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The information on Groklaw is not intended to constitute legal advice. While Mark is a lawyer and he has asked other lawyers and law students to contribute articles, all of these articles are offered to help educate, not to provide specific legal advice. They are not your lawyers.

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Red Hat Is Asking for Prior Art
Monday, February 16 2009 @ 03:39 PM EST

Red Hat could use our help finding prior art in connection with the patent infringement litigation brought by IP Innovation, LLC, a subsidiary of Acacia against Red Hat and Novell. It's supposed to go to trial in 2010, last I looked, in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. Where else? Here's where you go, the Peer-to-Patent site, to provide whatever you know or can find for them. Of course, you can comment here also, but do make sure to place all helpful information on the Peer-to-Patent site also.

We last updated the news on this case back in October, when we provided you the complete docket as of that date, including the complaint and other documents filed in the case, and you'll find some comments with prior art on the article we did when the lawsuit was announced in 2007.

Now, there is a need to go deeper. Let's break it down in more detail, to maximize usefulness.

The patent is for "user interface with multiple workspaces for sharing display system objects", for those of you who can safely read patents. If you'd like to help, here's what's needed:

The last category is the one where I think you'll be most helpful, because it might include your PhD thesis, for example, or a FOSS application the US Patent Office never heard of. Note prior comments before you submit any information, to avoid duplication.

It would be nice to get the tail pinned on this donkey once and for all.


  


Red Hat Is Asking for Prior Art | 158 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Red Hat Is Asking for Prior Art
Authored by: tknarr on Monday, February 16 2009 @ 04:05 PM EST

First thing I think of is the Conquest game from back in my VAX days in college. Multi-player, each player had a screen representing his view of the universe, which would show other players entering and leaving the game, changes in status of planets and such in real-time. It's history goes back to 1982.

[ Reply to This | # ]

OT Here
Authored by: SpaceLifeForm on Monday, February 16 2009 @ 04:33 PM EST


---

You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Corrections here
Authored by: SpaceLifeForm on Monday, February 16 2009 @ 04:34 PM EST
If any.


---

You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.

[ Reply to This | # ]

News Picks commentary here
Authored by: SpaceLifeForm on Monday, February 16 2009 @ 04:36 PM EST
Please note which article you are referencing,
and preferably include the URL.


---

You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Red Hat Is Asking for Prior Art
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, February 16 2009 @ 04:59 PM EST
Found this patent 5233687 that has the same title by the same people as patent
5,072,412.
5233687 references the earlier patent and is very similar.
Not sure what to make of this.
Can be found at free patents online
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/5233687.html

[ Reply to This | # ]

The NeWS Book
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, February 16 2009 @ 07:25 PM EST
On Google I found The NeWS Book
By James Gosling, David S. H. Rosenthal, Michelle J. Arden
ISBN 0387969152, 9780387969152

a quote from the example is telling about 1984 on page 8

At the same time, researchers of Stanford Carnegie-Mellon, and MIT began investigating a new approach to window systems: the window server, also referred to as a network-based window system. Window services allow application programs running on one machine to use windows on another machines display.
Two window servers were build, the Andrew window system at Carnegie-Mellon and the X window system at MIT, demonstrating the feasibility of window servers.
If google on "network-based window system" you will find more, like, "The first version of X-W was released in 1984, as the first network based window system.Actually the basic idea of the Project Athena at MIT was originated by another Standford's idea. The standalone GUI appeared even earlier."
/Arthur

[ Reply to This | # ]

...safely read patents??
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, February 16 2009 @ 08:01 PM EST
safely read patents? Please elucidate (explain).

[ Reply to This | # ]

This is so old that I don't have any refrences around ...
Authored by: PTrenholme on Monday, February 16 2009 @ 11:08 PM EST

but the patent does go on, at great length, talking about "workspaces" and "workspace organization." So I naturally think about IBM's APL, which used a workspace concept, and those workspaces contained objects (called "functons") that could be used in other workspaces as needed. There were, of course, methods available for examining a workspace's contents, etc.

This was, of course, well prior to the GUI metaphor, and the "display" was a APL specific CRT or TTY. (Actually, it was usually an IBM "Electric Typewriter" controlled by the computer with a special APL "ball" on the print-head.)

So, if someone has an old APL book, they might be able to point to some "prior art" related to the issue of "workspace," "workspace independence," and "object sharing."

