Did an Apple Engineer Invent FB Messages In 2003? 128
theodp writes "Q. How many Facebook engineers does it take in 2010 to duplicate a lone Apple engineer's 2003 effort? A. 15! On Nov. 15th, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg introduced Facebook Messages, which uses whatever method of communication is appropriate at the time — e.g., email, IM, SMS. A day later, ex-Apple software engineer Jens Alfke was granted a patent for his 2003 invention of a Method and apparatus for processing electronic messages, which — you guessed it — employs the most appropriate messaging method — e.g., email, IM, SMS — for the job. Citing Apple's lack of passion for social software, Alfke left Apple in 2008. After a layover at Google, Alfke landed at startup Rockmelt, whose still-in-beta 'social web browser' also sports a pretty nifty communications platform."
Re:Nothing New (Score:1, Informative)
How many anti-Apple idiots continue TO GET IT WRONG about PARC and the Macintosh?
Same idea (Score:4, Informative)
The Apple developer may have put forward the idea in 2003, but this same technology was a key plot point in the movie AntiTrust, which came out in 2001. And the concept wasn't new then. So, no, an Apple Engineer didn't invent the new FB messaging system, it's an old idea. FB just happens to have implemented it.
Re:prior art? (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101108/02464211754/us-patent-office-makes-it-harder-to-reject-patents-for-obviousness.shtml
1 Person's Software Diamond is Another's Dirt Clod (Score:5, Informative)
Steve Jobs in 1991: [cnn.com] Somebody at IBM a few years ago saw our NextStep operating system as a potential diamond to solve their biggest and most profound problem, that of adding value to their computers with unique software. Unfortunately, as I learned, IBM is not a monolith. It is a very large place with lots of faces, and they all play musical chairs. Somewhere along the line this diamond got dropped in the mud, and now it's sitting on somebody's desk who thinks it's a dirt clod. Inside that dirt clod is still a diamond, but they don't see it.
Re:Nothing New (Score:4, Informative)
None, since those engineers were hired by Apple, and Xerox engineers themselves have said Apple didn't rip them off. Did you know that the standard "File Edit View Window Help" menu layout originated at Apple? As did "cut-and-paste?"
Undeterred, the anonymous cabal of Apple-haters that has taken hold on Slashdot in the last six months will continue their efforts.
Re:Apple Claiming Credit for Something Else?!? (Score:3, Informative)
You seem to have left out one-button mice and homosexuality in your tired Apple troll, anonymous coward.
Re:Same idea (Score:5, Informative)
Wrong. A Donald Duck story from 1949 was once cited as a prior art example, denying a patent on a method of raising a sunken ship. Link [iusmentis.com].
Re:Apple Claiming Credit for Something Else?!? (Score:5, Informative)
No he didn't. Check the assignee on the patent link.
If you're an employee of a company and you invent something within the scope of that company's business, they own it. Unless you've managed to negotiate a contract that says otherwise.
Re:Nothing New (Score:4, Informative)
More specifically Xerox end of the deal was they opportunity to buy pre-IPO Apple stock. Something they couldn't have got otherwise. It's not theft if it's a deal - it's a transaction.
Re:1 Person's Software Diamond is Another's Dirt C (Score:2, Informative)
Are you out of your mind?
Visual Age Smalltalk never went anywhere and never provided anything like NeXTstep/Openstep/Cocoa
http://www-01.ibm.com/software/awdtools/smalltalk/
NeXT's UI was very innovative and was widely and poorly copied by Windows 95 and CDE.
Objective-C is a cross between Smalltalk and ANSI C and was created to enable smalltalk style object oriented programming while preserving compatibility with millions of lines of C code. I argue that more people are programming today with the smalltalk part of Objective-C than ever programmed with smalltalk directly. That is exactly because of the C compatibility.
Mach was created at Carnegie Mellon and achieved wide success including as the basis of the Open Software Foundation (OSF 1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Software_Foundation. One of the creators of Mach, Avie Tevanian, retired from Apple as executive VP for software after having previously been an executive at NeXT. You would criticize NeXT for adopting a widely supported open operating system foundation?
Display Postscript delivered a WYSIWYG get 2D graphics system with bezier paths, alpha transparency, floating point coordinate system, network transparent client server architecture, etc. at a time when both Mac and Windows used 16 bit integer coordinates and 256 color palette modes. Furthermore, Display Postscript was also used by Sun Microsystems' NeWS in 1986.
