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Microsoft has several trademarks on plain Windows

cool

I sense a prior art here: ln -s anyone?

Not to be too picky, but according to the link posted above, the Patent was *filed* Oct 1995 (not 1993 as you/palminfocenter state), and the first palm to hit the streets was March 1996.

There is probably a fair chance that the prototypes were about before Oct 1995. Prior art?

Although, the court has already decided.... anyways.

Further, the Patent *specifically* states 'a "unistroke" is a single, unbroken stroke', whereas graffiti has a number of multiple-stroke characters.

not sure this means a thing though.... IANAL.

gus

In Palm's patent on "Method and apparatus for handwriting input on a pen based palmtop computing device" check out a couple of the references that are cited:

Article: "touch-Typing with a Stylus", by David Goldberg and Cate Richardson, (9) pages total/
Xerox patents relating to handwriting recognition, (5) pages total.

Goldberg is the inventor listed on Xerox's patent. I'm sure someone at Palm (perhaps Hawkins and Haitani) saw this one coming a mile away.

In Palm's patent on "Method and apparatus for handwriting input on a pen based palmtop computing device" check out a couple of the references that are cited:

Article: "touch-Typing with a Stylus", by David Goldberg and Cate Richardson, (9) pages total/
Xerox patents relating to handwriting recognition, (5) pages total.

Goldberg is the inventor listed on Xerox's patent. I'm sure someone at Palm (perhaps Hawkins and Haitani) saw this one coming a mile away.

Why can't someone do this to Microsoft?

microsoft have got a big pile of their own patents covering all sorts of things. You would have to be very sure you're not infringing one of them before going after MS.

E.g. how many products don't do something like Method for creating and maintaining user data

Why can't someone do this to Microsoft?

microsoft have got a big pile of their own patents covering all sorts of things. You would have to be very sure you're not infringing one of them before going after MS.

E.g. how many products don't do something like Method for creating and maintaining user data

Is Xerox's claim towards the implementation in the OS or the general input method?

It seems to be more towards the general input method

There is some detail in there about the implementation but it's all based off of the display/input generating a list of xy coordinates making up the stroke. Since I can't imagine any computer engineer using anything but a 2D matrix for their displays it doesn't seem to me that these details narrow the patent down in any realistic manner.

Here are the details on Xerox's patent on Unistrokes for computerized interpretation of handwriting which was granted in 1997.

Relevent patent is 5596656

It looks pretty broad and clear

Lineoleum is no longer a registered trade name. Check out the query on "linoleum" from the US Trademark Electronic Search System

X Windows is not a registered trademark. According to a quick search at the U.S Patent and Trademark Office. It was abandonned in 1992, after having been filed on June 10, 1991 by Intilligent Decisions, Inc.

You can look these up by going to the US Patent Office search page.

I mean it's not for image compression specifically, but it definitely reminds me of IFS image compression in some ways. I'll bet that compression is very time consuming, but that's fine if you're warehousing data. I wonder if the clients are pre-loaded with a body of parameterized functions, so that the server just sends information describing what functions to run and what the parameters are. I guess if it's all based on polynomials all it needs to send are vectors of constants.

Neat idea. Patents: here and here.

I mean it's not for image compression specifically, but it definitely reminds me of IFS image compression in some ways. I'll bet that compression is very time consuming, but that's fine if you're warehousing data. I wonder if the clients are pre-loaded with a body of parameterized functions, so that the server just sends information describing what functions to run and what the parameters are. I guess if it's all based on polynomials all it needs to send are vectors of constants.

Neat idea. Patents: here and here.

Trademark filings are simple enough to do it yourself. The Nolo Press books on trademarks can be helpful.

The authorities have always known the obvious solution. I have been using WIPO.org.uk as the best domain name to get the message out ;-)

The United Nations World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO.org) and the United States Department of Commerce (DOC.gov) are hiding the simple solution to trademark and domain name problem.

The US Patent and Trademark Office virtually admitted this, August 22, 2000: "The questions you raised with respect to trademark conflicts, as well as the proposed solutions, have their basis in good common-sense. As such, they have been debated and discussed quite exhaustively within the USPTO, the Administration, and internationally."

