[nylug-talk] Patent Infringement Lawsuit Filed Against Red Hat & Novell

[Chris Knadle]

On Friday 12 October 2007, Jon Stanley wrote:
> I didn't even think about CDE. I was discussing this in #rhel on 
> freenode today. We all agreed that there was prior art here, but CDE
> completely escaped my mind. According to the ComputerWorld story that
> I read about this, the patent was granted in 91.

   Before CDE there was HP-VUE.  HP-VUE 2.0 apparently also had these 
features, and existed in Feb 1991, when it was written about in the 
Hewlett-Packard Journal by Mark A. Champine.

   Having trouble finding a screenshot of HP-VUE 2.0, though.  Easy to find 
screenshots for HP-VUE 3.0 [Wikipedia].

> Maybe someone older 
> than me could comment whether this feature existed in CDE in that
> timeframe (I think so - I know that it was a standard feature by the
> time I started using it in 97).

   It did.  CDE was around in mid 1993.  [Wikipedia]
   I think NeXTStep / OpenStep from 1988 may also have the features.

   The Groklaw comments on the story have other found prior art too.  
Apparently the patent(s) already cite prior art, so it may be a little bit 
more complicated than simply finding prior art to the patent(s).

   -- Chris

-- 

Chris Knadle
Chris.Knadle at coredump.us