National Panasonic (Matsushita Denki) took Just Systems, the makers of the popular Japanese wordprocessor Ichitaro to court for breach of its software patent and won.
The patent was for a help icon which when clicked allows the user to click another icon to reveal is function -- as far as I can tell this is the same as the "question mark" icon in Micro Soft products.
Justice Mariko Takabe decreed that the prior art help functions (using the keyboard) were sufficiently dissimilar, and the function buttons (using words) were sufficiently similar to icons to make Panasonic's claim valid.
Just Systems plans to go ahead with the new release of its software, and will appeal. The win for Panasonic does not mean that users must stop using the software. But if Just System's looses, I guess that it will be a big step forward for software patents in Japan.
Just Systems' Website
Just System's contact email address for a an email of encouragement
National Panasonic (Matsushita Denki's) Website
Panasonoic Customer Support in the US
Panasonic's Webmaster email address webmaster@mei.co.jp (I can't find another - they have contact pages for jobs and stuff but nothing general).
Are all companies copyrighting these sort of basic functions?
Things as general as this if patented will create a lot of pain. Perhaps the patent period should be only 6 months, or for commericial products only?
Timothy
. Other companies will probably try that too in European Community for example 
.