http://www.freepatentsonline.com/20090282325.pdf

They're apparently trying to patent "graphing data that's in a spreadsheet".

I didn't go thru it in detail, but unless a "sparkline" means something 
other than what's in the pictures, this seems really ... unlikely to clear, 
I would hope.  I mean, didn't Lotos 123 do this back before Windows?


-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Is God willing to prevent naglams, but unable?
     Then he is not omnipotent.
   Is he able, but not willing, to prevent naglams?
     Then he is malevolent.

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Darren New wrote:
> http://www.freepatentsonline.com/20090282325.pdf
> 
> They're apparently trying to patent "graphing data that's in a 
> spreadsheet".
> 
> I didn't go thru it in detail, but unless a "sparkline" means something 
> other than what's in the pictures, this seems really ... unlikely to 
> clear, I would hope.  I mean, didn't Lotos 123 do this back before Windows?

Oh, I see. Like this.

http://blogs.msdn.com/excel/archive/2009/07/17/sparklines-in-excel.aspx

That said, the "primary inventor" blogs that someone else already invented 
them and published them in a book, so I'm not real sure about that whole 
perjury thing with asserting you've invented it yourself goes.


-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Is God willing to prevent naglams, but unable?
     Then he is not omnipotent.
   Is he able, but not willing, to prevent naglams?
     Then he is malevolent.

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> I mean, didn't Lotos 123 do this back before Windows?

  Even if Microsoft itself invented the concept why would that matter?
I don't think that even in the US you can invent a concept and use it for
15 years and *then* try to patent it. Prior art applies even if the patent
applicant is the original inventor.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Darren New wrote:
> Oh, I see. Like this.
> 
> http://blogs.msdn.com/excel/archive/2009/07/17/sparklines-in-excel.aspx
> 
> That said, the "primary inventor" blogs that someone else already 
> invented them and published them in a book, so I'm not real sure about 
> that whole perjury thing with asserting you've invented it yourself goes.

AFAIK Tufte invented sparklines, but I haven't seen them used in 
spreadsheet software before, so maybe Microsoft is claiming that it's 
the way they've integrated them into a spreadsheet that's new?

In any case, I don't think it's worth worrying too much about these 
specific patents except as symptoms of a broken software patent system. 
  It's my understanding that most large sortware companies try to patent 
everything they can and developers are actively *discouraged* from 
trying to determine if someone else has invented it before (since 
there's apparently larger fee for infringing on a previous patent in 
that case).

I've heard that the reason for this is because, since software patents 
are sort of broken, it's almost unavoidable every large company has tons 
of patents on things used by the other companies (and probably 
independently invented there).  This having a large bucket of your own 
patents provides sort of a "mutually assured destruction" scenario where 
one company can't attempt to sue another for patent infringement without 
suffering a massive counter-suit.  So it's not necessarily the case the 
MS even intends to enforce these patents, but rather they're just part 
of this "patent everything" process.

I've heard most of this second hand, to take it with a bit of a grain of 
salt, but it certainly does explain why there's so many ridiculous 
patents but comparatively few cases of the (major) companies suing 
everybody for infringing on them.  Also, any patent system in which this 
is a standard strategy pretty clearly has some major problems, so I hope 
it's fixed someday.

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Kevin Wampler wrote:
> AFAIK Tufte invented sparklines, but I haven't seen them used in 
> spreadsheet software before, so maybe Microsoft is claiming that it's 
> the way they've integrated them into a spreadsheet that's new?

Could be, could be. And it's only an application, after all.

> In any case, I don't think it's worth worrying too much about these 
> specific patents except as symptoms of a broken software patent system. 

The whole patent system is broken. We just hear about the software patents 
more. :-)

> and developers are actively *discouraged* from 
> trying to determine if someone else has invented it before (since 
> there's apparently larger fee for infringing on a previous patent in 
> that case).

You're supposed to report all prior art you're aware of. There's no 
requirement for you to report prior art you're not aware of. There's no fee 
for filing a patent that can't be issued on the basis of prior art in 
another patent, so there's no infringement possible. IANAL.

> I've heard that the reason for this is because, since software patents 
> are sort of broken, 

They're broken in the sense that they're descriptions of formal systems that 
can be mapped arbitrarily to other formal systems. I might patent something 
that says "The user enters a password, and the computer grants access to the 
data", and then later argue that "enters" should be equivalent to "swipes" 
and "password" should be equivalent to "credit card number" and "data" 
should be equivalent to "bank account balance", and suddenly I'm suing a 
credit card terminal company over my clever password scheme.

*That* is what's broken about software patents.

The rest are broken because they're either obvious-to-people or 
non-enabling, yet they pass anyway.

> So it's not necessarily the case the 
> MS even intends to enforce these patents, but rather they're just part 
> of this "patent everything" process.

