The Amiga defeats patent troll

[Matt_H]

I've only quickly scanned this, but hooray for our favorite computer

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20100513121121635

[KThunder]

How far ahead was the Amiga? It can be used in 2010 to prove that it was the innovator, not some patent squatting troll trying to hold back an open source solution that can benefit many.
If they lost Red Hat/Novell would have had to remove the "infringing" technologies. That would have sucked.

[ElPolloDiabl]

:uzi:

"Waste that patent troll!"

From what I can see, they patented the desktop windows... intuition to us.

[runequester]

awesome

[whiteb]

it seems Acacia did not get the message, when Microsoft trampled their ass in court. (2007)

IP Innovations is a SUBSIDIARY of Acacia.

no doubt an appeal will happen

[mpiva]

The one thing that bothers me about the article, though, is the way the author talks about the Amiga like it's some ancient relic from eons ago:

one of the first comments mentioned the Amiga. I kid you not

...resulted in someone coming forward with a *working* Amiga, believe it or not...

I'll bet the lawyers on the other side never in a million years thought they'd have to deal with a working Amiga (emphasis mine)

Come on... an electronic device that still works after 25 years is not that unbelievable!

[runequester]

if you are coming from the PC world.. yeah, it is

[KThunder]

if you are coming from the PC world.. yeah, it is

How many pcs have capacitors burning out because they are the wrong way around, or batteries puking their guts onto the motherboard, or wirewrap timing fixes, etc. etc. etc.

oh, wait actually I've seen all that myself, never mind. The oldest pc I have is a commodore pentium from 1995 or 96? still works fine

[mikeymike]

The oldest PC I'm aware of still working belongs to one of my customers, it's a server running SCO OpenServer 5 and has a Pentium Pro processor, so 1995 at the earliest.

[Matt_H]

The one thing that bothers me about the article, though, is the way the author talks about the Amiga like it's some ancient relic from eons ago:







Come on... an electronic device that still works after 25 years is not that unbelievable!

Definitely. It was a little disturbing to see so much shock over vintage hardware. That's run-of-the-mill stuff in these parts... and nothing compared to the C64 and Apple II crowd!

[persia]

[Matt_H]

But can you patent it?

[Amiga_Nut]

Time has a funny effect on people who were blinkered, they forget all the true innovations that happened and only remember crap like Windows.

I wouldn't mind a précis as to what exactly we 'won'? WIMP? Specifics about windowing? Because Mac and GEM were around in 1984 and 85 respectively too.

[Plaz]

Nice that "Only Amiga" returns with new meaning.

Plaz

[sim085]

Is "User Interface with Multiple Workspaces for Sharing Display System Objects" what I think it is? i.e. - A window that can have the same icons as another window? or I am not understanding this correctly?