Comments on: Palm Loses Graffiti Lawsuit

All of this is far from over. Bear Sterns analyst Andy Neff said "It's the kind of thing that puts lawyers' kids through college."

Can't see how Xerox would NOT sure M$ also.

http://www.writingonyourpalm.net/column011224.htm

What about SONY, HandEra, Symbol, Handspring and Samsung? A license for the PalmOS was sold by Palm to the handheld makers. What if Xerox Demands $20 of Palm for the license to these folks too? What if the Graffiti license is higher than the sale price for the OS? Since they now legally own Graffiti, they can charge whatever they want. This is REALLY bad news for Palm. The only product that may be safe is the Keyboard enabled TREO that does not rely on Graffiti at all.

May Xerox and their lawyers rot in hell!

Scott

And I user my Newton MP 2001G (side by side to a army of Palms) every day - the Palm is no match for "the old green"

The Newton is in so many ways superior and much more elegant and refined to Palm that one could fill 1.000 pages - and not get to the end.

Boris von Luhovoy
publishing editor
Palmtop-pro Magazine
www.palmtop.at

I think the Xerox patent is not for the strokes used in unistroke vs graffiti (or jot for that matter), but over the use of a standardised set of movements to represent characters to a digital device. This patent is as stupid as Amazons "One Click Checkout" patent.

Like I said, that's what I _used_ to believe. I recently read a bio on Hawkins and saw no mention of him working at Xerox. Then I take a look at that picture of the Xerox unistroke characterset and I have to say I'm dumbfounded. The only thing they share in common is that they are all done using one stroke. The characters themselves are completely different.

I really hope Palm can fight and win this one without having to waste too much money on it. For shame Xerox!

Scott

I read somewhere that Hawkins dreamed up graffiti in college. He liked it so much, he created the Palm as an excuse to use graffiti on something. That's why it is so surprising to hear him predict that the keyboard-less Treo will be a big success.

I'm not a big fan of graffiti. If Palm lost the rights and had to add a mini-keyboard to all its models, I'd be real happy. I like the design of the new Zaurus. If someone made one like that that ran the Palm OS, I'd get it.

The way I see it the Xerox case is without merit as the strokes in graffiti more or less mimic letters when hand writen. The judge here is obviously ignorant or senile.. or likely both.

I am certain Palm will appeal the issue. If Xerox does win in the end, maybe the ancestors of the guy that developed shorthand should have a crack at them for infringing that concept?

The patent is for the concept of a singlestroke method of inputing data. From that perspective, the ruling could stand. That said, I still believe that even if Hawkins had seen Unistrokes before inventing Graffiti, it wouldn't have been that long before. The earliest mention I can find of Unistrokes being invented is sometime in 1993. The earliest mention I found of Graffiti being released as a standalone app for the Zoomer and Newton is in 11/94. That means, he would have seen it about a year prior to releasing it on his own and would have made significant improvements to it during that time. Also, at the time he would have seen it and started work on Graffiti, it was not patented, nor was any patent pending.

Scott

Now if in 2002, and I were to realize that the current input technology is not good enough and came up with another system that also uses the same idea as "one stroke" but sifferent character set, does that mean I infringe on Xerox patent???

BULL****!!! UTTER BULL****!!!

If the judge is going to do such a judgement, ask him to go f**k that tree outside his office!!!

This is called hindering the developement of technology. If this is called patent infringement, that would mean I can't use "single stroke" method and have to use say, "two stroke" or "three stroke" method??? This is total absurd!!! This way, technology will NEVER improve!!! How about this, if Thomas Edison is still around and he has a patent for his invention, he might as well sue ALL lighting companies cause HE invented the light bulb and everthing was EVOLVED from it. Does that makes sense??? If that makes sense and if it were to happen, we would still be in STONE AGE!!! Stupid fools(Xerox and the F**K UP judge)!!!

In other words, only Xerox can use "single stroke" and all others have to use technology that have more than one stroke??? Ask Xerox go F**K the tree too!!!

like the Laser Printer, Ethernet, Word Processing, etc.

