Geoworks IP claims...(was: WAP Competitors ?)

The only company claiming WAP "ownership" that I am aware of is Geoworks,
Inc. in Alameda, California.

They claim that their patents (US Patent #5,327,529
http://www.patents.ibm.com/details?&pn=US05327529__ and Japanese Patent No.
2,794,339 ) "Process of designing user's interfaces for application
programs" covers the "do" keyword in WAP's WML. The patents cover some of
the features of their FlexUI development environment for the GEOS windowed
operating system. It is interesting to note that mobile devices are not
mentioned anywhere in the 42 pages of the patent, and the patent cites no
non-patent prior art.

I communicated with Geoworks cheif technical officer, Adam de Boor, in
January 2000 and he confirmed that Geoworks has no patent claims in Europe.

Geoworks white paper outlining their claims to WML can be found here -

http://www.geoworks.com/tl/wap_ipr/GeoWIP.html.

Additional articles about Geoworks and their WAP claims can be found here -

http://slashdot.org/articles/00/01/20/0836201_F.shtml
http://www.zdnet.com/intweek/stories/news/0,4164,2432579,00.html
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1004-200-1528787.html?tag=st.ne.1002
http://lpf.ai.mit.edu/Patents/ipns/ipns-20000120.txt

Cheers,

Jim Ewing



----- Original Message -----
From: <jain@cs.purdue.edu>
To: "Josh Cohen" <joshco@Exchange.Microsoft.com>
Cc: "Sandeep Hundal" <sandeep@wde.org>; <www-mobile@w3.org>
Sent: Saturday, March 04, 2000 9:07 AM
Subject: RE: WAP Competitors ?


> U are absolutely right when u say that Java can be used with WAP
> (infact I am implementing WTLS using KVM! though I am facing some
> problems as DatagramSocket is not ported to KVM...and WAP uses
> UDP for communcation.).
>
> Coming back to the original question:
> The point is why do I need WAP at all if I can use the communication
> libraries provided by Java...(KVM has a socket implementation). So instead
> of going thorugh WAP protocol stack, the Java browser can use the
> stack provided by KVM.....and communicate to the gateway....
>
> As regards royalty question, I think u r right.
>
> Regards,
> Sandeep
>
> PS: BTW do u know if anybody has tried implementing the WAP suite
>     using KVM?
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
--
> Sandeep Jain                    Office: MTH 405
> Graduate Student                Phone : 765-494-5006
> Computer Science Department     URL: http://www.cs.purdue.edu/homes/jain/
> Purdue University
> West Lafayette, IN 47907-1398.
>
> On Fri, 3 Mar 2000, Josh Cohen wrote:
>
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: jain@cs.purdue.edu [mailto:jain@cs.purdue.edu]
> > > Sent: Friday, March 03, 2000 7:18 PM
> > > To: Sandeep Hundal
> > > Cc: www-mobile@w3.org
> > > Subject: Re: WAP Competitors ?
> > >
> > >
> > > Yes.....KVM - Kilobyte Virtual Machine from  Sun.
> > > Some companies are trying to propose this as a standard
> > > for software deployment on the mobile nodes. Well the crux of
> > > this is much-hyped Java.
> > >
> > > KVM is a lightweight version of Java virtual machine tailored
> > > specifically for devices with low memory, computing power etc.
> > > If KVM is installed on a mobile entity, it will be able to run
> > > Java programs....and these programs can be browsers...servlets..
> > > ..an application....
> > >
> > Java is an execution environment.  WAP is a protocol stack and a
> > scriptable execution environment.  WAP can easily be used with
> > Java or any other runtime environment.   I dont see how
> > Java and WAP are necessarily competitors.
> >
> > > But Java is proprietary....that means companies using this
> > > technology will have to pay royalty.
> > >
> > WAP also has some intellectual property constraints that
> > you may need to license, depending on what you are doing
> > with it.  You should see the WAP forum for more information.
> >
> > > Lets see who wins in the battle of technology n commerce...
> > >
> > > Sandeep
> > >
> > > --------------------------------------------------------------
> > > --------------
> > > Sandeep Jain                    Office: MTH 405
> > > Graduate Student                Phone : 765-494-5006
> > > Computer Science Department     URL:
> > > http://www.cs.purdue.edu/homes/jain/
> > > Purdue University
> > > West Lafayette, IN 47907-1398.
> > >
> > > On Sat, 4 Mar 2000, Sandeep Hundal wrote:
> > >
> > > >
> > > > Are there any alternatives to WAP ?
> > > >
> > > > Out of interest...
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > Sandeep
> > > >
> > >
> >
>

Received on Saturday, 4 March 2000 06:26:09 UTC