Generally, yes. Or people will patent things in order to get the patent 
office to do a patent search.  You decide to do X, but you don't want to get 
sued in 5 years when X is successful and someone has a patent on X, so you 
patent it yourself. If the patent clears, you're good to go.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Is God willing to prevent naglams, but unable?
     Then he is not omnipotent.
   Is he able, but not willing, to prevent naglams?
     Then he is malevolent.

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Warp wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> I mean, didn't Lotos 123 do this back before Windows?
> 
>   Even if Microsoft itself invented the concept why would that matter?

That's what I was trying to imply - Lotus 1-2-3 was out so very long ago and 
graphed data from a spreadsheet and kept it up to date. Not that it was 
not-Microsoft, but it was before even Excel was around.

It turns out that it wasn't putting it *in* the spreadsheet as such. It 
would be interesting to see what parts of things were already done that 
they're claiming are inapplicable. You really can't tell that just from the 
application or patent.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Is God willing to prevent naglams, but unable?
     Then he is not omnipotent.
   Is he able, but not willing, to prevent naglams?
     Then he is malevolent.

Post a reply to this message

"Darren New" <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote in message 
news:4b058a4d$1@news.povray.org...
> http://www.freepatentsonline.com/20090282325.pdf
>
> They're apparently trying to patent...

Tangentially related...

http://www.law.com/jsp/tal/PubArticleTAL.jsp?id=1202435316698&slreturn=1&hbxlogin=1

I have new hope.  Not only are the justices skeptical of Bilski, it actually 
sounds like the SCOTUS justices recognize that many types of patents should 
never have been approved.  In fact, they even seemed to attack the Deputy 
Solicitor General, because he was still in favor of things such as software 
patents.

Software is, and should be, covered by copyright law.  Period.  Just as one 
person can use an idea in their novel, even if it was obviously taken from 
another novel, it should not be prevented (via patent).  If you copy all, or 
a portion of, the other novel, it's a copyright violation.  Aside from text 
and interface (copyright), computer programs are mostly mathematics and 
databases, both of which are not patentable, nor copyrightable.  Alas, we 
have software patents, nonetheless.  Someone dropped the ball.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if the SCOTUS shot them all down?  I have a little 
bit of hope.  If it doesn't happen in this case, it appears that they are 
simply waiting for a better case.

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> It turns out that it wasn't putting it *in* the spreadsheet as such.

  If patents on prior art can be granted if the patent does some tiny
detail differently and originally, wouldn't that mean that, conversely,
you don't infringe the patent if you implement it with some tiny detail
being different from the patent description?

  The latter would make patents basically useless, but that means that
patents should not be granted on prior art simply because the patent has
a minor difference compared to all existing usage.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Kevin Wampler wrote:
> I've heard that the reason for this is because, since software patents 
> are sort of broken, 

Not broken, invalid as a concept. Please describe to me *anything* in 
software that isn't technically a set of instructions, which, in 
principle, a human could not reproduce themselves, if they had some 
means to access the same data, and some means to produce the same 
results on a computer screen. Can't? Well, then, software patents are 
not legal at all, since you can't patent such "instruction sets", as 
defined by the laws set up to define what you *can* patent. The problem 
is, no one mentions this niggling little detail, or makes sure the 
people in the court, like the judge, knows that software "is" such a 
thing. One side argues its not, but never manages to say why, the other 
side argues it is, and babbles about unique, protecting IP, etc., and 
the courts go by what they know, which is, "Someone wrote the thing, and 
its all incomprehensible to me, so sounds like a machine, not instructions."

If that where true though, I, and others, would have been breaching 
patent every time they tweaked the read code on the Apple IIs to produce 
copy protection, or crack it, or just to look at the raw data, follow 
the decoding instructions, to manually work out the result, to see why a 
sector on the disk was bad and not reading correctly. Oops.. Turns out a 
human "can" follow machine instructions, not just the machine.

No, we have this problem because, it seems, everyone arguing the cases 
has either ignored, glossed over, or blindingly failed to address, the 
"definition" of patent, and why it can't apply, and instead dealt solely 
with ownership, uniqueness, and whines about "stifling innovation", 
which it turns out is statistically worse when they are imposed in this 
case.

-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

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Patrick Elliott wrote:
> Not broken, invalid as a concept. Please describe to me *anything* in 
> software that isn't technically a set of instructions, which, in 
> principle, a human could not reproduce themselves, if they had some 
> means to access the same data, and some means to produce the same 
> results on a computer screen. Can't? Well, then, software patents are 
> not legal at all, since you can't patent such "instruction sets", as 
> defined by the laws set up to define what you *can* patent. The problem 
> is, no one mentions this niggling little detail, or makes sure the 
> people in the court, like the judge, knows that software "is" such a 
> thing. One side argues its not, but never manages to say why, the other 
> side argues it is, and babbles about unique, protecting IP, etc., and 
> the courts go by what they know, which is, "Someone wrote the thing, and 
> its all incomprehensible to me, so sounds like a machine, not 
> instructions."

Isn't *everything* reducible to a "set of instructions"?

--
Tim Cook
http://empyrean.freesitespace.net

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