Comments on: palmOne Wins Summary Judgment Invalidating Xerox's Unistroke Patent
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RE: Xerox just got a black eye
Yes. No more royalties/license fees from M$ for Unistroke Graffiti clone.
I wonder if the 2 Palms can now sue M$ for infringing on G1?
Death to G2!
Good.
RE: Good.
RE: Good.
RE: Good.
Even better, PalmSource -- now having this dark shadow gone -- provid a much less restrictive stroke recognition API so third party apps can plug in whatever they want for their app.
Adaptive, cursive handwriting recogntion running on a Palm OS Cobalt thread in native ARM code anyone?
RE: Good.
RE: Good.
RE: Good.
I'm running it on my TH55 right now.
AFAIK anyone can, given a search or two... ;)
:D
RE: Good.
RE: Good.
Well, I'm not so sure. Do you remember New Coke?
RE: Good.
However, don't get too excited just yet. The US District Court is not the highest court in the land. I guess it is possible that Xerox may file an appeal. Anyone out there know the relevant time limit for appeals?
It is also interesting that this announcement was made by palmOne, not by Palm Source. Does this mean that palmOne ones G1? Will Palm Source bundle G1 with future updates of Palm OS?
Cheers.
RE: Awesome News!
I recently posted on Discussion boards staring how frustrated I am with G2.
I hope Palm gives everyone the option of using either G1 or G2 (ala PPC)
RE: Good.
RE: Good.
RE: Good.
RE: Good.
RE: Good.
Palm m505 User
RE: Good.
In the meantime, continue to allow G1 to be applied over G2. They each have their plusses and minuses - and having both allows new users to learn quickly, and G1 fans to enter things faster...
RE: Good.
Make sure to follow the instructions, as not doing so can put your palm into an infinite reset loop.
RE: Good.
Just a thought.
Oh, and G1 works just fine on my T3
_________________
Sean
Always remember that you are unique. Just like everyone else.
RE: Good.
If Xerox appealed the summary judgment, then the Circuit court would remand the case to the District Court for a trial. No matter who won a trial, the other party could then appeal the result. That's a lot of litigation when the court has already indicated that Xerox cannot prevail.
If Graffiti were the crown jewels of the Xerox Corp., then I would tell them to appeal and to take their best shot. But in this case, it's unlikely that their interests would be well served by continuing.
The summary judgment motion is designed to keep from wasting judicial resources (and defendants' money) with cases that have no chance of success. I haven't seen anything yet to suggest that the District Court didn't rule entirely correctly.
elo
RE: Good.
Obviously, I'm being disagreed with by a host of "dun-switched" users.
Pat Horne; www.churchoflivingfaith.com
RE: Good.
RE: G1 and G2 - PALM please read and learn...
G1 is all single stroke, so I agree with other posts, give me back my single strokes. Or allow me that choice, not the ridiculous alternative choices tofor T etc, which are still double stroke. ELIMINATE that darn silly timing issue.
Also, allow me to stay in text entering mode and dont assume I want text-block-select mode.
And get rid of that slider to expose the software keyboard.
And if you must have a hardware keyboard (as in the tungsten C which thank god I sold) please make it usable and ergonomic - hint - look at the motorola pagers, those keyboards are usable.
Simon
And thanks so much to the Patent Office
Well done, sirs and madams.
I've never understood Xerox's claim........
De facto, Palm introduced the Palm Pilot in 1995(?) if memory serves me well..... at least 2 years before Xerox's patent, according to the dates in the article.
How could Xerox be allowed to file a patent for something which so obviously already existed?
Does that mean I can patent air and make you all pay for using it?
Louis
RE: I've never understood Xerox's claim........
RE: I've never understood Xerox's claim........
Patents are filed frequently for "ideas" that are
completely developed by other parties. A recent
MS patent was filed, for a feature that has been
in the enlightenment window manager for years.
It made me sick to my stomach seeing the "inventor's"
names on the patent. It is complete bull poop.
Independent Palm Software Developer
RE: I've never understood Xerox's claim........
Meanwhile, lawyers on both sides and the USPTO would laugh their way to the bank...
I remember jokes about M$ patenting 1's and 0's and making everyone else switching to mechanical computing :).
RE: I've never understood Xerox's claim........
If air is so easy to patent, some lawyer would have already tried it.
What makes our patent office so ridiculous is that the office has OK'd poorly documented methods, and allowed patents of methods that are commmon practice in industries that the patent office has little experience with or knowledge of. The people who work in the patent office often have little idea what it is that they're looking at when a company shows up with a new software patent filing. If we want a better patent system, we're either going to have to disallow patents of methods, or we're going to have to shell out for the Federal government to hire competent experts in the appropriate fields.
RE: I've never understood Xerox's claim........
If palm1 will make G1&G2 available in the next Palm PDA's (a la PPC) my fear is that M$ will sue P1 because it infringes its patent on using two or more writing recognition techniques on the same device.
yes, sw patents are THAT bad
Did you know that IBM has a patent on a method to draw rectangles?
And that Amazon tried to patent the "1 click buying"? (and managed to do it - partially at least!)
You can see those examples and some other (even nastier?) ones at
http://swpat.ffii.org/patents/samples/index.en.html
(some are in german, but most are in english)
It's INCREDIBLE.
2 sw patent examples on the last year
2)Do you know Matlab? And Matlab's Simulink? Well, National Instruments sued Mathworks because they used "a method to represent a process with boxes and arrows" (or something similar). (IIRC, the case already was closed against Mathworks - in some states at the very least, like Texas).
Those are only 2 examples that I remember right now as having shocked me during the last year.
Aren't those absurd patents?
RE: I've never understood Xerox's claim........
Scott
http://Tapland.com
- Tapwave Zodiac News, Reviews, & Discussion -
RE: I've never understood Xerox's claim........