Think they're trying to make up for lost time and lost revenue?

What I want to know is if this was thrown out before, why the hell did it come up again? What ever happened to double jeopardy?

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But (1) there are Grafitti strokes that are not characters (capitalize, capslock, backspace), (2) some symbols are two "strokes" (all dotted or slashed symbols), (3) some Grafitti strokes are two-stroke commands (copy, paste, cut), and (4) there is more than one way to write many characters (X, Y, etc).

Also the main judge says that all characters must be graphically and directionally different from each other, and uses O and Q and B and R as examples. He should have included G and Q in that list. I don't know how many times my Palm fails to recognize these characters because they are graphically similar and directionally identical.

Also, note that in the judgement, part of Xerox's claims are upheld and part are not (don't know which is which from reading it).

This judge is wrong.

He says, "One of the reason so many bad software patents issue, is that patent examiners do not have enough time and library resources to do their jobs."

He gives a list of other reaaly bad patents, too.

No business sense whatsoever.

Palm has already lost its appeal. The Sonys are much nicer ;).

(yes, just kidding)

Palm could instead license Jot for use in the "Graffiti" area. Xerox doesn't have a claim for recognizing regular handwriting--only for the use of special strokes. Which is why they haven't gone after Microsoft.

But Palm should win the appeal anyway.

like the taliban - do not accept reality neither people - its ok for you poor chap to go back to work and pray to your god.
Given - it wont help you nor the sober Palm followers like me - but better not to have your "endsieg ist unser" under all conditions statements

;-)

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The trolls always have the last laugh...

- Trolly


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The trolls always have the last laugh...

1) Licensed OS to Handspring and Sony. Sony now makes better PDA hardware and Handspring will be making better PDA/phone hardware than Palm, siphoning off a significant amount of Palm's potential sales. Palm gave up tens of millions in quarterly hardware sales for 4 or 5 million in quarterly PalmOS sales. You do the math.

2) Failed to innovate, instead repackaging the same old hardware year after year, thinking consumers wouldn't demand more.

3) Gouged PDA buyers when there weren't other options. Ever wonder how much their profit was on those $400 Palm V thaT sold so well? You wouldn't believe it if I told you.

4) Got big, fat and lazy, with dozens of "managers" that serve no beneficial function for the company.

- There's more, but I hope you get the idea. Palm's probems stem from corporate decisions and policies that have been in place for three or four years - well before Carl Yankowski's disastrous term at the helm.
Palm's 1997 - 2000 directors are more responsible than Yankowski is for the company's presently being on life support.

But in any event, what's the point bashing him or Palm? Leave the negative comments to professional TROLLS, like me.

- Trolly

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The trolls always have the last laugh...

a) The licensing strategy was put in place at a time when Palm just couldn't meet demand on it's own. All the projections at the time were that the market would continue to grow exponentially. Palm didn't have the financial resources to expand sufficiently. Nor did it want too - if the sales projections proved wrong then the increased financial commitment would have lead to a catastophe. On the other hand, Palm thought that they were sitting on a goldmine and they had to do something to capture more of the 'upside'. There were also 'strategic' issues relating to Jeff's departure.

So Palm compromised. They licensed the Palm OS to all comers. At the time they didn't think that they would do themselves out of too many sales because they just couldn't meet the demand as it was. Players like Handspring and Sony were going to get into the market anyway, so Palm saw the licensing arrangements as a way of keeping a greater degree of control over the market, an indirect way of sharing the development costs and getting some revenue out of the demand which Palm itself could not meet. This whole strategy was based on the notion that the PDA market would continue to boom, so the new entrants would not cannibalise Palm's sales.

It didn't turn out that way. After a while, the growth in the market was not what everyone thought it was going to be. Handspring and Sony had already invested a great deal and they couldn't just walk away. They went after sales by price cutting and, to a lesser extent, 'innovation' (see below). The result was that Palm's licensing stragety now looks stupid.

