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Microsoft sues Salesforce

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Re: Microsoft sues Salesforce

#21

Post by tzs »

rfrey wrote: post #12
roc wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've come to terms with the fact that even here on HN, many people still mistake a summary for a legal definition of the invention covered. But I had held out hope that this wasn't the sort of place where one could condemn patents by title alone, let alone the sort of place where a false argument like that would find approval. No point is bolstered by pretending the titles have any bearing on the legal or philosophic…

Nobody mistakes a title for a summary, or a summary for an exhaustive 40 page patent. Nobody mistakes an academic article title for an abstract, or the abstract for the text, or the text for the data, either. But that doesn't stop us from mentioning articles by title. I thought it would be helpful to list the patents since they are not listed in the original article and one has to scan a 10 page pdf to find them. I'm…

Actually, people do commonly mistake the title of a patent for the claims of the patent. That's one of the main reasons discussions over specific patents on sites like Slashdot, Reddit and...well, pretty much everywhere that programmers hang out are almost always close to worthless.

Probably best to post the patent numbers along with the titles, which makes it more likely some people will look at the patents themselves and subsequently post more information as to what is or is not actually being alleged.

The best way to think of patent titles and abstracts is not as things telling you what the patent covers, but rather as telling you what it DOESN'T cover. When you are trying to figure out what patents might cover some particular thing of interest, you use the titles and abstract to eliminate patents. For those not eliminated, you then need to read the specification and claims.

For instance, looking at the 9 titles you posted, I can quite confidently conclude that 7 of them cannot possibly cover anything I'm currently working on.

Re: Microsoft sues Salesforce

#22

Post by tzs »

bhiggins wrote: post #8

Is it just me or are all these patents pretty trifling? Stacking toolbars, web templates, mouse timing? Really Microsoft? Did Marc Benioff say something mean to Horacio Gutiérrez? Maybe they can team up with Intellectual Ventures and do some awesome lawsuits. When you can't win in the marketplace...

"Is it just me or are all these patents pretty trifling?"

I can't tell, as the story was only posted an hour ago, and I can't even really understand one patent in an hour. It would take me days to be able to competently assess 9 patents. I'm quite impressed that you were able to do so in a mere one hour.

Re: Microsoft sues Salesforce

#23

Post by [deleted] »

roc wrote: post #10
rfrey wrote: post #2

Sues on violation of 9 patents. 1. Method and system for mapping between logical data and physical data 2. System and method for providing and displaying a web page having an embedded menu 3. Method and system for stacking toolbars in a computer display 4. Automated web site creation using template driven generation of active server page applications 5. Aggregation of system settings into objects 6. Timing and veloci…

I've come to terms with the fact that even here on HN, many people still mistake a summary for a legal definition of the invention covered. But I had held out hope that this wasn't the sort of place where one could condemn patents by title alone, let alone the sort of place where a false argument like that would find approval. No point is bolstered by pretending the titles have any bearing on the legal or philosophic…

[deleted]

Re: Microsoft sues Salesforce

#24

Post by _delirium »

jimfl wrote: post #13
rfrey wrote: post #2

Sues on violation of 9 patents. 1. Method and system for mapping between logical data and physical data 2. System and method for providing and displaying a web page having an embedded menu 3. Method and system for stacking toolbars in a computer display 4. Automated web site creation using template driven generation of active server page applications 5. Aggregation of system settings into objects 6. Timing and veloci…

It seems like anyone doing automatic software updates is in violation of "Method and system for identifying and obtaining computer software from a remote computer." When a user accesses the remote update service, an update service computer conducts an automatic inventory of the computer software on the user computer. The data collected from the inventory of the user computer software is then used to make comparisons…

The claims don't make it look too much better, either. Here's claim 21:

A computer-implemented method of acquiring computer software for a first computer, the method comprising:

establishing communications with a second computer over a network to determine whether computer software not installed on the first computer is available for installation on the first computer;

responsive to determining computer software not installed on the first computer is available for installation on the first computer, presenting a list at the first computer displaying the computer software not installed on the first computer and available for installation on the first computer;

from the list displaying the computer software not installed on the first computer and available for installation on the first computer, accepting a selection selected at the first computer indicating computer software to be downloaded and installed on the first computer; and

to the first computer, downloading the computer software to be downloaded and installed on the first computer.

The later claims clarify that upgrades count as well. I could be missing something, but sounds awfully close to a description of Debian's 'aptitude' and 'dselect'?

Re: Microsoft sues Salesforce

#25

Post by andreyf »

rbanffy wrote: post #18
papachito wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I could understand that if Microsoft was a dying company but last time I check they are still making billions record profits. So why? Because salesforce is doing integration with google apps?

They are a dying company. They just have too much inertia. It will take a while. Desktop software will be irrelevant shortly, as will the personal computer as we knew it. Companies will redeploy internal desktop apps as web apps, first to their own servers, then for cloud platforms like GAE. Microsoft is doomed. This is its future.

Desktop software will be irrelevant shortly

Shortly? To me, it's pretty damned irrelevant now.

Re: Microsoft sues Salesforce

#26

Post by DanielBMarkham »

Looks like the Microsoft PR machine is working in full force again today

Win a couple hundred million, lose the support of 5% of the voters. Nice trade, guys. Few more like that and you'll be the next AT&T

We continue to confuse kinetic force with winning.

Re: Microsoft sues Salesforce

#27

Post by mwerty »

rfrey wrote: post #12
roc wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've come to terms with the fact that even here on HN, many people still mistake a summary for a legal definition of the invention covered. But I had held out hope that this wasn't the sort of place where one could condemn patents by title alone, let alone the sort of place where a false argument like that would find approval. No point is bolstered by pretending the titles have any bearing on the legal or philosophic…

Nobody mistakes a title for a summary, or a summary for an exhaustive 40 page patent. Nobody mistakes an academic article title for an abstract, or the abstract for the text, or the text for the data, either. But that doesn't stop us from mentioning articles by title. I thought it would be helpful to list the patents since they are not listed in the original article and one has to scan a 10 page pdf to find them. I'm…

I think links to fulltext are best.

I don't think summarizing patents makes sense in this case with such vague content-free titles.

Re: Microsoft sues Salesforce

#29

Post by coderdude »

rfrey wrote: post #12
roc wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've come to terms with the fact that even here on HN, many people still mistake a summary for a legal definition of the invention covered. But I had held out hope that this wasn't the sort of place where one could condemn patents by title alone, let alone the sort of place where a false argument like that would find approval. No point is bolstered by pretending the titles have any bearing on the legal or philosophic…

Nobody mistakes a title for a summary, or a summary for an exhaustive 40 page patent. Nobody mistakes an academic article title for an abstract, or the abstract for the text, or the text for the data, either. But that doesn't stop us from mentioning articles by title. I thought it would be helpful to list the patents since they are not listed in the original article and one has to scan a 10 page pdf to find them. I'm…

"Sounds like they're being sued for deploying an AJAX application."

You listed just the patent titles and then made a smart remark about them. Roc stated that you cannot tell what a patent covers simply by looking at its name. It sounds more like you mistake a title for an exhaustive 40 page patent. Otherwise, you were just wise-cracking for the sake of it.

Re: Microsoft sues Salesforce

#30

Post by thasmin »

Microsoft says it only uses lawsuits as a last resort when a licensing agreement can't be reached. It sounds like they're trying not to be bad guys, but I read this as Microsoft using lawsuits to force companies to license their patents. I'm not under the illusion that any other company does differently, just commenting on their attempted PR spin.
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