Xerox may have improved on an existing technology, but apparently Palm were able to show that there was prior unistroke technology in use before Xerox was issued a patent.
I would like to see G1, but with some of the features of G2, like capital characters in the middle, etc.
I've been using G2 for over a year and I still can't make an X reliably.
RE: I've never understood Xerox's claim........
These are not real "things", inventions, that are easily cataloged and recorded to show that prior art doesn't exist. These are vague concepts that are being allowed to be patented. These are not patents for air or wheels. These patents suck. And what makes them even worse is that instead of innovating, companies are patenting everything in sight in an effort to stifle their competitors. They are doing this simply because they can, and according to their lawyers, its a sound business practice.
I restate: There is a HUGE difference between patents of real things and patents of methods/algorithms/software in both the difficulty to obtain them and how they are used by the patent holder.
Another factor, barely touched on by most critics of the American Patent Office is that the corrupt nature of our legal system as regards to Tort law. Tort reform is yet another aspect of this problem that needs to be addressed.
RE: I've never understood Xerox's claim........
The original poster put a bad example and you picked it up, finally mixing the "physical patent example" with Xerox's software patent. Furthermore, you sounded like "no problem with bad patents, you can revoke the patent later". I only tried to counter this last point.
Should I have gone into nitpicking mode? Then, we should note that the original poster also got wrong the difference between copyright, applicable to ideas (and "the like"), and patents, applicable to physical inventions. :P
Anyway, you say that the cause is USPTO officers' inexperience. Well, a number of people is not that kind. And I find difficult to believe that the sheer number of horror stories can be just provoked by "inexperience". They have been granting "dubious" patents for more than a pair of years.
These are not real "things", inventions, that are easily cataloged and recorded to show that prior art doesn't exist.
Hey, tell me how do you excuse IBM's rectangle patent because they don't know how to investigate or ask for prior art, for Dog's sake.
As an extreme example, I remember reading that the situation had gone as surreal as someone trying to patent Eratosthenes' sieve. IIRC, the patent was rejected, but only on the last stages of the process!
These are vague concepts that are being allowed to be patented.
Again, try to apply that to IBM's patent on rectangles. The concept is pretty clear; however, the patent still is absurd.
RE: I've never understood Xerox's claim........
When you consider that Apple and Microsoft both made off with the concept of Windows and claimed it for their own, let alone other inventions which I believe include word processors and spreadsheets, which never saw the light of day, maybe someone at Xerox finally woke up to the fact that they should do something about it.
Louis
RE: I've never understood Xerox's claim........
Microsoft on the other hand, licensed specific parts of the Mac OS for Windows 1.0 with restrictions on what they could use. They just decided they didn't like the restrictions, and ignored them with the release of Windows 3.1. When Windows 95 came out, it was basically an inferior Mac OS clone and newer versions of Windows remain such today. Everytime Microsoft catches up, Apple becomes more inovative. Windows XP is no better than Mac OS 9, but Mac has moved on to OS X.
Xerox really did invent the "Palm Pilot"
See http://www.ubiq.com/parctab/">here for more history.
RE: I've never understood Xerox's claim........
Yes, you are right - I was exaggerating for effect. However, Xerox Parc did make a habit out of pioneering new ideas which ended up locked in cabinets somewhere!
RE: I've never understood Xerox's claim........
I *think* they did copy the mouse, though. (?)
(then our beloved Gates arrived, and... :P)
RE: I've never understood Xerox's claim........
RE: I've never understood Xerox's claim........
Now as to the 1995/1997 thing, applying for a patent is a long process. It usually takes 2 or 3 years from the time of application to the time of approval. And you have to keep your idea a secret before you apply (for a US patent you can apply up to a year after first public discloure, but for a world patent there can be non public disclosure until after application).
This ruling does not place "G1" into the public domain. That is a matter of copyright. It doesn't give anyone the right to redistribute existing software. Someone could write their own G1-like input system for the Palms though, and wouldn't have to worry about Xerox's patent.
RE: I've never understood Xerox's claim........
RE: I've never understood Xerox's claim........
And, "what we need" is, from what I've read, not to make better patents; software patents (and "the like") are SIMPLY WRONG. Copyrights were created to protect ideas, books, songs; patents were created to protect physical inventions. Trying to use the patents' rules for ideas and information causes lots of nasties. (I'm not saying that copyrights are perfect, though, but that's another subject)
I already mentioned www.ffii.org. There you'll find lots of info and examples.
However, IANAL (I Am Not A Lawyer)
RE: I've never understood Xerox's claim........
I've read several hundred patents, and the biggest problem is these massive, mult-hundred page patents written by lawyers who don't know the technology, about simple little things that a 6-8 page patent application could easily handle. This is the real thing killing the PTO (and anyone else reading those patents...).
Good News
All you Palmies out there need to stop shooting everything down. Seems like so many postings on this site are so negative nowadays. Every new hardware and software product gets shot down when in fact most software and hardware nowadays is so much better than it was 3 years ago.
Let's support the Palm platform rather than killing it off when manufacturers don't follow your every wish immediately.
RE: Scott_R's comment
Xerox should have lost, and it's good that the judge thought so too.
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Xerox just got a black eye
The barrier that makes a patent valuable is the sheer court and attorney costs to invalidation it. However, when a technology becomes so valuable that invalidating a patent fits in the corporate budget, it is like seeing a six story house of cards fall.
Is this going to hurt Xerox's bottom line? Maybe a stock dip for a bit and that is it. But for a company like PalmSource to have their core technology public domain since they now have market share, one more shadow is moved away.
In summary, Palm now has done two things Apple failed to do. One is spin off their OS IP into an independant company. And now, have the Xerox patent invalidated that the technology is centered around.