Is ribbon patented by Microsoft?

Posted Aug 18, 2015 16:46 UTC (Tue) by david.a.wheeler (subscriber, #72896)
In reply to: Doing better than Apache, but is that saying much? by louie
Parent article: Schaller: An Open Letter to Apache Foundation and Apache OpenOffice team

I think the ribbon user interface was patented by Microsoft, and while they would sometimes license it, they were hostile to the idea of another office suite using it. I'm not sure if that's true, but that's what I recall. Yes, this is like patenting the idea of a car steering wheel.

Thanks to recent Supreme Court rulings that patent may no longer be enforceable, or Microsoft may be willing to license it. But it'd be wise to check out legal issues before adding a ribbon.

Frankly, I'm happy that LO does not have a ribbon, but I'd keep using LO even if it had a ribbon.

Yet another example of why patents are a bad idea.

Is ribbon patented by Microsoft?

Posted Aug 19, 2015 6:41 UTC (Wed) by louie (guest, #3285) [Link]

Yeah, the patents are a potential issue, which is part of why I carefully didn't say "just implement Microsoft's Ribbon". The point was supposed to be less "implement this specific UX" and more "LO's UX is actually demonstrably very bad for many users, please fix it".

To be clear, I'm fairly sympathetic to Michael and team here: good UX work is very hard; harder still without the data that Microsoft and others now take for granted. But that's really got to be the focus, not quibbling with Apache.