
Can I Legally Use the “Fluent UI” or Ribbon Design? - luu
https://www.infoq.com/news/2018/02/Ribbon-UI
======
WorldMaker
A number of quibbles about things semi-confused in this article here:

1) Fluent UI is not Ribbon UI; I'm not sure why Fluent is mentioned in the
article headline, other than an implication there might be unspoken patents in
the Fluent Design System, and that's an indirect spook from the topic at hand.

2) Corel's violations of the Office Ribbon UI licensing terms clearly happened
during the time in which the Office Ribbon UI licensing was enforced (that is,
prior to the most general release/retiring from those terms in 2016).

3) The article author seems to have a hard time finding resources regarding
the historic Office Ribbon licensing terms, but even just using Jensen's blog
heavily linked in the article you can find a relatively detailed FAQ:
[https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/jensenh/2006/11/21/licensin...](https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/jensenh/2006/11/21/licensing-
the-2007-microsoft-office-user-interface/)

4) The key violation of Corel for the licensing terms should be very obvious
from Jensen's FAQ:

> There's only one limitation: if you are building a program which directly
> competes with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, or Access (the Microsoft
> applications with the new UI), you can't obtain the royalty-free license.

~~~
1wd
Fluent UI is probably mentioned because "Microsoft Office Fluent user
interface (UI)" (short: Fluent UI) used to mean Ribbon UI, long before the
Fluent Design System existed.

[https://technet.microsoft.com/en-
us/library/ff461922(v=offic...](https://technet.microsoft.com/en-
us/library/ff461922\(v=office.14\).aspx)

~~~
contextfree
Ribbon was the name of just one element of the Office 2007 UI system. Fluent
was supposed to be the name of the whole system.

------
cpburns2009
The real question one should ask is: should you use a ribbon design?

~~~
rm445
Ribbon UI is very discoverable. I bet most people would have a better chance
of picking up a feature-rich program such as AutoCAD nowadays than back in the
time of menus and toolbars.

CAD packages are a good example, really. They tend to have tons of features,
which are fairly easy to find with a ribbon, but also have lots of
configurability (hideable toolbars) and speed features (radial menus) for
power users. But the balance is hard to strike - if anything they tend to have
too many ways of doing things, and not good enough defaults.

The current incarnation of Microsoft Office products' UI is a mess too.
Buttons and search bars all over the chrome of the windows (what used to be
the title bar), most of the old Alt+letter codes still working, and ribbon
'tabs' that bring up full-page menus (the File menu). My answer to your
probably-rhetorical question is yes, you should use a ribbon design in a
windowed app, to provide a baseline level of making the features easy-to-find.
The difficult part is adding more powerful power-user features or most-used
features without turning the interface into a big mess.

~~~
Angostura
Oddly enough, I find the Mac versions of Office much easier to use because
they still have a menu system where everything sits still and behaves itself.

------
oneeyedpigeon
If a user interface element can’t be reused, it defeats any usability you
might gain from using it. It simply won’t be familiar - at least, not as
familiar as it could/should be.

------
Wofiel
The followup on the page:
[https://www.infoq.com/news/2018/02/Ribbon-2](https://www.infoq.com/news/2018/02/Ribbon-2)

(TL;DR: Yes, using one of this set of frameworks)

~~~
klez
Actually the TL;DR should be "Yes, using one of this set of frameworks, and we
won't tell you if any other framework can use it" since Microsoft declined to
comment.

------
lolikoisuru
It's almost as if there is complete disregard for "prior art" when it comes to
software patents. It's a bit ridiculous really. Microsoft shouldn't have
gotten the patent and they shouldn't have won this case.

~~~
WalterGR
_Microsoft shouldn 't have gotten the patent and they shouldn't have won this
case._

Why not? What prior art are you thinking of, specifically?

~~~
nailer
I honestly thought this was famous as a patent where there was prior art -
surprised the parent is downmodded and anyone else who knows what 'ribbon'
means doesn't know about it being done before Microsoft patented it.

\- HotDog

\- Macromedia HomeSite

\- Dreamweaver

\- Borland Delphi

all used ribbon UIs before Microsoft patented it.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Homesite-2.5.png](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Homesite-2.5.png)

Then again, I'm getting old so maybe people didn't use a lot of these apps.

~~~
nailer
Dreamweaver shot: [http://www.projectseven.com/tutorials/dreamweaver/insert-
bar...](http://www.projectseven.com/tutorials/dreamweaver/insert-
bar/images/screen-04.jpg)

------
KozmoNau7
LibreOffice 6 has an optional ribbon-like UI, and I assume they checked that
it wouldn't infringe on anything, when they decided to add it.

~~~
lostgame
Isn’t it also FOSS, which indicates that the legal issue of profit from
Microsoft’s design is null and void?

------
meuk
So Microsoft is a patent troll, just like Apple (who decided to sue Samsung
for the 'slide to unlock'). On the bright side, I think most people don't like
the 'ribbon' (I don't understand the difference with a normal tabbed UI
anyway) pattern anyway.

~~~
oaiey
Not a fan of patents at all, but is not a troll someone who does not invent
and sell products? Both Microsoft does.

They are playing the hard game with patents, but IMHO not troll style.

~~~
meuk
You're right, 'patent troll' is not accurate here, but I couldn't find a
better word.

~~~
mfoy_
So you're just denigrating the entire concept of patents? O.K.

~~~
meuk
Of patenting obvious things and aggresively defending them. Although I think
you could make a strong case against the whole concept of a patent as well.

~~~
ovao
You admit that you don’t understand the difference between the ribbon UI and
tabbed layouts, yet assert that the ribbon design is “obvious”?

~~~
bostonpete
A ribbon UI essentially _is_ a tabbed layout, isn't it?

~~~
ovao
It is, essentially, with the addition of context-sensitive controls and
elements. Or at least that's my very layman's interpretation of the patents.

------
chris_wot
Are there links to the actual patents in question? And how does this affect
the LibreOffice notetabbar?

~~~
patentatt
Here's some of the utility patents:

[https://www.lens.org/lens/patent/US_8255828_B2](https://www.lens.org/lens/patent/US_8255828_B2)

[https://www.lens.org/lens/patent/US_7703036_B2](https://www.lens.org/lens/patent/US_7703036_B2)

Source:
[http://www.ipwatchdog.com/2018/02/13/93710/id=93710/](http://www.ipwatchdog.com/2018/02/13/93710/id=93710/)