And maybe IBM has a patent of two related to APL, eh?

Oh, another thought: Does the patent offer any more functionality (except the fancy icons) than can be achieved using the venerable (but still useful) EMACS system? That "display system" has been in active use since the Multics OS was developed at MIT. Does an EMACS "buffer" differ in any significant way from the patent's "workspace?" Within the limitations of the ASCII character set, almost anything claimed by the patent has probably been achieved using LISP and EMACS. When I retired several years ago, I junked most of my old computer stuff, but there may be active EMACS users who read Groaklaw. If so, they might be able to point to some additional "prior art."

---
IANAL, just a retired statistician

[ Reply to This | # ]

Red Hat Is Asking for Prior Art
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, February 17 2009 @ 07:03 AM EST
What about TopView or GEM?

GEM came out in 1983 see:
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Vista/6148/gem.html and TopView proceeded
it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TopView and
http://www.dvorak.org/blog/whatever-happened-to-ibms-topview/

Note with TopView you also had the capabilities built into the 3270 terminals to
view multiple application windows from multiple hosts in a text mode windowing
system.


[ Reply to This | # ]

I guess I miss something
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, February 17 2009 @ 08:32 AM EST
"Therefore, a display system object can be linked to several
workspaces"

IMO the garbage can in Apple's Mac (1984) is an
object that every workspace could use.

What do I miss?

[ Reply to This | # ]

Eastern District of Texas
Authored by: RFD on Tuesday, February 17 2009 @ 09:17 AM EST

We may see fewer patent litigation cases in the Eastern District of Texas after the Court of Appeals fot the Federal Circuit issued a Writ of Mandamus In re TS Tech USA.

Defendants should find it easier to obtain a change of venue.

---
Eschew obfuscation assiduously.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Red Hat Is Asking for Prior Art
Authored by: vadim on Tuesday, February 17 2009 @ 10:18 AM EST
If i remember correctly Xerox PARC folks had first release of Smalltalk
environment in 1976. Smalltalk used a MVC - model/view/controller GUI
paradigm. This allowed explicitly for and object (model) to have mutliple views
of it on the display. It seems to me that this technique covers flatly what is
described by the title of patent.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Red Hat Is Asking for Prior Art
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, February 17 2009 @ 10:45 AM EST
Multiple displays was, I think, fairly common with DesqView at that time.

If I recall correctly, SCO Xenix had multiple workspaces in the form of alt-F1
switching on P.C. type computers, as did, AT&T unix.

Right?

[ Reply to This | # ]

Borland's Side Kick
Authored by: capt.Hij on Tuesday, February 17 2009 @ 11:58 AM EST
Borland used to have a product called "Sidekick." It loaded itself into upper memory of a PC running DOS. When you hit a certain key combination it popped up a window which allowed you to work in that program and do things like manage your schedule or other tasks. The technique was fairly common back in those prehistoric days. I wrote applications that did the same thing. It was a way to organize different tasks in an operating system that did not easily allow you to partition different tasks.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Some 8085 development system
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, February 17 2009 @ 01:01 PM EST
In the 1986-1988 time frame, I ran across an 8085-based development system. It
was old then, so it will certainly be early enough to count as prior art. This
thing had two 8085s in it, one of which was attached to an in-circuit emulator,
and one of which was attached to a source-code editor. You could switch back
and forth between them with a hot key. So this was essentially two
"views" of your "workspace", which you could only display
one on the screen at a time.

It seems to me that the only thing that might kill this as prior art is that it
was in two different CPUs. But the patent would have to be very carefully
written to not be covered by that prior art, but still cover multiprocessor
PCs.

Sorry, I don't remember the name of the system or the manufacturer...

MSS2

[ Reply to This | # ]

CTOS Context Manager
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, February 17 2009 @ 01:40 PM EST
CTOS context manager might qualify. I recall it being a kind of virtual
workspace / terminal controller, in a weird CTOSious way. (Everything about
CTOS was weird, sometimes good weird, sometimes bad weird.) Unfortunately I
can't find a date for Context Manager's release; it might be old enough, as I'm
reasonably sure that CT built Context Manager and not Unisys. Unisys bought CT
in 1988 and it's plausible that Context Manager was two years older than that.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Is There Something Needed Before Prior Art?
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, February 17 2009 @ 03:12 PM EST

Back before this was raised before, there was an article posted here which carried links to a number of other sites which included an article which discussed the issue of scope. It had something to do with patenting types of fastener as an example, but I cannot seem to find the link again.

