OSNews

"where you can minimise windows into an icon on the desktop"

Or Windows 3.1 for that matter

This is not minimising a window to an icon on the desktop - it sure does sound like it, but it is not. That's why I said "reminds me of" in the teaser.

What this patent application details is how when you minimise, say, a browser window showing OSNews.com, a 'clipping' will be made of that window (by default, the top left section) which will then be placed on the desktop; not a scaled image of the entire window. So, live previews in Vista, minimising to a desktop icon, progress icons in a taskbar, they are not the same as what is being described here.

Please, read the article before commenting. The Ars article CLEARLY describes the behaviour.

While this idea is kind of interesting, it is of course ridiculous something like this can be patented in the first place, I agree with many of the other posters here on that issue. Software patents like this, lots of them coming from Microsoft and Apple, do nothing to foster competition. In fact, they stifle it.

Edited 2007-07-17 11:57

It's just an evolution of the original concept. Where as in 1990 the window minimized into a generic icon, today it minimizes into a live-view clipping. Mobile phone might have screens and no wires, but they still have numbers and call people, same as 100 years ago.

"Mobile phone might have screens and no wires, but they still have numbers and call people, same as 100 years ago."

Warning, Car Analogy Ahead
Flying cars might have jet engines and no wheels, but they still have seats and carry people, same as 100 years ago.

That's how we as humans advance, by improving what we have and what we know and building on top of it little by little.

Edited 2007-07-17 14:06

Is this a little like a mixup of the features of the OS X dock (status reporting in the icons) and the thumbnailing features of other OSes.

It seems a pretty simple evolution of the ideas present in all other OSes, and especially considering this sort of work was being put into GNOME (similar intention, different implementation) it seems a bit stupid that it can be patented.

To be honest though, it's not that great compared to the dock for instance. The dock seems a lot better than this idea would be.

Exciting. Instead of scaling the window to the desired size, just show a piece of it. Simpler and less effective.

I should patent a system for promoting movies by distributing a low-quality version. Instead of downsampling the resolution, I'll just crop it to the upper-left corner and only include the sound for the first fraction of the movie. It's simpler and less effective than downsampling, but more importantly, nobody's been dumb enough to think of it before.

In general, yes. Your invention, your rules -- for 20 years, at least.

Yes, but it isn't an invention, yet. It's just an idea.

Except ideas aren't inventions.

Pardon, but there is a *GIANT* difference between a person(s) coming up with a really cool idea which enhances their product and doing what the likes of ELOAS does.

One invests money into R&D to create technology that enhances their own products to have a competitive edge over rivals - patents protect that idea from being ripped off.

The other hand, you have scum sucking roaches such as ELOAS who are merely patent harvesting lawyers coming up with far reaching generalised descriptions for so-called 'inventions'. They then gang up on companies with a band of lawyers hoping that the mere presence will scare the company into submission without challenge.

Microsoft seem to be 'getting in' on the patent harvesting industry - I have no problems trademarking names and so forth - but really, when you patenting like the above, you end up in a situation where not only those which directly copy, but those who might even *appear* to have a similar action, come under the spotlight of lawyers who litigate at the drop of a hat.

Edited 2007-07-17 11:37

Again, they are patenting these things to PROTECT themselves against companies like ELOAS in the future. If they didn't get a patent for this, someone else would have when they implemented it and sued them, and they would probably win because the US patent system sucks.

If that is the case, then it's fine (and we actually know that Bill Gates himself doesn't hold software patents in high regard). However, in order to convince everyone of their good faith, perhaps they should get Steve Ballmer to stop making veiled patent threats against Linux and FOSS...

In general, yes. Your invention, your rules -- for 20 years, at least.

But it's with things like this that the notion of "software inventions" breaks down.

Let's say you're a mechanical engineer and you come up with a new way to make, say, a snack vending machine. You file a patent for it. In your patent application you would have to supply great detail about your invention, and exactly how it works, and so on. Every country has slightly different wordings, but in general the detail should be sufficient to allow somebody else to go away and build your invention purely from your drawings and description.

For software, the equivalent requirement would be at least the algorithms used, if not the actual source code itself.

