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Is it a machine or is it a method of making precision rubber ducks? ...nt | 101 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Apple's accused patents against Samsung Presentation
Authored by: FreeChief on Saturday, August 11 2012 @ 08:54 PM EDT
The link is to a pay-to-read article which is, I suppose, alleged to be prior art. I would rather have a link to a description of the patent.

Did they patent the whole idea of an OO-OS, or some particular algorithm or data structure?

The problem with a patent on an "OO-OS" is not prior art, but ill-defined buzzwords. I have asked several people who used the words "Object Oriented" what they mean by that. The answers included:

  • Written in SmallTalk (the only OO language).
  • Has assignment commands (not purely Function Oriented)
  • A solid block of more buzzwords, which I do not remember since they meant nothing to me.
That third answer occurred several times, but that doesn't make it the popular vote winner, since two people who answered in buzzword blocks would often get into an argument about whose buzzwords were better.

It's not a software patent, it's a marketing patent; it's like a patent on New Improved.

You all look like recursively enumerable indices to me.

 — Programmer in Chief

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

LISP is not an OS and "paralell execution" is not the same as "multitasking"
Authored by: bugstomper on Saturday, August 11 2012 @ 09:24 PM EDT
Sorry, but even though I agree that an object-oriented multitasking operating
system probably existed before 1993, your argument makes no sense for several
reasons:

LISP is a programming language, not an operating system

The paper you linked to is about an implementation of a variant of LISP that is
based on the LISP dialect Scheme, called Multilisp. MultiLisp is a programming
language used to write programs that run parallel algorithms. Not only is
MultiLisp not an operating system, parallel processing, in which an algorithm is
split up into separate processes that run on separate processors, is not the
same as multitasking.

In multitasking, an operating system manages separate tasks that may not be
related, running them either on separate processors or switching from one to
another running each a bit at a time so they appear to be running in parallel.

Also, there are object-oriented extensions to some dialects of LISP, such as the
CommonLisp Object System (CLOS), but Scheme is not object-oriented, and as far
as I know neither are the Multilisp extensions to Scheme.

Finally, a patent that is about object-oriented multitasking operating systems,
or as you put it "a patent on an object-oriented multitasking Operating
system" is not the same as a patent that covers all object-oriented
multitasking operating systems. If you want to point out prior art for the
patent you would have to actually read the claims of the patent to see what
particular methods that have to do with object-oriented multitasking operating
systems Apple is trying to claim as their invention.

And now that I have thoroughly criticized your prior art example, I will admit
that you seem to be on the right track :)

After reading the first claim of each of the patents 5,519,867 and 6,275,983 (as
far as I can get through the obfuscatory language of a patent without my brain
starting to explode) it does seem that the OS in LISP machines from Lisp
Machines Inc and Symbolics in the 1980's had every element of the claims.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Is it a machine or is it a method of making precision rubber ducks? ...nt
Authored by: Ian Al on Sunday, August 12 2012 @ 04:40 AM EDT
.

---
Regards
Ian Al
Software Patents: It's the disclosed functions in the patent, stupid!

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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