“On September 27, the US Patent & Trademark Office published Apple’s patent application titled Methods of manipulating a screen space of a display device. Embodiments of the invention relate to graphical user interfaces (”GUIs”). More particularly, embodiments of the invention relate to methods of manipulating a screen space in a display device. On one hand the description of screen space strongly suggests that this patent could be relating to Apple’s forthcoming OS feature known as Spaces and yet certain embodiments suggest otherwise,” Neo reports for MacNN.
Read the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
First, I admit I haven’t read the full text of the patent application. However, Spaces is just an Apple implementation of the age-old virtual desktop that’s been in use in various flavors of *nix for decades. How is Apple’s rendition not “obvious”? I thought Apple is on the camp of fighting to get rid of frivolous patents?
Sounds more like Expose to me…
i like the ‘new’ Apple. New being last decade or so…they patent EVERYTHING. Obviously having learned from their mistakes of the ’80s…
They need to add Coverflow to Spaces and insure all full screen interfaces remain persistant. Just scroll through all your open apps in Coverflow
I agree with Someone Else.
Unix and GNU GUIs have had virtual spaces for many years. Unless Spaces has something totally new to add to this, I can’t see a patent here.
Until the patent laws change, Apple needs to be like everyone else and patent the shit out of whatever they can or risk paying some patent troll down the road.
Just because one holds a patent does not mean they have to enforce it through the courts.
I think Apple has been burned by patent lawyers one too many time to not patent what they do… really, I think they are just covering their asses so as not to be sued by some a-hole who puts in a patent just to litigate later.
These patents are like nuclear weapons; You wouldn’t ever use one against someone who also has them.
I don’t think this is for Spaces. It actually sounds like a feature called Single Window Mode that was in some developer previews of Mac OS X (before 10.0). It was a purple gem on the upper right-hand corner of the title bar, and when you activated it, you got only 1 window on the screen at a time. If you switched to another, that one went and hid.
See http://www.guidebookgallery.org/articles/interviewwithjohngruber/pics/purpledot
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Everyone knows Apple can’t patent spaces, it would be like M$ patentnig the curser.
Leopard’s Spaces?
I think the catbox is covered by plenty of patents already.
If someone can copyright the song “Happy Birthday” and reap all the royalties, anything and everything is up for grabs.
“Just because one holds a patent does not mean they have to enforce it through the courts.”
Unfortuantely that is not true. Use it or lose it… let one person/company use it and not license it to them and your patent is lost. There have been several cases where people/companies have not fought to protect their patent until later on and they lost the case since they did not fight in due time. I think Apple won a patent case a while back on the same grounds. Not 100% sure about that though. But if you get a patent and do not intend to enforce it… why bother in the first place.
MW: brown
Who makes this stuff up?
If Apple’s Spaces is sufficiently different enough from other implementations of a “virtual desktop”, then that difference needs to be patented else it will show up in Vista SP1 and three flavors of Linux by the end of the year. There are other ways to do the same thing, let the competition do their own coding. If all they’ve done is cribbed a bit from Sun/Solaris and HP/HP-UX, the patent can’t be supported.
Dave
@ oY o. Happy Birthday was actually composed by two sisters. Their copyright does not prevent anyone from singing it or writing it, but it does prevent the broadcasting of it through any media without consent from them or their publishers.
What does this mean for you and I? Diddly squat!
What does it mean for film makers, broadcasters & publishers? a royalty has to be paid. Not big, just small enought to enforce their rights, just as in the case of Linux.
Can I kindly suggest that you purchase some Camel’s Milk and drink it? You will Fart like you have never farted before! evil smelling cheroots of farts, but by the time you stop farting, you will be predesposed to not making hasty comments without engaging your brain into first gear!!!!
Yours Sincerely CMD
Use it or lose it… let one person/company use it and not license it to them and your patent is lost
Not true–ever heard of submarine patents? GIF is one of the better-known examples.
You’re probably thinking of trademarks, which is the only type of IP that can be lost if you don’t enforce it.
Read the patent. This is clearly nothing to do with Spaces and a lot more to do with enhancements to the Expose concept. Whereas Exposes basically just lets you easily find a window in a cluttered screen, the patent seems to describe an extension to the concept to let you more easily then work with the found window whilst keeping the other windows and applications off screen.