A restricted TLD is required to replace the trademark symbol. The solution was ratified by honest attorneys - including the honourable G. Gervaise Davis III, UN WIPO panelist judge.

This is very important, as virtually every word is trademarked - Alpha to Zeta or Aardvark to Zulu, most many times over. MOST share the same words or initials with MANY others in a different business and/or country.

For example, the World Trade Organization (WTO) shares its initials with six trademarks - in the USA alone. Conflict is IMPOSSIBLE to avoid.

The US Department of Commerce allow this conflict to continue purposefully, knowing they abridge peoples right to use these words - even the common words you learnt with your A B C's - apple, ball and cat. You cannot make your own small business using a dictionary word, it is bound to conflict with some trademark or other - check yourself. People also cannot make fan sites or protest about corporations (one of reasons why they do not want it). This violates the American Department of Commerce own First Amendment.

The authorities are allowing certain trademarks to be abused by their owners, giving them dominance over others using same words. Example; Caterpillar tractors claimed 'cat' is 'their' trademark on the Internet - even though there are hundreds of trademarks using the word 'cat' - IN THE U.S. ALONE. The United States Department of Commerce and the World Intellectual Property Organization do not seem to mind that all trademarks fight it out - or that one has this illegal dominant position. This is against unfair competition law.

For the TM lawyers - yes, I know about classifications. Please visit WIPO.org.uk - nothing to do with UN WIPO.org.

anyway the cnet article says:

eDigital said its Treo is pronounced "tray-o" and has an accent on the "o," while Handspring pronounces its device like the word "trio" and has a mark over the "e." Both devices have a U.S. trademark and are not the only ones with that honor. Women's shoe brand Nine West also has a trademark on Treo for use "in the field of shoes and of accessories, namely handbags, belts and hosiery," according to the Patent and Trademark Office's Web site.

so i went to the uspto site and searched for 'treo' (tm) and found

TREO: PORTABLE MUSIC PLAYER FOR STORAGE AND PLAYBACK OF DIGITAL MUSIC, Serial Number 78031260, Filing Date October 18, 2000 (APPLICANT) Hy-Tek Mfg. Co. Inc. CORPORATION ILLINOIS 1998 Bucktail Lane Sugar Grove ILLINOIS 60554

TREO: computers, computer monitors, computer hardware, computer peripherals, handheld computers, personal digital assistants, electronic organizers, electronic notepads, telephones, computer gaming machines, microprocessors, computer memories, electrical circuit boards, printed circuit boards, memory cards, computer monitors, liquid crystal displays, computer keyboards, computer cables, modems, computer printers, videophones, computer disc drives, and photographic and video cameras; computer software, namely, prerecorded computer programs for personal information, management, database management software, character recognition software, telephony management software, electronic mail and messaging software, paging software, database synchronization software, computer programs for accessing, browsing and searching online databases; internet appliances; instruction manuals supplied with the foregoing

[pretty comprehensive, huh?]

Serial Number 76307493, Filing Date August 29, 2001, (APPLICANT) Handspring, Inc. CORPORATION CALIFORNIA 189 Bernardo Avenue Mountain View CALIFORNIA 94043

TREO: RETAIL STORE SERVICES IN THE FIELD OF SHOES AND OF ACCESSORIES, NAMELY HANDBAGS, BELTS
AND HOSIERY.

TREO ENGINEERING: CAR AUDIO PRODUCTS INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO SPEAKERS, AMPLIFIERS, ACCESSORIES AND RELATED PROMOTIONAL ITEMS. Serial Number 76258297, Filing Date May 17, 2001. (APPLICANT) TREO ENGINEERING INC CORPORATION NEBRASKA 2464 S TEJON ENGLEWOOD COLORADO 80110.

there's also stuff for insect repellent, skin moisturizer, and other stuff, including urinal deodorant ...

as far as i can make out all have been submitted, but only one has been granted a registered mark, the shoe company. so i guess they have first dibs.

maybe it will come down to who has the right accents - but that's what lawyers are for, right?

is some really big cats, so they can get some exercise (US Patent 5,443,036)

I was once told that a claim had to be a single sentence

Easy. "We claim a method for allowing $cool_feature comprising " followed by a list of noun phrases describing the steps.

and could not contain the word "or"

The patent under present discussion contains an "or" in the first claim: "wherein the selection of shows is based on one of either pattern matching or fuzzy logic analysis of the user specified criteria"

However: this particular wording opens up a potential loophole: The word "either" may turn an OR into an XOR by excluding the "both" possibility.

