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Moom removed from sale due to patent violation claim

manytricks.com

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Re: Moom removed from sale due to patent violation claim

#111

Post by egypturnash »

jakobegger wrote: post #19

I was about to complain loudly about bullshit patents, but then I took some time to read the actual patent (make sure to look at the images too!), and it turns out that this patent describes a method that is very similar to what Moom does (judging by screenshots). This is not a case of the overly broad patents that we usually complain about, this is a very precise patent.

This patent was granted in April 2013 (see http://pdfpiw.uspto.gov/.piw?PageNum=0&docid=08434019&IDKey=...), and does indeed pretty precisely describe Moom's "drag across a grid" window repositioning method. Which... first appeared in April 2011. See this old blog post, describing the brand new grid-selection feature of Moom 1.2: https://manytricks.com/blog/?p=1297

So that should be interesting.

This patent may also cover the window arrangement widget in Adobe's products, which seems to date back to at least 2011 (google for 'adobe application frame'): http://egypt.urnash.com/media/blogs.dir/1/files/2017/05/Scre...

...but somehow I doubt they'll be suing Adobe until they've successfully gone after all the other folks who independently invented something similar to their patent.

Re: Moom removed from sale due to patent violation claim

#112

Post by [deleted] »

endorphone wrote: post #42
jakobegger wrote: post #19

I was about to complain loudly about bullshit patents, but then I took some time to read the actual patent (make sure to look at the images too!), and it turns out that this patent describes a method that is very similar to what Moom does (judging by screenshots). This is not a case of the overly broad patents that we usually complain about, this is a very precise patent.

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…

[deleted]

Re: Moom removed from sale due to patent violation claim

#113

Post by tarikozket »

tyingq wrote: post #17
wereHamster wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please go read the patent, it describes an "apparatus and method" that is much more advanced than traditional tiling window managers. The patent doesn't even compare to simple terminal based tiling of sub-shells. It also describes a GUI to control the positions, and describes in detail how it's supposed to work. There is a section "Description of the Related Art" in the patent which makes references to existing (at t…

>There is a section "Description of the Related Art" in the patent which makes references to existing (at that time, year 2008) approaches and why they are not good enough In that section, it mostly compares itself to Microsoft Windows' stacking (not tiling) window manager. There's no comparison to ANY of the already existing tiling window managers. It was filed on June 2nd, 2008. There were a ton of tiling oriented…

Seems like the patent is already by a Microsoft engineer: http://pdfpiw.uspto.gov/.piw?Docid=05371847&homeurl=http%3A%...

Re: Moom removed from sale due to patent violation claim

#114

Post by __2__ »

jostmey wrote: post #104

What kind of person spends their days looking through other people's software, asking if their collection of questionable patents applies to someone else's hard work?

Is this an honest question?

Honest answer: That person is someone who makes more money per hour than the person who did the hard work. And they stand to make even more money in the event of a settlement.

How can you fix this problem? Take away the financial incentives.

Re: Moom removed from sale due to patent violation claim

#115

Post by grkvlt »

jostmey wrote: post #104

What kind of person spends their days looking through other people's software, asking if their collection of questionable patents applies to someone else's hard work?

The same kind of person that owns a collection of valid patents, based on many years of unique research and development, looking to see if they apply to someone else's lazy theft of their hard work. Hint: it's really hard to tell the difference!

Re: Moom removed from sale due to patent violation claim

#116

Post by DanBC »

appleflaxen wrote: post #64
jakobegger wrote: post #19

I was about to complain loudly about bullshit patents, but then I took some time to read the actual patent (make sure to look at the images too!), and it turns out that this patent describes a method that is very similar to what Moom does (judging by screenshots). This is not a case of the overly broad patents that we usually complain about, this is a very precise patent.

but it was completely not novel at the time of the patent

What other tiling WMs had the same gui menu to select layout?

Re: Moom removed from sale due to patent violation claim

#118

Post by tyingq »

DanBC wrote: post #109
tyingq wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The patent doesn't appear to describe tiling window management It does though. The screenshots show grid options, and describe how the end user can place windows in the grid. It specifically complains about how MS Windows has overlapping windows. Grid + no overlap == tiling. >Indeed the patent describes a user interface to accomplish this that looks very similar to screenshots of Moom. Sure. The argument about "nove…

> The idea that 2008 was the first time someone had the notion of grid layouts and allowing an end user to place a window in them is just silly. That's not what's being patented. The gui menu to select placement of windows is what's being patented. Did that exist before 2008?

Yes, it did.

I know I used window managers with almost the same grid square select in the 1990's. Not able to conjure up a screenshot yet. I did find one that's very close, here: http://www.badros.com/greg/papers/scwm-extensible-wm.pdf

That is clearly a UI for dynamic window placement and sizing, just not with the exact grid dynamic, though you can define new constraints, so it's possible it can do it as well. It's not the one I remember, but it's hard to Google up old UI's in HN time.

Given some time, I'm sure I could find something exactly like it.

Re: Moom removed from sale due to patent violation claim

#119

Post by nilliams »

egypturnash wrote: post #111
jakobegger wrote: post #19

I was about to complain loudly about bullshit patents, but then I took some time to read the actual patent (make sure to look at the images too!), and it turns out that this patent describes a method that is very similar to what Moom does (judging by screenshots). This is not a case of the overly broad patents that we usually complain about, this is a very precise patent.

This patent was granted in April 2013 (see http://pdfpiw.uspto.gov/.piw?PageNum=0&docid=08434019&IDKey=... ), and does indeed pretty precisely describe Moom's "drag across a grid" window repositioning method. Which... first appeared in April 2011 . See this old blog post, describing the brand new grid-selection feature of Moom 1.2: https://manytricks.com/blog/?p=1297 So that should be interesting. This patent may als…

Here's Divvy doing this in 2010 [1], the question is if Divvy is related to the patent or if they too received a letter.

[1] http://lifehacker.com/5715221/divvy-window-organizer-lands-o...

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