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Call for Prior Art

[Posted February 16, 2009 by ris]

Red Hat and Novell have been accused of patent infringement. "IP Innovation L.L.C. and Technology Licensing Corporation (collectively, "Plaintiffs") have brought a patent-infringement action against Red Hat, Inc., and Novell, Inc., alleging infringement of U.S. Patent Numbers 5,072,412; 5,533,183; and 5,394,521. The patents concern a user interface that has multiple workspaces. The Plaintiffs' complaint identifies as accused products "Red Hat Linux system," the "Novell Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop," and the "Novell Suse Linux Enterprise Server."" This site has link where you can submit prior art to combat this claim.
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Er, this was filed in *2007*...

Posted Feb 16, 2009 20:03 UTC (Mon) by JesseW (subscriber, #41816) [Link] (2 responses)

LWN reported on this back in Oct 2007, when it was news. "Post-issue.org", although affiliated with New York Law School, seems to be, um, rather confused and disorganized. ris-- please check the context more throughly before posting.

Er, this was filed in *2007*...

Posted Feb 16, 2009 20:21 UTC (Mon) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] (1 responses)

It may not be clear from the page, but this is a new push (backed by Red Hat's legal department) to bring out prior art in this case. It's new news which merits a mention now.

Er, this was filed in *2007*...

Posted Feb 16, 2009 21:02 UTC (Mon) by JesseW (subscriber, #41816) [Link]

That does explain things a bit -- and with some digging, I came up with this OSNews post that explains (some) more about it; then I found an actual message(via mail-archive.com) from an "Assistant General Counsel, IP" at Redhat explaining it. It'd be really nice if the post-issue.org page was clearer, and linked to some of these pages, though.

Call for Prior Art

Posted Feb 16, 2009 20:20 UTC (Mon) by felixrabe (guest, #50514) [Link] (5 responses)

Multiple Workspaces? Thinking of Smalltalk? :)

Call for Prior Art

Posted Feb 17, 2009 8:30 UTC (Tue) by janpla (guest, #11093) [Link]

Or screen?

Call for Prior Art

Posted Feb 17, 2009 13:33 UTC (Tue) by eru (subscriber, #2753) [Link] (3 responses)

It would be helpful if Red Hat lawyers (or other patent experts) tried to summarize in plain English what exactly the lawsuit claims is infringed. In particular, what specific feature in modern Linux distributions is allegedly infringing. Features already common in mid-1980's GUI systems probably cannot be it, one would imagine even the USPTO would have seen them as prior art.

Call for Prior Art

Posted Feb 17, 2009 13:43 UTC (Tue) by admorgan (subscriber, #26575) [Link] (2 responses)

I would not count on this. Microsoft released a multiple workspace extension in their "toys" group of applications. I use this application at my Windows only work-site. I have been there for 2 years, and I still get people approaching me about this "awesome new feature". A USPTO worker likely would not have the exposure needed to know this has been around forever and a day.

Call for Prior Art

Posted Feb 17, 2009 14:21 UTC (Tue) by eru (subscriber, #2753) [Link] (1 responses)

Is that (multiple "workspaces" or "desktops" as implemented in most current X11 window managers) the issue here? I recall seeing it first-hand only around 1995 or so in fvwm, if my memory serves. I'm sure the idea is much older than that, but it definitely was not common in 1987. PC:s of the time struggled to maintain just one workspace...

Call for Prior Art

Posted Feb 17, 2009 15:59 UTC (Tue) by AJWM (guest, #15888) [Link]

Not GUI-related, per se, but I first encountered the term "workspace" in a computer context circa 1974 (and it wasn't new then) when I first got my hands on an APL console. An APL workspace is (loosely speaking) a (named) collection of data and functions that can be saved and loaded -- and thus one can switch between workspaces.


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