more to this? When I lay out all the research, you can decide...

 

Details at Groklaw.

[darkscot]

A copy of the actual patent can be seen here:

http://www.google.com/patents?id=3tUkAAAAE...mp;dq=5,072,412

Having read it, albeit briefly, it seems to me that the holders would have good case to go after Microsoft for Internet Explorer. It to uses workspaces with forward and back 'doors'. Not to mention the snazzy new Vista desktop!

I am sure we will see M$ leaping to the the aid if their pals at Novell to make sure this fails and IP Innovation don't come after them next (or maybe not? ;) )

[Ixthusdan]

*yawn*

 

Of course Microsoft is behind it. They have not had an original idea since Gates left Apple.

[ianw1974]

When you see guys leaving Microsoft and going to this company that is doing it, then yeah, Microsoft is definitely behind it. So much for Novell, considering they are supposed to be in collaboration with Microsoft so that they don't get sued for supposed IP issues.

 

I bet Novell are wondering why they paid Microsoft all that money now. Little clause: Microsoft said they wouldn't sue Novell. However, it doesn't stop some other company suing them, even if it is a subsidiary of Microsoft!!!!!

[Steve Scrimpshire]

I really don't understand how 'software patents' are supposed to work. They can 'patent' the final output of a program so that no one can duplicate it, even with their own innovation? How complicated does your output have to be?

[Ixthusdan]

That is a good question. I think that I read somewhere that one may patent a code, but not a result. After all, there is more than one way to code a result, isn't there? (At least I hope there is!)

[iphitus]

That is a good question. I think that I read somewhere that one may patent a code, but not a result. After all, there is more than one way to code a result, isn't there? (At least I hope there is!)

 

Lookin at it purely mathematically, there'll be a "best way" to perform a task. A single way that will be more optimised than any other routine that does the same thing on the same hardware.

[RadioEar]

I have to agree at this point that software can look alike and perform in the same manor. The name of the software and the order the functions are presented often are the only difference from one software to another and can be patented.

 

The coding of an OS for the most part is similar from one OS to another. After all we are coding to the same processor and hardware. But it is the OS that offers the differences, of course, to applications. Today, we write apps to run in the environment of the OS.

 

After saying that, I would think an application would have to be pretty remarkable or distinctive to file lawsuits over software. What it comes to really is software appearance, and Micro$oft is good at scrabbling over that.

Edited October 16, 2007 by RadioEar

[scoonma]

Lookin at it purely mathematically, there'll be a "best way" to perform a task. A single way that will be more optimised than any other routine that does the same thing on the same hardware.

 

OT: You're right of course, as long as the ideal solution exists (travelling salesman problem,...) and as long as it's a reasonable effort to find it on given hardware. Chess programs and database problems came to my mind - and finally an old movie you probably know, too: Wargames. The optimal solution to the problem was to stop the program from further computing...

 

It is a widespread idea that mathematics can describe or actually is identical to the underlying essence of nature, of our world. OTOH, how could you code an emotion?

[aRTee]

The whole problem with software patents are that they are about protecting an idea, not the implementation of an idea.

 

Contrary to regular patents (which are in this kind of context called hardware patents), where the idea is not protectable, but the implementation is.

 

Essentially, for a patent, your invention must be:

1- novel (i.e. any prior implementation will invalidate it)

2- non-trivial, non-obvious to someone skilled in the art (i.e. no matter how clever some invention is, if anyone who is skilled in the same field were to face the same problem, he would come up with the same solution in little time; that doesn't mean that if you see something and you immediately see how it works that it shouldn't be/have been patentable - it should be non-obvious in a world that hasn't seen the solution yet, in that hypothetical world it must be difficult to come up with)

3- useful, have industrial application (not sure how this is limited / how this is determined)

 

From this it is derived that the thing you normally patent (i.e. you get temporary monopoly rights to) must be a solution to a problem, i.e. an implementation to solve some blocking thing, that makes something useful possible.

 

If you look at the reasoning, it's not too bad: a patent means you get an exclusive right to a specific solution, in return for disclosing your 'hi-tech', so that in time it will not get lost but be available to all.

If it's really new (requirement nr 1) it should not be a problem if you have the sole rights to it for some time - without you/your invention, the idea is that no one would have it anyway.

If you get this kind of reward, it will motivate you to disclose your developments, and do more developments. You stand to gain money for your developments, and the patent system will enable you to capitalise on your investment.

 

Without patents, if you invest and develop novel and non-trivial solutions, what will stop competitors from copying your product as soon as it hits the market? They don't have this investment to recoup, so they can be much cheaper. So you go out of business, and the quick copyers get to make money, as long as there are some new developers from time to time.

So copiers have an unfair advantage: no high investments, easy money. Original solutions makers are penalised and would likely try to keep things under wraps, possibly leading to loss of knowledge (see the art of violin making that was lost when Stradivarius died), which means big setbacks for humanity...

So that's not good for advancement of science.

 

With patents, those who invest in creating smart solutions are able to get protection, and if someone comes up with a different way to solve a specific problem, they get to have a patent on their implementation.

Which is ok, they also invested in their solution, and if theirs is simpler, and therefor cheaper to develop, or was found quicker, more luck to them.

Good to push innovating companies.

 

 

What is missing from the requirements for patentability is that if something didn't take any investment to invent/come up with, why should you be able to protect it?

 

Now to software patents....

Here, the implementation itself is already protected by copyright, and usually not available (closed source).

So what is protected is the idea, not the implementation.

A UI where one can click a button...?

Or where one can drag and drop?

All ideas, there's nothing about implementation.

 

The stupid thing is, as soon as you ask any software developer: can you write some code that does this or that, they can.

And the investment is similar to all competing parties: just some development time (may not be trivial depending on the functionality).

So there is no unfair advantage to anyone copying anything - they face the same investment cost!!!

 

So there should be no patent protection for such things.

 

On the other hand, if you look at MP3, it really takes a lot of investment to figure out how to do that kind of lossy compression and still end up with something acceptable.

I'm not talking about the implementation or the algorithm (algorithms are not patentable), but it takes a lot of research into psychoacoustics to figure out how to do your filtering and signal discrimination to compress without deteriorating the listening experience.

I'm not sure how one can protect such investments...

[scoonma]

On the other hand, if you look at MP3, it really takes a lot of investment to figure out how to do that kind of lossy compression and still end up with something acceptable.

I'm not talking about the implementation or the algorithm (algorithms are not patentable), but it takes a lot of research into psychoacoustics to figure out how to do your filtering and signal discrimination to compress without deteriorating the listening experience.

I'm not sure how one can protect such investments...

 

We all can be glad MP3 was invented originally at Fraunhofer institute in this country - which gains mixed financing both from business customers *and* public authorities. In consequence of that there's no global patent warfare on it. I'm pretty sure the method of mp3 (de-)coding would not be as widespread if it were patented to the full extent; we had a multitude of similar but incompatible patented techniqes instead - together with lots of converting tools.

 

I consider research to be more fruitful when interchange of ideas and methods is less restricted. At the very moment big corporate money gets in, quality goes down the drain - because invention becomes an issue of making money, with marketing and the like much more important than product quality by itself. Bugs become features and many users open windows of deception instead of portals of perception now...

 

If you're clever enough to achieve real innovation you get your first payment in a currency of much higher value than gold coins or pay checks: fame. Money following that does not pose the same social and political problems than we have with software patents.

 

Why does GPL exist? If there were no patents of software, there wouldn't even be a need to defend the idea of free speech in terms of code.