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Moom removed from sale due to patent violation claim

manytricks.com

51–60 of 141 posts

Re: Moom removed from sale due to patent violation claim

#51
post #39

are there any open source alternatives to Moom?

Cinch and SizeUp.

http://www.irradiatedsoftware.com/cinch/ http://www.irradiatedsoftware.com/sizeup/

Been using them for a few years now. I'm quite happy. The combination, after you configure it, is superior to the Windows implementation.

Re: Moom removed from sale due to patent violation claim

#53
I once designed an app to later realize that I was infringing dozens of patents I never knew existed before.

Go and read a dozen patents, then come back and tell me they're not obvious. Most of them are ridiculously obvious, assuming you have some understanding of their given field/domain.

Re: Moom removed from sale due to patent violation claim

#54
post #36

Daniel Paul Nelson what a douchenozzle

Please be aware that "Daniel Paul Nelson" the artist, for which most Google results are, is likely not the same as the Daniel P Nelson who seems to live with his wife in Salt Lake City and applied for the patent.

Re: Moom removed from sale due to patent violation claim

#55

There's something fundamentally broken about the patent system.

It's difficult to say where the fault lies. I would rather live in a world of patents than not, if we insist on sticking to the idea of not forcing research and discoveries into the public domain. What would have prevented this particular case?

Usually when you create a patent there's no expert from the government who can verify that your idea is actually novel. Or complex enough to constitute an invention.

So you can easily register something, write it in an unreadable way and sue people for it.

Additionally there's a corrupt area int Texas where judges and lawyers have a very high tendency to rule in favor of patent trolls, because they'd have no jobs without them.

Here's an easy proposal: Let anyone claim patents for everything. If someone sues you for patent infringement it's their job to proof you infringed on their patent. And it's their job to proof their idea is complex enough to constitute a patent. And it's their job to proof their idea is novel. After the patent holder invested some money to show all these things; They can start to sue you.

This puts the assumption of innocence back in our justice system like it should be. And makes sure less people get patent trolled, since trolling now is a lot more expensive then sending out thousand of spam letters.

Re: Moom removed from sale due to patent violation claim

#56

There's something fundamentally broken about the patent system.

It's difficult to say where the fault lies. I would rather live in a world of patents than not, if we insist on sticking to the idea of not forcing research and discoveries into the public domain. What would have prevented this particular case?

Usually when you create a patent there's no expert from the government who can verify that your idea is actually novel. Or complex enough to constitute an invention.

So you can easily register something, write it in an unreadable way and sue people for it.

Additionally there's a corrupt area int Texas where judges and lawyers have a very high tendency to rule in favor of patent trolls, because they'd have no jobs without them.

Here's an easy proposal: Let anyone claim patents for everything. If someone sues you for patent infringement it's their job to proof you infringed on their patent. And it's their job to proof their idea is complex enough to constitute a patent. And it's their job to proof their idea is novel. After the patent holder invested some money to show all these things; They can start to sue you.

This puts the assumption of innocence back in our justice system like it should be. And makes sure less people get patent trolled, since trolling now is a lot more expensive then sending out thousand of spam letters.

Re: Moom removed from sale due to patent violation claim

#58
What's really galling about this particular patent trolling is that Rob Griffiths, principal of Many Tricks which publishes Moom, is one of the original OS X nerd's nerd.

He's done so much for the OS X and the UNIX communities, having run Mac OS X Hints for more than a decade. [0] When pro users were just figuring out best practices for everything from window management to command line AppleScript (osascript) to postfix configuration, Griffiths' tireless and largely selfless (ads were unobtrusive, implemented with a very light touch) support of Mac OS X hints made it the go-to site for how to do all things command line in OS X.

It's a shame this patent troll has chosen to shake down so selfless a member of the OS X community.

[0] http://macosxhints.com (redirects to) http://hints.macworld.com

EDIT: Grammar: add missing direct object to last sentence of second paragraph.

Re: Moom removed from sale due to patent violation claim

#59
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being similar doesn't justify it as a patent. A core foundation of patents is that the invention be novel and non-obvious to a practitioner. If countless people independently -- without learning from the claims -- derive exactly the same "invention", it is an invalid patent. Of course then you have to actually get it invalidated, at great time and expense. It is completely a bullshit patent. The patent office got the…

It's only a bullshit patent if you have pockets deep enough to take them to court over a patent issue. And, the patent holder is considered "Right" until otherwise proved.

From a qualitative perspective it's a bullshit patent, full-stop. But yes, the legal process is prohibitive, but if you demonstrate prior art to the USPTO you can request a re-examination that allows them to save face.

If this patent were filed in 1988 it might have a hope of standing. It was remarkably filed in 2008, years after countless grid-based Windows manager had come and gone. It stands no hope, and the EFF will make quick work of this.

The USPTO needs to be held liable for this sort of nonsense, or alternately people who file spurious patents need to be penalized. This is legalized extortion.

And since this always comes up - someone is going to say "read all the claims...this is novel only in its entirety". The claims of a patent, unless specifically cross-referencing, hold independently.

Re: Moom removed from sale due to patent violation claim

#60
post #27
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do exist in Europe, and indeed many companies patent things in Europe to take advantage of legislation like Patentbox.

Okay, I looked it up, and strictly speaking you are right, [1]. But, quoting: "The European Patent Convention (EPC), Article 52, paragraph 2, excludes from patentability, in particular 1. discoveries, scientific theories and mathematical methods; 2. aesthetic creations; 3. schemes, rules and methods for performing mental acts, playing games or doing business, and programs for computers; 4. presentations of informatio…

That's all well and good, but if you get sued you still have to pay quite a lot of money to a lawyer to prove you're right, and even if you win you're still stuck with the bill.
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