Apple v. Google and Smalltalk-80

The lawsuit by HTC against Apple is actually retaliation for Apple's lawsuit against Google.

This is a big deal because Apple claims a number of key patents are being violated by Google's Android phone software (though Google is not directly named "Android" is often mentioned).

So what are these patents in the Apple suit against HTC (and Google)?

A little digging turned up this list:

• Patent #5481721: Method for providing automatic and dynamic translation of object oriented programming language-based message passing into operation system message passing using proxy objects
• Patent #5519867: Object Oriented Multitasking System
• Patent #6275983: Object-Oriented Operating System
• Patent #5566337: Method and apparatus for distributing events in an operating system
• Patent #5929852: Encapsulated network entity reference of a network component system
• Patent #5946647: System and method for performing an action on a structure in computer-generated data
• Patent #5969705: Message protocol for controlling a user interface from an inactive application program
• Patent #5915131: Method and apparatus for handling I/O requests utilizing separate programming interfaces to access separate I/O service
• Patent #RE39486: Extensible, replaceable network component system 

So let's take a look at the first one ('721):

Dynamic translation of messages between processes.

I recall begin interested in this around 1990 or so.  I had discovered Tim Bud's "Little Smalltalk" and was fiddling around with it.

I was specifically interested in "remote messaging" at the time.  For example, having a "container object" like a process which had targets inside to which messages could be sent.  The idea was to have an object like "my calendar."  Then anything wanting to interact with that object would message it - even from remote machine.

However, with respect to the basic idea this was nothing new.

Again Smalltalk pioneered this (see this paper from 1987).

To me this one looks like a loser for Apple.

Let's take the '705 patent next...

Here is an article on "distributed Smalltalk" from 1987.  Distributed Smalltalk has remote messaging and can use remote messaging to manager displays.  The patent covers a foreground display processing being controlled by a background process.  Sounds just like a debugging exercise in Distributed Smalltalk.

Again, I think this is a loser for Apple.

Over all the more I review this stuff the more I see that the concept of software patents is flawed - at least from the perspective of today.

Today I can Google up these various old articles with little effort (just enter "smalltalk remote display handling").

But when these patent applications first hit the system in the 1990's there was no internet.  It would have not been easy to find prior art related to messaging and objects without some detailed knowledge of Smalltalk and its history.

In the very early 1980's I worked with a spin-off of Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) that sold a product called Scribe.  I was always interviewing contractors from the student body for various project.  Many of these were PhD candidates who would later interview or move to Xerox Parc (though Parc was was a bit on the decline by that time).

CMU also used technology built at Parc - Smalltalk machines, the "Dover" laser printer, Smalltalk itself.  Parc had donated it to CMU when it was finished with it.

I also bought books at that time on various computer topics from the local university bookstores.  This gave me access to things like Smalltalk that few others would have in the days without the internet.

Its actually quite hard to imagine a patent examiner in the 1990's or later even knowing about Xerox Parc, Smalltalk or its history unless they were specifically interested in it.  I imagine that instead the patent hacks at the PTO simply searched old patent records for prior inventions or trusted the data submitted with the patent application.

These specific patents are cited by numerous Java patents as well - so Oracle and old Larry Elison will have to watch their backs as well because their patent treasure trove would appear to be in part based on Apple's.

If I were a lawyer I would put my hands on everything Xerox Parc I could find from the 1970's and 80's starting with the Smalltalk-80 book pictured above.  Its the key to dismantling the Rube Goldberg patent machinery on which all of these lawsuits are built.