NeXT were brilliant at selecting the right technologies to integrate into a system. Mach, BSD Unix, Display Postscript, Objective-C, the precursor to Cocoa frameworks, ... It was and remains a dream come true software development environment.
Re:Same idea (Score:5, Informative)
Why doesn't fiction count? If it's obvious enough to a person who is writing 'fiction' why should a patent be awarded. I could trawl through old Star Trek movies looking for ideas, and patent the concepts I get from there.
Because prior art only counts for what it teaches or enables one of ordinary skill in the art to do. Otherwise, it's considered "non-enabling prior art". H.G. Wells wrote about a time machine. Can you read his book, and then build one? No. So, it hasn't added a time machine to the public domain other than the concept of a time machine, and granting you a patent on a working time machine (should you be able to design and build one) wouldn't be removing anything from the public domain.
It's not a matter of "fiction" not counting - highly descriptive fiction would count as prior art for everything it describes in sufficient enabling detail. The issue is that most fiction isn't that descriptive, and doesn't actually teach those ideas.
Uh, no. (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101108/02464211754/us-patent-office-makes-it-harder-to-reject-patents-for-obviousness.shtml
Yeah, there was a big stink when that story first appeared on Slashdot, all because of people who didn't actually bother to read the USPTO guidelines. The Supreme Court described 7 tests for obviousness in KSR, back in 2006. Since then, there have been several dozen court cases. The new guidelines describe those cases to clarify the 7 tests. However, only 4 of the tests have been issues in the several dozen court cases, so in describing them, the new guidelines only talk about those 4. However, they state:
The decisions of the Federal Circuit discussed in this 2010 KSR Guidelines provide Office personnel as well as practitioners with additional examples of the law of obviousness. The purpose of the 2007 KSR Guidelines was, as stated above, to help Office personnel to determine when a claimed invention is not obvious, and to provide an appropriate supporting rationale when an obviousness rejection is appropriate. Now that a body of case law is available to guide Office personnel and practitioners as to the boundaries between obviousness and nonobviousness, it is possible in this 2010 KSR Guidelines Update to contrast situations in which the subject matter was found to have been obvious with those in which it was determined not to have been obvious. Thus, Office personnel may use this 2010 KSR Guidelines Update in conjunction with the 2007 KSR Guidelines (incorporated into MPEP 2141 and 2143) to provide a more complete view of the state of the law of obviousness.
Sheesh. Complaining that they're now not considering prior art as one of the tests of "obviousness" is like complaining that Apple isn't making laptops anymore, because you saw an ad that only shows a picture of the iPhone or iPad, regardless of the text at the bottom that discusses using an iPhone with your Apple Macbook laptop: not only are you wrong in your FUD-based interpretation, the thing you're citing says you're wrong.
Re:Nothing New (Score:4, Informative)
When you grab a disk image or a disk in OS X, the trash can icon changes to an eject icon. I assume you're talking about OS X here, since you have joined this point with the restore button function. On OS 9 I can't remember exactly what the trashcan did when you grabbed a disk, since I tended to use the key combo for "put away" rather than using the mouse. I'd fire up the old 9600, but I can't remember where it is right now.
Plus means "bigger" so the window getting bigger seems like an accurate description of what the UI element does (maximise has never really been an Apple paradigm, so expecting it to do what it does on Windows and calling it bad UI is just a non-sequitur). A more salient criticism of that particular element, called the "restore" button is that it flips between two window states when you click it - so it can go from big to small, or small to big, all the while with a plus symbol that appears on hover. That is inconsistent/mislabelled UI and should be changed, but that's not what you were complaining about - your issue was that it got bigger when you clicked on it, and it is marked with a plus sign. I really can't see the issue here.
They are perfectly capable of putting a battery door on an mp3 player, and have given a sound engineering explanation for why they chose not to (using the extra space you save by not having a removal mechanism, battery bay, contacts, hinges and latches to increase the size of the battery itself, and to simplify the internal layout when you don;t have to consider where a battery would be inserted or removed). To simplify that down to "poor engineering because they can't figure it out" is a gross oversimplification and wilful ignorance of the design decisions behind the iPod and iPhone. You may not agree with it, but your conclusions about why they went that way just don't mesh with reality.
iTunes does need some rework. The fact that it is still a Carbon app in this day and age shows that is is hauling some cruft around with it. Not that it's worse than Cocoa, just that it has been technically deprecated by Apple themselves). I don't agree with the realignment of the window buttons - breaking Apple's own guidelines, and certain other UI elements in it.