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In a patent application 20040055446, published Thursday, Apple describes a graphical user interface "and methods of use thereof in a multimedia player." The patent application refers to a hierarchically ordered graphical user interface and lists Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs as one of three inventors, along with Jeffrey L. Robbin and Timothy Wasko.
Robbin was the primary author of SoundJam, the MP3 player to which Apple bought the rights in early 2000 as it sought to make up for lost ground in digital music after it underestimated demand for CD-RW drives. Robbin moved to Apple with the acquisition and later took a lead role on the company's iTunes music download service. Wasko worked with Jobs at Next before moving back to Apple after Jobs took up the post of interim CEO (and later CEO).
This is not the first time Apple has tried to stop others from copying its interfaces.
In the late 1980s, the company agreed to license parts of the user interface that appeared in the Lisa and Macintosh computers to Microsoft, which was then working on Windows 1.0. But as Microsoft added more features in Windows 2.0 and later in version 3.0, Apple in 1988 filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard (which at the time was working on an Apple-like skin for Windows called NewWave) to stop them using elements that it used in its Lisa and Macintosh platforms.
Apple lost all its claims, except those that related to the trashcan and file folder icons in HP's long-since abandoned NewWave. An appeal by Apple to the U.S. Supreme Court was later denied.
Critics at the time suggested that Apple was attempting to gain all intellectual property rights over the desktop metaphor for computer interfaces. That case was further complicated when Xerox, which is widely held to have invented the graphical user interface, filed its own lawsuit against Apple, saying that it held all copyrights over graphical user interfaces.
Apple appears to have learned from its mistake in relying on copyright law and is now turning to patent law to protect its user interfaces.
"Patents offer stronger protection than copyright," said Struan Robertson, associate solicitor at law firm Masons. "If what you have done can be covered by a patent, you are well advised to get the patent. But Apple will still have copyright rights over the interface and so could still assert those in any action."
Apple's UK office declined to comment on the patent filing.
Matt Loney of ZDNet UK reported from London.
be free. Don't composers and musicians need to live? And if not,
why stop at free music? Following your thinking, we should have
free cars, free airfare, free food. Free books, free art, free.....
Grow up.
http://www.kernelthread.com/mac/oshistory/
http://www.apple-history.com
discus (with an open mind) and repeat as needed. History is
never so black and white.
- Isnt this getting old
- by lthrwolf March 29, 2004 2:56 PM PST
- I am so tired of hearing how someone stole(or might steal)a user interface from apple oh boo hoo. And no apple fan EVER says anything about apple stealing the GUI from xerox. Thats right kids the first GUI did not come from apple. It was called P.A.R.C which is an acronym for Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center.
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- Oh please
- by OscarWeb March 31, 2004 8:57 AM PST
- This is no more ridiculous than the hundreds of other patents that are/were either pending or approved by the US Patent office, like the ones on the human genome, people's DNA, etc. Apple got permission from Xerox for their GUI (and I believe Smalltalk), unlike Microsoft. What else was first developed over at Xerox PARC? WYSIWYG, Ethernet, and network services such as Directory, Print, File, and internetwork routing were all developed there, but we don't see anyone talking about those things, now do we?
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- This is getting old ...
- by treerod April 1, 2004 7:43 AM PST
- As a matter of clarification ... unlike Microsoft, IBM, and HP, Apple DID license the GUI window concept from Xerox, and unofficially, Xerox even help Apple develop Lisa, the predecessor to the Mac.
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- WEIRD management and bad lawyers
- by Ipod Apple May 17, 2007 3:19 PM PDT
- http://www.analogstereo.com/turntable_stanton_str8_20.htm
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(9 Comments)And now their asking for a patent on an ipod display???
Good computer
Lotsa WEIRD management and bad lawyers
Music should be free? Yes, because you're too cheap to pay someone for their work, that means it should be given out for free. Right. Let's demand that cars, artwork, plane rides, and food be free as well. After all, we NEED food.
For everybody's "book of worthless information" Paul Allen & Bill Gates (then a fledgeling company called Microsoft) was contracted by Apple to develop a couple of software programs (Word and Excel) for the forthcoming computer called the Mac. Needless to say, Microsoft promptly "stole" ... oh I mean based their program from two other popular programs called Word Star and Supercalc. Oh yea, DOS that little program that Gates gets credit for "inventing." He bought it in 1979 for I believe $5,000.
And finally, the reason both Xerox and Apple lost their law suits was not because they had no merit, but rather they waited too long to defend their rights to the technology, over ten years. This is how Xerox lost their rights to the Ethernet, Laser Printers, GUI, the Portrait computer monitor, the mouse (technically not developed by Xerox, but rather acquired via the purchase of another company), just to name a few technologies that came out of PARC and the MEC facility in El Segundo, CA.
So yes, this is getting old. Unfortunately no one seems to remember it correctly.