We’re all (and Microsoft) are going to dye!
These patent fights are getting a bit nuts. I was joking with people that Microsoft made Windows 8 so ugly to avoid this kind of lawsuit. Even that didn’t help them.
How is the updating tile different than the mini-windows that have been in a variety of window managers, such as KDE and Gnome, for many years? These show mini-tile views of whatever is on a particular desktop slice.
please tell me this is a joke
Prepare to be assimilated...
lucky for the early guys in the automobile industry that it was accepted that “the concept” was not your invention, your execution (the how do we do it) of a concept was your invention and it was what set you apart from competitors who invented different implementations of the concept
but the entire computer industry has become fixated - wrongly in my view - that concepts are as much a “creations” as are tools that make a concept into a product - they’re not
what you are not supposed to steal is someone elses DESIGN (the “how to” of something)
but there can legitimately be many different versions of an implementation of the same concept - HOW you do it can be different than how someone else does it, though they may LOOK alike
in this case, on the little evidence so far, the first company “discovered” the concept of “live” icons/tiles
anyone can “discover” the same concept
they just cannot steal the first company’s computer code for that puts that concept to use
what has been going on in the computer industry is as if one could discover the chemical formula for water, patent it and charge royalties on everyone who uses water in a commercial process in which water is divided into its constituent parts
of course some people think they can discover a gene in nature and then they own that gene; whereas I would grant them only a patent for the tools they invented for identifying the gene, while others could invent their own tools to do the same thing, legally
They’ll have a hard time getting past an obviousness defense.
It sounds like some the claims conflict with Microsoft Active Desktop, invented in 1997, I think. It provided users with moving/updating widget/gadget like tiles for real-time information.
Often patents overlap other patents as the PTO does a lousy job of researching patents before awarding them.