User Interfaces
- US 6275213 and US 6424333 related to EP application 0864145
- Immersion Corporation sued Sony under these US patents in 2002. They relate to force-feedback technology such as that used in PlayStation 2 DualShock controllers. Sony lost the case and Immersion were awarded $90.7 million, an injunction (stayed pending appeal), and a compulsory license. The claims of the related European patent application require the device to be attached to a body part and were, in any event, refused by the examining division of the European Patent Office for lacking an inventive step.
- EP 0394160
- US 5301348
- The patent relates to a progress bar. Filed in 1989, it was highlighted in 2005 by Richard Stallman in New Scientist and The Guardian as an example of a software patent granted by the European Patent Office, that would impede software development and would be dangerous. The claims as granted describe a process of breaking down a task to be performed by a computer into a number of equal task units and updating a display each time a unit is completed and therefore does not cover progress bars which operate in different ways.
Read more about this topic: List Of Software Patents
Famous quotes containing the word user:
“A worker may be the hammer’s master, but the hammer still prevails. A tool knows exactly how it is meant to be handled, while the user of the tool can only have an approximate idea.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)