gjb@cs.brown.edu (Greg Brail) (12/25/89)
What if: Coke sued Pepsi for the "look and feel" of their soft drink? The Wright brothers sued all the other airplane manufacturers? Johann Sebastian Bach sued all other composers who used counterpoint? The Beatles sued all rock musicians who grew their hair long? East Germany sued Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Romania for opening their borders? CompuServe sued GEnie, Delphi and America Online? Fender sued all the other makers of the electric bass guitar? Federal Express sued other 24-hour delivery services? IBM sued other computer companies that used a command-line interface? Small pizza shops that deliver in 30 minutes or less sued Dominos? AT&T sued other makers of "touch tone" phones? MTV sued the other video music channels? Aspirin companies sued the makers of other pain relievers? Levis sued other blue jeans companies? Johnny Carson sued Arsenio Hall, Merv Griffin, David Letterman and Pat Sajak? Sesame Street sued The Electric Company? Sony sued other makers of compact disk players? Henry Ford sued other companies that use assembly lines? The makers of "Star Wars" sued the makers of other space-adventure movies? Time sued Newsweek and U.S. News and World Report? Apple sued Microsoft, and then Xerox sued Apple? (Oops. That one really happened.) -greg +----------------------------------------------------+ Greg Brail Internet: gjb@cs.brown.edu BITNET: gjb@browncs.bitnet UUCP: ..uunet!brunix!gjb Home: (401)863-6284
t-jacobs@cs.utah.edu (Tony Jacobs) (12/25/89)
In article <GJB.89Dec25011658@heloise.cs.brown.edu> gjb@cs.brown.edu (Greg Brail) writes: >What if: > >Coke sued Pepsi...The Wright brothers sued...Johann Sebastian Bach sued... >The Beatles sued...East Germany sued...CompuServe sued...Fender sued... >Federal Express sued...IBM sued...Small pizza shops...AT&T sued... >MTV sued...Aspirin companies sued...Levis sued...Johnny Carson sued... >Sesame Street sued...Sony sued...Henry Ford sued...The makers of "Star Wars".. >Time sued... >Apple sued Microsoft, and then Xerox sued Apple? If Ideas were patentable or copyrightable, then they all MIGHT WIN!!!!!!!! That seems to be Xeroxs strategy. They haven't cliamed copyright infringement. They claim Apple has 'unlawful use of copyrighted Xerox software and charges Apple with copyright "misrepresentation"' (whatever that is suppose to mean) The following is a list that was posted on the net a year or two ago, it should shed some light on the matter. REMEMBER SOMETHING, JUST BECAUSE SOMEONE HAD THE IDEA PREVIOUSLY, DOESN'T MEAN THEY HAVE ANY KIND OF PROTRECTION. They must have a copyright, patent, trade- mark, design patent, or some other kind of recognized protection. If XEROX made the mistake of showing things to people without some kind of non- disclosure signed, then they made a BIG MISTAKE. Simple as that. Perhaps a lot of this will come out in the courts. Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac,comp.windows.misc Subject: Re: Credit where credit is due Date: 14 Mar 88 17:59:43 GMT Organization: Carnegie-Mellon University, CS/RI Keywords: window human computer interface Here are my updates to Oliver Steele's list. I was lucky enough to witness many of these concepts being created because I worked in the Smalltalk group at Xerox (first the Learning Research Group, then Systems Concepts) from about '74 to '81, then in the Mac group from the end of '81 to mid-'84. I invite any PARC/Apple alumni to correct my list regarding innovations done at Xerox and Apple. I think it is unrealistic to attribute many of these concepts to a single person. Many folks in LRG (Learning Research Group) & SSL (Systems Science Laboratory), CSL (Computer Science Laboratory), and SDD (Systems Development Division) at Xerox, and the Lisa and Mac groups at Apple were involved in creating these ideas. I added a few new concepts that I felt should have been in the list as well. I don't claim these to be correct as to the FIRST creators, but at least they represent earlier accomplishments than the previous list. BitBLT/RasterOp : Ingalls(LRG)@Xerox (VERY IMPORTANT!) Bitmapped display as main display device : CSL@Xerox (the Alto) (?) (PERQ first commercial product) Pointing device mapped to screen pointer : Englebart@SRI (?) Mouse : Englebart@SRI Menus : LRG@Xerox (?) Popup Menus : Ingalls(LRG)@Xerox Pulldown menus : Lisa@Apple Menu bar : Lisa@Apple Hierarchical menus : Paeth(SSL)@Xerox (in Smalltalk) Disabling of menu items to show invalidity : Lisa@Apple Key equivalents for menu items : Lisa@Apple Check marks on m. i. : Lisa@Apple Overlapped windows : Ingalls(LRG)@Xerox Windows (tiled LATER!) : CSL@Xerox Event Queue : Simula@NCC, then Lisa@Apple Icons : SDD@Xerox (Star) -> Mac -> Lisa (!) (my Finder prototype was borrowed by the Lisa group for their Filer, and enhanced) Scroll bars : LRG@Xerox Push Buttons : LRG@Xerox Radio Buttons : Kaehler(LRG)@Xerox (I brought the term "radio button" from LRG to Apple). Check Boxes : LRG@Xerox (?) Dialog Boxes : Star@Xerox (property sheets) Language-independent software (making a French Finder without recompiling source) : Lisa@Apple "Resources", object databases for dialog layout and language independence: Horn(Mac)@Apple Multifont/style text records : CSL@Xerox (Bravo) Modeless Interaction : Tesler(SSL)@Xerox Cut/Copy/Paste w/ mouse : Tesler(SSL)@Xerox (Gypsy, then Smalltalk) Text selection point is _between_ characters : Tesler(SSL)@Xerox (Gypsy & Smalltalk) (TECO had this earlier than PARC, it is claimed) -- Bruce Horn, Carnegie Mellon CSD Tony Jacobs * Center for Engineering Design * U of U * t-jacobs@cs.utah.edu
kaufman@Neon.Stanford.EDU (Marc T. Kaufman) (12/26/89)
In article <GJB.89Dec25011658@heloise.cs.brown.edu> gjb@cs.brown.edu (Greg Brail) writes: >What if: >Coke sued Pepsi for the "look and feel" of their soft drink? >The Wright brothers sued all the other airplane manufacturers? The Wright brothers DID sue other manufacturers who attempted to infringe on their "wing warping" patent. In particular, they sued Glenn Curtis, who was forced to invent ailerons to circumvent the patent. Good thing, too. Can you imagine a 747 using wing warping for roll control? >[others deleted...] >IBM sued other computer companies that used a command-line interface? or who used, say, a smart IO channel-type bus... [MCI] >Levis sued other blue jeans companies? Just other companies who use rivets in the same pattern >Apple sued Microsoft, and then Xerox sued Apple? >(Oops. That one really happened.) Marc Kaufman (kaufman@Neon.stanford.edu)
kaufman@Neon.Stanford.EDU (Marc T. Kaufman) (12/26/89)
In article <1989Dec25.150214.5292@hellgate.utah.edu> t-jacobs@cs.utah.edu (Tony Jacobs) writes: >Bitmapped display as > main display device : CSL@Xerox (the Alto) (?) Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab - RasterOps Disk based system ca. 1969. MIT had one about the same time. The "space cadet" keyboards were an outgrowth of being able to put ANY character you could design to the screen. Bunker Ramo had a display they built for the Army powered by an IBM 1401, ca 1966. That probably doesn't count, since it didn't lead to commercial (consumer) stuff. Marc Kaufman (kaufman@Neon.stanford.edu)
kaufman@Neon.Stanford.EDU (Marc T. Kaufman) (12/26/89)
In article <1989Dec26.022252.17055@Neon.Stanford.EDU> kaufman@Neon.Stanford.EDU (Marc T. Kaufman) writes: >In article <1989Dec25.150214.5292@hellgate.utah.edu> t-jacobs@cs.utah.edu (Tony Jacobs) writes: ->Bitmapped display as -> main display device : CSL@Xerox (the Alto) (?) >Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab - RasterOps Disk based system ca. 1969. I meant Ramtek, of course. The system was originally intended to do video playback (instant replay) at football games. A side effect was that standard TV was available at the terminal since the interface standards were the same. (Creature Features on a green screen). Marc Kaufman (kaufman@Neon.stanford.edu)
gillies@m.cs.uiuc.edu (12/28/89)
Who had the idea of making the screen drawing packing into a graphics
language, and using the same language for drawing on the screen as
well as for drawing on the printer?
In my opinion, this idea and the concept of "resources" are the best
technical innovations in the macintosh.
Don Gillies, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Illinois
1304 W. Springfield, Urbana, Ill 61801
ARPA: gillies@cs.uiuc.edu UUCP: {uunet,harvard}!uiucdcs!gilliests@cup.portal.com (Tim W Smith) (01/01/90)
> What if: > AT&T sued other makers of "touch tone" phones? Since "Touch Tone" is a trademark, they probably would sue if the other maker of phones called them "Touch Tone". > Johnny Carson sued Arsenio Hall, Merv Griffin, David Letterman and Pat > Sajak? Carson's production company also produces the Letterman show, so I doubt that they would sue.
casseres@apple.com (David Casseres) (01/03/90)
In article <1989Dec25.150214.5292@hellgate.utah.edu> t-jacobs@cs.utah.edu (Tony Jacobs) writes: > Windows (tiled LATER!) : CSL@Xerox Well, it's possible to quibble about exactly what is a window and what isn't, but in the mid to late 60's Doug Englebart's system had a permanent area at the top of the screen for command/feedback interactions. Just below that was an area that was created dynamically to display text that was being buffered for input, and disposed of when no such buffering was going on. Below that were one or more areas each displaying the content of a document. These areas were created as needed, and later disposed of, by user commands, and whichever area was currently active "owned" the command/feedback area. I'd say all these areas were "tiled windows." David Casseres Exclaimer: Hey!