FS, with a JAWS market share of nearly 90% world wide and over 70% in the US is definitely not desperate in any way. Lee Hamilton, FS CEO, told me in his office when I was still a VP there that patents, even pretty shaky ones, can be used to "drop boulders in the road maps of any perceived competitors."
FS v. Serotek, in which FS declared themselves the soul owner of the word "freedom" would have died in a courtroom but, a smaller company like Serotek had to settle, change the name of its premier products and lose a couple of months to the distraction. Software patents are a weird portion of the US intellectual property law so a statement like "FS hasn't a leg to stand on in the case versus GW" may feel good to say and, in a more perfect world may actually be true but high stakes IP lawsuits can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars just to get a summary judgement in favor of the defendant. Years ago, Richard Stallman and I founded a non-profit called "League for Programming Freedom" in which we took on a lot of US law in this area. You can look us up at www.progfree.org and learn much more about the nastiness involved in these kind of legal instruments. I recommend moving this to the vo bs list as it is pretty distant from VO. cdh . On Aug 25, 2009, at 9:31 AM, Scott Howell wrote: > Huh, good luck cause FS hasn't a leg to stand on in the GW Micro > case and they couldn't say a word about Apple's implementation. FS > must be pretty desperate. > On Aug 25, 2009, at 8:10 AM, Chris Hofstader wrote: > >> I wonder if Apple's "Auto Web Spots" is different enough from the >> FS Placemarkers feature as FS is currently suing GW Micro over a >> patent infringement on this concept. There are a lot of problems >> with the FS patent but judges aren't always of the nuances that >> make one idea different from another. >> >> cdh >> On Aug 24, 2009, at 5:21 PM, Charlie Doremus wrote: >> >>> The following is copied directly from the Apple site. >>> >>> Find information fast with auto web spots. >>> >>> Many web pages are filled with complex design elements or lack >>> useful HTML tags, making them difficult to convey through a screen >>> reader. So Apple invented new technologies to comprehend and >>> interpret the visual design of web pages, then use the information >>> to assign virtual tags called “auto web spots” to mark important >>> locations on the page. If you’re on a newspaper website, for >>> example, there might be an auto web spot for each lead story, >>> another for a box containing weather or sports scores, and so on. >>> You can jump from web spot to web spot with a keystroke or the >>> flick of a finger. And if there’s a particular feature on a site >>> you visit often, you can assign a “sweet spot” on that page so >>> that VoiceOver will go there first when the page opens. >>> >>> >>> On Mon, Aug 24, 2009 at 10:28 AM, Marie Howarth <marie.jane2...@gmail.com >>> > wrote: >>> >>> one feature I just read they have in snow leopard is voice over will >>> now read the whole website to you. I cannot say I'm happy about >>> this, >>> the one thing about VO I love is it does what I want it too not what >>> it thinks I want it too. ugh. apple why listen to them? >>> sorry, but what do others think? >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> -- >>> Check out our web site, www.giantdolphin.com >>> >>> >>> >> >> >> >> > > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. To post to this group, send email to macvisionaries@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