Furthermore, you would never see a patent granted just on the *idea* of a magic box that gives you snacks when you put money into it. And yet this is what happens in the software world all the time. Rather than patenting a specific *implementation* of an idea, we instead see patents being granted which cover *all* possible ways of doing something.

If software were held to the same standards as physical objects, I don't think so many people would have a problem with them. Then the person with the best implementation of a specific idea would still be able to benefit from it. But instead we have the absurd situation whereby, to take an example off the top of my head, Red Hat can't ship an NTFS driver due to Microsoft patents, even though no-one has any idea how Microsoft's implementation for reading and writing to NTFS actually works.

All in all I'm very glad to live in a country that takes a sensible view with regard to software patents: they're simply not allowed. Rule Britannia!

Edited 2007-07-17 11:42

In general, yes. Your invention, your rules -- for 20 years, at least.

Yes but it is not MS's invention they are just lifting prior art from the history of the Unix desktop. So the patent is invalid - got a couple of million dollars to defeat it in court.

The patent system is broken.

Fine... the problem is it is not your invention. There is no such thing as "my invention". You cannot find a single thing which is solely one person's invention.

If it can be invented it has been done before. Or put differently. Everything is and has prior art.

What a patently ridiculous statement to make. There are obviously a great many inventions that had no prior art - a simple look at the level of technological advancement over the last 200 years demonstrates that quite simply. Not only that, it is offensive to anyone who genuinely has invented something and belittles their achievements.

I really don't think I need to add anything further, and I don't know why you would add such a silly comment, unless it constitutes very well hidden sarcasm on your part.

Mention one invention without any kind of prior art in any sense.

The bad thing is that there the EPO also granted a lot of Software patents with a judicial base that can be enforced as soon as Software patents are legal in the EU.

Which they never will be.

Software patents died in june/july 2006. They are not valid in EU even if software patents became a reality, which is not going to happen for quite a few years. It is not even being discussed anymore. That battle is over (for now).

"Software patents died in june/july 2006. They are not valid in EU even if software patents became a reality, which is not going to happen for quite a few years. It is not even being discussed anymore. That battle is over (for now)."

That only works if you are prepared to ignore interoperability with a whole country when Apple;Microsoft are based there.

Let me rephrase:

Software patents died inside EU in june/july 2006.

In regard to USA software patents are mostly irrelevant due to recent court rulings rendering most software patents invalid (which is why nobody wants to go to court).

My question to every U.S. citizen: Do you like the fact that ideas like this get patented?

My answer as a U.S. citizen: No, I do not like it.

Or even better, how about this one: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070717-microsoft-patents-the...



Yes, they are.

<Sure, it looks like an interesting concept, nothing revolutionary, but interesting.

My question to every U.S. citizen: Do you like the fact that ideas like this get patented?

For me, this is just another example of how sick software patents are.>


I am against software patents but the thing about this that is the most annoying is that I would be supprised if microsoft ever uses this.

That being said, the only reason they patented this is to keep others from competing against them using that concept.

It should most certainly be illegal to patent something you have no intention of ever using only to stifle competition.

I could be wrong about this, but it just sounds fishy to me.

Edited 2007-07-17 20:59

It makes me wonder if all MS patents claims that we hear about when linux distro signs a deal with MS are build on such patents, what if MS will get this patent before KDE team will release KDE4 and those extenders will be very similar to MS interface? Will they have a valid reason to sue KDE?

No they will not, every line of code in a public source repository counts as published, even if it's not in the main branch. And fortunately those revision control systems are really good at tracking which code went in at what time.
I know the US patent system is a bit fscked up, but that seems to be mainly because applications don't get checked for validity of its claims properly. No patents can be filed on previously published concepts, so this and many many other stuff already realized in some window manager or the other cannot be claimed as invention by Microsoft - they simply didn't come up with it first. Now the responsibility is with the patent agencies to dismiss their intellectual property claims as invalid. In either case, people WILL switch. How is anyone (including US patent system or the DMCA) gonna stop them?

That's good to hear, but will it also stop MS from spreading the news that another patent they own was stolen by "linux" ?

Of course not- but who cares? They will fail in court and people will simply stop using their products in favour of better alternatives...
Reality is when you don't wake up after getting twitched. They'll soon wake up... by christmas at teh latest

No. It's to protect themselves from getting sued if they use it.

