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Trouble with TIFFs

Several month's ago, my lawyer and I were struggling to understand the Sun Community Source License (SCSL). Our main contention with the SCSL involved the potential for a party who releases software under the SCSL to be sued for intellectual property infringement by a third party. At one point during this process, I became curious about the patents that Sun had applied for or been granted for ideas used in Jini. Back in January 2000, when I had visited Sun Burlington for the service UI design review, Ken Arnold had said that if I wanted to know about Sun's Jini-related patents, I should go to a patent library and search under Jim Waldo's name.

One night, I decided to try and find on the Web the address of the Sunnyvale Patent Library, and perhaps a map. Via a search engine, I found the Sunnyvale Patent Library's Website, and quickly located the address and map I was seeking. Fortunately for me, the US Patent Library in Sunnyvale, California is just a bike ride away from my house. However, as I paused to marvel over the wonders of the World Wide Web which had enabled me to so easily get the information I wanted, I noticed some blue underlined text that said, "Search the Patent Database." It hit me that perhaps I wouldn't even need to visit the library in person. I could just sit in front of my computer and get all the information about patents that interested me.

I typed "Jim Waldo" into the appropriate Webpage, and, with a bit of finesse, located one Jini-related patent that Sun had already been granted, titled "Leasing for Failure Detection." I skimmed through the patent text, and saved it to my local disk. At the bottom of the patent's Webpage, I found a button with the label, "Images." I also wanted the diagrams that went with the patent, so I clicked there. However, I didn't receive the diagrams for the patent; I received a "Patent Images" Webpage that held a small picture of a puzzle piece with the caption, "Click Here To Get the Plug-in". When I clicked on the puzzle piece, this dialog box popped up:

Figure 4. Netscape Navigator dialog box

It turned out that the patent library distributes its images in TIFF format, which my browser wasn't able to understand. When I clicked to get the plug-in, I was taken to a page that listed 15 different plug-ins that I could use, each with two buttons, "Download" and "More Info." Since I didn't have time to research 15 plug-ins, compare their relative merits and prices, buy one or download a free one, and then install the plug-in on my hard disk, I gave up.

Out of curiosity, I then visited the same patent page with Internet Explorer, and clicked on "Images" again. I was taken to the same "Patent Images" page, but instead of a puzzle piece, I got a cube icon that was so tiny it took me a while to notice it. Not knowing what else to do, I clicked on that cube icon and was presented with this dialog box:

Figure 5. Internet Explorer dialog box

When I clicked the "Yes" button, I was taken to an official looking page titled "MSDN Business Connection Directory," which contained edit boxes that would allow me to search "by product or other offering type from companies who support Microsoft products." Apparently I was supposed to know that what I needed was a TIFF plug-in, and how to find it via that search engine. Once again, I gave up.

So much for, "You see something you want, you just click on it."