Posted on 10/31/2012 1:04:26 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Microsoft is being sued over the most visible new feature of Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8.
A company called SurfCast claims that Microsoft's Live Tiles, which actively update new information on the main screen as it is received, violates a patent it has. SurfCast filed the lawsuit with the U.S. District Court in the District of Maine yesterday, October 30, The Next Web reported.
According to its website, SurfCast says it designs operating-system technology and has applied for four more patents.
The company designed a new concept referred to as "Tiles" for which it is suing Microsoft.
SurfCast describes its "Tiles" as "dynamically updating icons," different from standard operating-system icons for files and applications because they are "selectable and live—containing refreshed content that provides a real-time or near-real-time view of the underlying information." That's Patent 6,724,403, granted in 2004:
“System and method for simultaneous display of multiple information sources.”
That does sound similar in concept to Microsoft's Live Tiles, which show information from users' email, calendar, and social networks, as well as other software and Web apps.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
We’re all (and Microsoft) are going to dye!
These patent fights are getting a bit nuts. I was joking with people that Microsoft made Windows 8 so ugly to avoid this kind of lawsuit. Even that didn’t help them.
How is the updating tile different than the mini-windows that have been in a variety of window managers, such as KDE and Gnome, for many years? These show mini-tile views of whatever is on a particular desktop slice.
please tell me this is a joke
Wow...never knew you could patent a square. Who’s got the circle patent? (Bet he’s a 1 percenter...)
It should not be possible to patent some things. Hey, I am going to go and patent ...um.. grass... your all going to owe me bucks.
/johnny
Prepare to be assimilated...
lol.
Any time a lawn is mowed, it infringes (literally) on my patent.
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No, they’re 3.14 percenters. ;-)
lucky for the early guys in the automobile industry that it was accepted that “the concept” was not your invention, your execution (the how do we do it) of a concept was your invention and it was what set you apart from competitors who invented different implementations of the concept
but the entire computer industry has become fixated - wrongly in my view - that concepts are as much a “creations” as are tools that make a concept into a product - they’re not
what you are not supposed to steal is someone elses DESIGN (the “how to” of something)
but there can legitimately be many different versions of an implementation of the same concept - HOW you do it can be different than how someone else does it, though they may LOOK alike
in this case, on the little evidence so far, the first company “discovered” the concept of “live” icons/tiles
anyone can “discover” the same concept
they just cannot steal the first company’s computer code for that puts that concept to use
what has been going on in the computer industry is as if one could discover the chemical formula for water, patent it and charge royalties on everyone who uses water in a commercial process in which water is divided into its constituent parts
of course some people think they can discover a gene in nature and then they own that gene; whereas I would grant them only a patent for the tools they invented for identifying the gene, while others could invent their own tools to do the same thing, legally
Well apparently Apple already owns rectangles with curved edges, so they had to try to find some other shape!
Apple has the patent on rounded corners.
The Wright brothers tried to patent flying.
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