The way in which I rationalise what a patent is probably sounds very wrong to someone who actually knows from a legal standpoint what a patent is. I see it as a form of contract, one in which a party makes an agreement with the government to allow that party legal claim to an invention and the right to protect it under law. This contract is naturally negotiated, with the Patent Office acting on behalf of the government. The text of the patent is the equivalent of the text of a contract in that it is a written form of agreement describing what is is that they consider to be protected.

On the side of the party wanting the patent, they would ideally want to get away with as much as they can. With the Patent Office, they will try to limit what the patent protects such that it does not collide with existing patents and thus cause a conflict with other patent holders. Both sides negotiate to produce a definition of what the patent protects. This is the scope.

As I recall, this particular patent is the one that got kicked around for several years before being accepted by the Patent Office. Presumably this had something to do with the scope. I believe there was mention at the time that there was some sort of record of these goings on, but that it would cost to get a hold of it. My guess would be that this would show the negotiations over the scope and could, to one skilled in this particular field, show where the Patent Office was trying to draw the line and provide some clues as to where the boundary of the scope lies. Of course, I could be very wrong about that.

Now this may or may not be a correct interpretation of things, but I can see from the posts here that the same thing that occurred on the original article is happening again. I do not mean any disrespect here, but I think everyone is once again going off in their own directions with their own interpretations of what the language in the patent actually means. Something I did read somewhere (it might have been here) is that a patent can be less clearly expressed than a contract. If someone wanted to leave the reader totally confused as to what was actually being protected, they could probably achieve that as long as the Patent Office think they know what it means and it does not tread on anyone else's toes.

In essence, what I am saying is that there is a step missing here. Before trying to find prior art, surely it would be better to work out exactly what the patent is designed to cover. At least then it would be possible to work to a consistant notion of what the patent is about which would theoretically make it easier to identify what is or is not within the scope of the patent. Without this, what we will see is the same scattergun approach as before with replies that one person sees as perfectly justified based on their interpretation but which are dismissed by others who have equally dismissable ideas when viewed by others. Note that this is the second time this question has been asked here, so presumably the previous effort did not result in very much usable prior art.

I'm probably going to get flamed to death as a heretic here, but I thought the point was worth making. Perhaps if there are some patent lawyers hanging around that might be willing offer up a little advice on the subject they could suggest what the correct direction to go in with regards this sort of investigation of a patent. Is it a good idea to go wading straight in after prior art or are there other steps that should be followed first?

[ Reply to This | # ]

This is not infringment against Linux, but rather a specific distribution
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, February 17 2009 @ 03:46 PM EST

Since linux doesn't have any form of graphical user interface, this patent
clearly cannot refer to nor invalidate linux. It appears that the
distributions that bundle Gnome are in the line of fire, however. There may be
implications for KDE as well.

That said, if xerox or apple didn't do it first, I'd be surprised.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Red Hat Is Asking for Prior Art
Authored by: vruz on Tuesday, February 17 2009 @ 04:57 PM EST
Head over Heels, a game by Jon Ritman and Bernie Drummond, released in 1987,
originally for the ZX Spectrum home computer, although it was later ported to
other systems including Linux.

There's two characters, each character has a different world view on screen, and
can interact with objects existing in the room. When the game starts, the
characters are separated in different rooms. The user can switch between the
views (each view containing one or more characters and the available objects in
the room) at any given time. When the two characters are in the same room,
their worldview becomes the same, and it can be separate again when the
characters go different ways to other different rooms.

Wikipedia entry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head_Over_Heels_(game)
The newer remake:
http://retrospec.sgn.net/games/hoh/

Jon Ritman's HOH page:
http://www.jonritman.f2s.com/games/hoh/index.htm

Jon Ritman can be contacted at:
http://www.jonritman.f2s.com/contacts.htm



---
--- the vruz

[ Reply to This | # ]

Red Hat Is Asking for Prior Art
Authored by: vruz on Tuesday, February 17 2009 @ 05:25 PM EST
AmigaOS Workbench

The Amiga was a family of personal computers originally developed by Amiga
Corporation. Development on the Amiga began in 1982 with Jay Miner as the
principal hardware designer. Commodore International bought Amiga Corporation
and introduced the machine to the market in 1985.

