Apple Awarded Patent on The Dock

[jcassara]

Apple Insider is reporting that on Tuesday, the United States Patent and Trademark Office granted Apple patent number 7,434,177 titled "User interface for providing consolidation and access." What does this mean for AmigaOS 4.x's workalike?

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/10/08/apple_awarded_patent_on_the_dock.html

[Argo]

I think it means AmiDock is dead, as it was based on Next's dock utility.

[Trev]

Nothing at all? Software patents should be fought with vigor and violated at every opportunity. If NeXT had been granted a patent in 1989, it would be set to expire next year.

I haven't read the patent, but the article says it's specific to magnification and displaying application names. At least it's specific.

[Matt_H]

There's another Amiga program called AmiDock (unrelated to the 3.9-4.x one) that dates from the 1.3 era.

Besides, the Amiga and its dock software are probably so far below Apple's radar that this will never come to anything.

[FluffyMcDeath]

What does this mean for the Amiga dock?
Not a whole lot if the article is accurate about what the patent focuses on.

[Argo]

Read the patent! It's linked to from the article.

[rbelk]

I read the patent. here is the problem I have with it "the ability to display application names as a user cycles through its icons".

There are to many older OS's that have had this feature. IBM's OS/2, AT&T's OpenLook, and a bunch of UNIX window managers. I also though that artistic stuff couldn't be patented but I guess I could be wrong.

[stefcep2]

I've been using toolmanager to create docks for so long I can't remember.  You can get a patent, but enforcing it is another matter.  Sure Apple's lawyers are on par with Microsoft's, but MS lawyers have not won every legal fight they have had.

I think the patent probably refers to an animated icon dock, but we've had those too well before OS X.

[weirdami]

All you'd have to do is to show that the thing was invented years ago and that they didn't invent it and the patent would be struck down or something. The patent office probably only checks to see if something has already been patented and if someone invented it years ago but didn't patent it, then they wouldn't know about it. Just wait for the first case to happen and then it'll all fall apart.

[DFergATL]

Actually I don't think it means much.  The "dock" has been in Amiga for almost as long as MacOS.  As I understand it the dock in Amiga would be "grandfathered" in as it was done before the patent was in effect.  If people could get a patent and make it retro active, well what a mess that would be.  We might have some bad laws here in the US, but not everything is crazy.

[Nautilus]

Means nothing in Brazil, because here and also in Europe software can't be patented.

[InTheSand]

Software patents stink!

[Tripitaka]

This is most likely Apple covering themselves against anyone claiming the idea belonged to them. I doubt if they will use it to hit anyone else with, it's not solid enough.

[Hattig]

The patent is quite specific, it relates to the icons on the dock resizing when the mouse pointer is near, which was a really neat effect back in 1999 or whenever it was first shown. AmiDock doesn't do that, so it is perfectly fine. I don't think that Apple would care though, they just want to protect themselves against copycat clones.

The patent includes the resizing algorithm and other concise behaviours that together make up the patent.

[Raffaele]

The patent is quite specific, it relates to the icons on the dock resizing when the mouse pointer is near, which was a really neat effect back in 1999 or whenever it was first shown. AmiDock doesn't do that, so it is perfectly fine. I don't think that Apple would care though, they just want to protect themselves against copycat clones.

The patent includes the resizing algorithm and other concise behaviours that together make up the patent.

There are at least 3 good made Windows XP/Vista docks that have animated and resizing icons just as like as the dock in MacOS X...

http://klauskjeldsen.dk/2007/12/21/mac-os-x-dock-clones-for-windows-xpvista/

Also there are at least 5 "almost" good or at least decent docks for Linux that do the same trick as the one in MacOS.

http://www.internetling.com/2008/03/24/linux-docks-5-mac-os-x-docks-for-ubuntu-and-other-linux-distros/

As long as I know, about Patent Laws, when you request for a patent then the Patent is "in a stall" for some time before being definitevly accepted...

This is called PATENT PENDING...

This stall time is used by the patent office to check for prior art that null and voids any further patent claim or also to check if the technology is already SPREADED all around, and thus the patent could not cover what is in public domain...

If you people in USA were were smart, then mail the Patent Office showing that there are already clones of Animated Dock existing for various operating systems before Apple requested the patent...

Post them some good screenshots, and site links of existing clones... :rtfm:

This fact make automatically VOID any patent claimed by Apple, and the patent will be rejected...

Then the Apple could request another patent covering its own DOCK-ICON-MAGNIFY ALGORYTHM, but just only the algorythm, and not the dock itself...

If the Apple wanted to avoid that other people had created its own icon-magnify docks, then they should had being enough smart to patent it BEFORE launching MacOS X, and not after all the world copied this little dock eyecandy...  :roll:

Do you know that in the eighties the IBM not patented the assembling structure of computer as case and components of the PC-XT, and this originated the phenomenon of CHINESE PC CLONES, that started all the market of the PeeCees?

Poor IBM... They patented the name PC-XT and they forgot to patent the square case with drive bays, slots for cards and connectors for peripherals...  :roll:  :-D  :-P  :lol:  :lol:  :lol:

BTW, did you know that Apple copied "Think Different" motto from Bang&Olufsen?  :-P