Re: patents

[iain <iain prettypeople org>]

> Thumbnails
> Setting the icon image to a scaled representation of the document.
> US patent held by Apple
> http://www.delphion.com/details?pn10=US05479602

This seems to be very specific in its methods
What that means I don't know because I'm not a subscriber so I can't see
the rest of the patents.

> Emblems
> Create a composite icon from background and foreground icons
> US patent held by Apple
> http://www.delphion.com/details?&pn=US06100888__

This patent seems to refer to Software asks for image A
system sees that its supposed to return image B and gives that instead.
And it mentions completely replacing image A with image B
rather than taking image A and superimposing images B,C,D and E over it.

> Taskbar
> The taskbar provides status information about the running applications
> and services.
> US patent held by Microsoft
> http://www.delphion.com/details?pn=US05757371__
> http://www.delphion.com/details?pn=US05920316__

This describes a panel which is a taskbar.
It may be subtley different but our taskbar is not a panel
and our panel is not a taskbar.

> Dock/launcher
> An area of the desktop reserved for icons representing applications.
> US patent held by NeXT (Apple)
> http://www.delphion.com/details?pn10=US05146556

And this one seems to be more related to windowmaker's dock which has
icons for currently running programs, than a panel with icons to launch
applications. Which isn't surprising, WM is based around the NeXT system
wasn't it? This patent was published 12 years ago (and filed 13), how
long do patents last?

iain