With the Amiga computer, the name Workbench refers to the native graphical
interface file manager and application launcher of the Amiga Operating System
typically presented to users upon booting the Amiga. The Workbench was not
required to boot the Amiga or run other applications, but was a standalone
application listed in the startup-sequence script.

Amiga computer:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga

Wikipedia entry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workbench_(AmigaOS)

Screenshots of AmigaOS/Workbench 1.0, 1985
Copyright 1985
http://www.guidebookgallery.org/screenshots/amigaos10

Screenshots of AmigaOS/Workbench 2.x, 1991
Copyright 1984-1991
http://www.guidebookgallery.org/screenshots/amigaos204

Workbench preservation project:
http://www.gregdonner.org/workbench/

Workbench timeline:
http://www.gregdonner.org/workbench/os_versions.html

Workbench is the name given to both the core operating system software that is
not stored in the Kickstart ROM (the "Workbench disk"), and also the
native graphical shell for the Amiga computer. The Workbench environment does
not have to be loaded for software to run. In fact, to take over the Amiga
hardware and keep all memory and resources to themselves, many games boot
directly from Kickstart (using a custom bootblock on the floppy disk).
Amiga Workbench 1.3 (1988)

As the name suggests, the metaphor of a workbench is used, rather than a
desktop; directories are depicted as drawers, executable files are tools, data
files are projects and GUI widgets are gadgets. In many other aspects the
interface resembles Mac OS, with the main desktop showing icons of inserted
disks and hard drive partitions, and a single menu bar at the top of every
screen. Unlike the Macintosh, the standard Amiga mouse has two buttons – the
right mouse button operates the pull-down menus, with a Macintosh-style
"release to select" mechanism.

A unique feature of Workbench is multiple screens. These are conceptually
similar to X Window System virtual desktops or workspaces, but are generated
dynamically by application programs as necessary. Each screen can have a
different resolution and colour depth. A gadget in the top-right corner of the
screen allows screens to be cycled — as the OS stores all screens in memory
simultaneously, redrawing is instantaneous. Screens can also be dragged up and
down by their title bars. On older Amigas this functionality was provided by the
custom chipsets specially designed for the platform, but since AmigaOS4 a new
technique is adopted and the screens are draggable in any direction. Drag and
drop between different screens is possible too.

Underlying the Workbench is the Intuition windowing system. This controls and
draws screens, windows and gadgets, and handles input from the keyboard and
mouse, passing messages to programs.
....
Workbench 2.0 also added support for public screens. Instead of the Workbench
screen being the only shareable screen, applications could create their own
named screens to share with other applications.


---
--- the vruz

[ Reply to This | # ]

Unix Screen Utility
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, February 18 2009 @ 04:39 AM EST
The "screen" programme is a way to multiplex several text-terminals
(eg login sessions to different machines) onto one screen. It has quite
sophisticated switching and job-control features.

Try "man screen" on any linux system for a massive amount of detailed
info.

At the end of the "man" output, the copyrights are listed, the oldest
of which is:
Copyright (C) 1987 Oliver Laumann

The "versions" section states:
Note that all versions numbered 2.x are copyright
by Oliver Laumann
which presumably means that 1.x existed and is older..

[ Reply to This | # ]

Red Hat Is Asking for Prior Art
Authored by: dmomara on Wednesday, February 18 2009 @ 06:51 AM EST
EDA tools, and in particular mechanical and electrical CAD would be a good place
to look for multiple graphical workspaces that are contextually linked. Any
number of vendors were ahead of the remainder of the workstation curve in this
in the early eighties out of necessity. Even early personal computer tools had
rather advanced implementations at the time, for instance Orcad had loadable
device drivers in the DOS stone age around 1995 or 96. Vax and workstation
products would have had rather elaborate windowing systems for user
interaction.

I recall a McDonnell Douglas mechanical CAD product with multiple windowing
views of large drawings dating from the early to mid eighties. It ran on a
vector mapped display as did many Tektronix based CAD systems.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Sun OLWM
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, February 18 2009 @ 12:50 PM EST
The OpenLook Window Manager which Sun developed had a virtual desktop with
multiple workspaces. Sun open sourced the code sometime around 1990 and it was
one of the first good window managers for Linux.