Yes, although I haven't read the article yet, as soon as I saw the words 'iconify' I immediately thought of RISC OS's Pinboard's feature.

Yes, although I haven't read the article yet, as soon as I saw the words 'iconify' I immediately thought of RISC OS's Pinboard's feature.

Yeah, until you were to actually read the article and realise that it is not the same as iconify.

Yeah, until you were to actually read my post and realise that I never said it was the same as RISC OS's. I just said it made me THINK of RISC OS's iconify. ;-)

Yeah, until you were to actually read my post and realise that I never said it was the same as RISC OS's. I just said it made me THINK of RISC OS's iconify. ;-)

pwnd.

Excusez-moi . +1, too.

Edited 2007-07-17 13:29

"This is kind of similar to a feature iv been using in RISC OS for 15 years, where the window minimises into an icon to the side of the pinboard."

Except that these are actually live windows, and not icons. So I guess that may be a bit different.

And ArthurOS / RISC OS too.

Which makes it hard for Microsoft to enforce. Which is fine. They are most likely applying for it to protect themselves, like with almost all their other patents.

Also important to remember this is merely a patent application... Not a granted patent (which some people posting here seems to think).

All they need are some lawyers and they can pick who they want to go after. Then they have to go through the mess of having to get their own lawyers and defeat this in court.

Very bad thing when the court systems can be used as a tool by the wealthy to oppress folks. The founding fathers did what they could to try to keep the legal system from being this way, but even their ideas are being rejected (current patent law is perfect example of this).

I'm actually bemused by sappyvcv constant posting about Microsoft protecting Microsoft by saying that Microsoft is protecting itself, not that I'm not saying its true. But if *prior art* exists and it definitely does in this instance, isn't Microsoft less able to defend itself as its legitimizing, an idea that is already *obvious* or an *extension* of an idea.

The patent system is broken so they probably will get the patent granted, prior art or not. Having a patent does make it much less likely they can get sued for it. So I'm not sure why you are bemused.

I suspect strongly that, Microsoft is hoping to have deep enough pockets to pay of the patent trolls, to make them the only legitimate OS...If that ever happens well thats the end of competition.

I don't follow what you're trying to say.

Sorry. The idea of patents in this instance is an *original idea* is worth money. This patent has lots of *prior art* and isn't original. If a company has prior art, and we see that lots of open-source companies are being invested in becuase of the *potential* that they possess prior art. If the *prior art* is patented Microsoft have *no* defense that the idea is not original becuase *they* patented the idea, so they must *believe* it is. They can only defend that there idea is *different*. I suspect because they have a stack of cash they can just pay them off, so they are the only ones who can use an unoriginal idea.

Listen. If they have the patent, it's a HUGE argument point in a court battle. That's the reality of the broken system. Prior art almost becomes irrelevant unless it's Microsoft suing someone else.

It doesn't matter if it's original. It's not.

"Listen. If they have the patent, it's a HUGE argument point in a court battle. That's the reality of the broken system. Prior art almost becomes irrelevant unless it's Microsoft suing someone else."

I understand there is no justice. I understand that even the very idea of patents is flawed, and there implementation is too.

But the thing I don't understand is why any capitalist country would want to legitimize a monopoly. I was merely pointing out how even an unsuccessful patent claim by Microsoft, would still benefit Microsoft.

If we want to talk about patents *if* the idea was a *legitimate* one, and your arguing simply by patenting it, it is. We see a possible good feature essentially a smaller version of the *actual* application showing only the critical parts. It limits several things, extensions on these patents; how you interact with these views, but then I'm unclear as to how an extension of an idea can be patented or how this affects applications that take advantage of these ideas.

More importantly in a world where we see interoperability and cross-platform becoming the norm, not the exception. This feature which is tied to a platform through patents, even though the application is what is actually implementing it, but then I'm unclear how a patent built on another patent works. Although I imagine people in dark suits will be visiting people who do just this, and we will hear nothing of it.

But then I'm confused how a Monopoly that *sets* standards of how applications interact with the Desktop, can actually patent any of it, or how any of it can be original.

Edited 2007-07-17 15:26