The reality is that it was merely a result of over-optimistic projections and wishfull thinking about how robust the PDA market really was. That was the real error - nobody can predict the future. The licensing strategy made sense at the time, although it was based on a flawed assumption about future growth.

Another way of looking at the licensing strategy is to think about what might have happened otherwise - Palm could have borrowed heavily so as to expand production and, if it had done so, it would now be on the verge of bankruptcy. Yes, the licensing strategy now looks like a failure, but it might have saved Palm from making a bigger mistake.

b) One of the common complaints is that Palm failed to 'innovate'. This is repeated so often, that most readers probably accept it without question. Let's put this into perspective.

Arguably, the only true 'innovation' over the last few years was: the Springboard expansion module. This is a great idea - it takes the humble PDA to a higher plain. The Springboard was not as successful as it could have been, but the idea is a winner. Palm accepted this (eventually) and came up with what is arguably the best option for expansion. (Sony's approach is pretty good too.) So, yes, Palm was slow to innovate, but when they saw the possibilities, they acted and they came up with a good approach. Could they have done so sooner? Certainly. On the other hand, they were doing pretty well at the time, their R&D budget was pretty well committed to OS development, communication, etc (not to mention the ridiculous plan to build a new HQ and other wastage), so they didn't push things as hard as they should have. That was a mistake - you can't sit still in the computer game. But when they realised what was happening, they caught up.

The moral is that they did in fact 'innovate', it's just that they could have reacted quicker.

What are the other 'innovations'? Handspring, for a while, had a chip that ran faster. But this was not critical because the Palm OS and the standard apps were so well written that they actually run pretty well at 20Mhz.

What about MP3? Big deal.

What about colour screens/hi-res? In my book, these are not really 'innovations'; they are incremental improvements and they are necessarily important to most users. (Did color screens save WinCE2?) And they were largely driven by marketing considerations rather than a genuine innovation path. Look at it this way: Sony wanted to enter the market - Palm already had (at the time) the lion's share. Sony needed to differentiate itself from Palm and it used the old consumer products idea of adding so-called 'features', many of which would not add any real functionality for most users. (Who really uses all the functions on their VCR?) At best the accumulation of such 'features' was merely an exercise in making incremental improvements; it doesn't rank as 'innovation' of the same scale as expansion.

Of course, Palm's problem was that its main investment in 'innovation' has lead (so far) to blind alleys. In particular, the VII/VIIx was not as successful as it should have been (probably due to subscription pricing issues). Hopefully Handsping's Treo will succeed (and, if it does, it will in a way justify all the effort which Palm has put into the communications area).

Mr TROLL's points 3) and 4) are valid. That Palm's management became bloated and complacent is understandable (but not excusable). As to pricing, in a way, the high prices were a reflection of supply and demand - why would anyone sell anything for say $40 if they could sell it for $400. In any event, Palm should have bitten the bullet sooner and discounted its vast Vx stocks much more aggressively, about 6 months prior to the launch of the m500.

So, dude, read the words posted and don't put words in the posters mouth that aren't there.

p.s. I see by all of your know-it-all posts, you have WAY too much time on your hands. Try getting out of the house and away from the computer, ******.

Accusing Xerox of "technology squatting" is completely unjustified. I happen to think that this patent is not particularly good, and I happen to think that software patents in general are a bad idea, but given that they are the law of the land, Xerox has, if anything, been more liberal than other companies in permitting use of its patented inventions.

The idea that Xerox PARC hasn't capitalized on its inventions is a myth. Xerox has managed to get lots of great inventions out into the marketplace and probably done better in this regard than other technology companies.

This is not true.
I do not embrace M$ at warmest but I'm against any unjustified accusations. Microsoft lisenced the basis for Transcriber legally through a complicated and oficially hidden deal.

Boris Michael v. Luhovoy
publishing editor
Palmtop-pro magazine
The Magazine for dedicated Palm user
www.palmtop.at