[ Reply to This | # ]

  • TVTWM - Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, February 19 2009 @ 02:21 PM EST
Desqview
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, February 18 2009 @ 12:55 PM EST
Let's not forget the DOS application from Quarterdeck called
"Desqview". They later came out with "Desqview X" about the
same time Windows 3.0 arrived. It supported multiple virtual consoles, each
running a separate DOS application. I remember using it to download stuff from
a BBS while doing word processing. Great stuff and very applicable to this
suit.

[ Reply to This | # ]

  • Desqview - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, February 18 2009 @ 01:27 PM EST
NeXTStep
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, February 18 2009 @ 06:40 PM EST
WindowMaker is based on NextStep. It has the feature to make windows persistent
across workspaces. The ability to bind an application window into multiple
workspaces (or all workspaces) appears to be the just of the claims of
invention.

NextStep was released in 1989, however, it was previewed starting in 1986
(according to the wikipedia NeXTStep article). NeXT might have documented prior
art to at least some of the claims. (OTOH, it is also possible that NeXT
licensed these patents from Xerox... ...well, no, the timing is wrong.)

Of course NeXT was bought by Apple. So if Apple settled on this patent, it was
likely because they could not defeat all of the claims. However, the Apple
desktop and that of WindowMaker, Gnome and KDE, (not to mention others) are not
the same. It is possible that prior art embodied in NeXTStep defeats the claims
against these window managers.

Now, GNUStep, (again according to the wikipedia OpenStep article), began
development based on NeXTStep prior to the open API specification by Sun and
NeXT in 1993. It is possible that some of the original GNUStep developers have
information about NeXTStep that could constitute evidence of prior art on at
least the claims that could be defeated by NeXTStep.

If I was faced with busting these claims, I would start by talking to the
NeXTStep or original GNUStep developers as the WM not only implemented the UI
described in the patent but the object-oriented data strucutures in the
underlying implementation as well. I would also see if Apple could be candid
about why they settled on these claims inspite of being owners of NeXT IP.

Well, my 2 cents, FWIW.

[ Reply to This | # ]

  • NeXTStep - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, February 18 2009 @ 07:01 PM EST
Red Hat Is Asking for Prior Art
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, February 18 2009 @ 07:03 PM EST
Sinclair QL used multiple windows in 1984. It's in their manuals -- there's
pictures all over the Internet. Tony Tebby designed the operating system for
Sinclair and has been modifying for it for years.

I'm not sure if this qualifies as prior art or not.

[ Reply to This | # ]

MCS
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, February 18 2009 @ 07:23 PM EST

Here is some possible prior art from not so restricted to the Desktop GUI industry: the multimedia communications system. This is described in the ITU-T T.120 series specifications. The specifications provide for a system of audio, video and data (application sharing) between systems and MCS is a protocol based on the MCV paradigm. The protocol permits a single workstation to participate in multiple sessions (or workspaces) with different view (joining different shared applications) and provides a data model for supporting it. It appears to directly address the pertinent claims.

These protocols and services were specified by ITU-T as early as 1993; however, I happen to know that they were contributed to ITU-T by a commercial company that provided complete multimedia conferencing systems for use both in Canada and the US prior to 1990 and were likely developed prior to the application date on the patent. (IIRC the product was the GMCS (Generalized Multimedia Conferencing System, or some such).

It might be of interest to those looking for another angle on the claims.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Red Hat Is Asking for Prior Art
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, February 18 2009 @ 10:34 PM EST
Perhaps MS Windows 1.01, released 20 Nov 1985, would help?

[ Reply to This | # ]

Red Hat Is Asking for Prior Art
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, February 19 2009 @ 11:51 AM EST
How about DRDOS? It had this back in '93 ish or earlier. I think it was around
version 5.0(?)

[ Reply to This | # ]

VisiCorp VisiOn
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, February 19 2009 @ 09:34 PM EST
One of the first graphical desktops released in 1982.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visi_On
and
http://toastytech.com/guis/vision.html

[ Reply to This | # ]

XEROX Star System
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, February 19 2009 @ 09:38 PM EST
Xerox PARC finally tried to make something of all the cool tech they developed.
Here is a Star system with dekstop, multiple windows, concept of a workspace.

http://www.digibarn.com/collections/systems/xerox-8010/index.html

[ Reply to This | # ]

Red Hat Is Asking for Prior Art - User Interface
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, February 20 2009 @ 07:52 AM EST
One might take a look at Apple's Hypercard program for the early Macintosh
computer to see how much of the patent is satisfied by that product. It ran on
the original Macintosh computer.

[ Reply to This | # ]

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