My favorite part of the claims is the typo. They use MEG and MEG2 as examples in some claims. I'd guess M$ Word spell hexer did that for them.

See the full patent at the USPTO database here.

Patent number: 6,233,389

Multimedia time warping system

And they were granted this on May 15th of 2001.

I am not a lawyer though so what do I know..

Zeno

Multimedia time warping system

Patent number: 6,233,389
Filed: July 30th, 1998
Granted: May 15, 2001

Next we have the replaytv patent:

Video data recorder with integrated channel guides

Patent number: 6,324,338
Filed: August 7, 1998
Granted: November 27, 2001

The only difference between the 2 is that the tivo patent isn't as broad as the replay tv patent. What is also interesting is that the tivo patent was filed 8 days before the replaytv patent. They also got the patent awarded to them about 5 months before replaytv. I have read thru both patents, I am not a lawyer, but they are describing pretty much the same device.

Saying that, and what I found on the web about prior art

What Can Be Used As Prior Art For Invalidating A Patent?
In essence, any publication, in any language, located anywhere in the world is valid prior art for invalidating a U.S. Patent. One copy of a thesis, written in the Chinese language and stored on a dusty shelf of the Beijing University Library will invalidate any and all U.S. patents that were filed one year after that thesis was published and that claims as an invention ANY of the subject matter that was disclosed in that thesis.
A publication can be, among other things: a thesis, a PHD dissertation, a journal article, a text book, a newspaper article, a patent, a home work assignment, a white paper, written materials handed out during a presentation, a product, or a product brochure.
A publication is NOT: your recollection of what someone once said, someone's recollection of what they themselves once said, a trade secret, or a confidential company memo. The upshot is that prior art must be publicly available, and it must be printed (or a physical object).

So, I doubt replaytv could use this patent for much more then ego boosting. If they even tried to touch tivo, tivo could invalidate their patent fairly easily with their own patent as prior art.

Zeno

Multimedia time warping system

Patent number: 6,233,389
Filed: July 30th, 1998
Granted: May 15, 2001

Next we have the replaytv patent:

Video data recorder with integrated channel guides

Patent number: 6,324,338
Filed: August 7, 1998
Granted: November 27, 2001

The only difference between the 2 is that the tivo patent isn't as broad as the replay tv patent. What is also interesting is that the tivo patent was filed 8 days before the replaytv patent. They also got the patent awarded to them about 5 months before replaytv. I have read thru both patents, I am not a lawyer, but they are describing pretty much the same device.

Saying that, and what I found on the web about prior art

What Can Be Used As Prior Art For Invalidating A Patent?
In essence, any publication, in any language, located anywhere in the world is valid prior art for invalidating a U.S. Patent. One copy of a thesis, written in the Chinese language and stored on a dusty shelf of the Beijing University Library will invalidate any and all U.S. patents that were filed one year after that thesis was published and that claims as an invention ANY of the subject matter that was disclosed in that thesis.
A publication can be, among other things: a thesis, a PHD dissertation, a journal article, a text book, a newspaper article, a patent, a home work assignment, a white paper, written materials handed out during a presentation, a product, or a product brochure.
A publication is NOT: your recollection of what someone once said, someone's recollection of what they themselves once said, a trade secret, or a confidential company memo. The upshot is that prior art must be publicly available, and it must be printed (or a physical object).

So, I doubt replaytv could use this patent for much more then ego boosting. If they even tried to touch tivo, tivo could invalidate their patent fairly easily with their own patent as prior art.

Zeno

Anonymous Coward is right. We should take a few moments to READ the patent before commenting on it. My initial reaction was an off-the-cuff remark - another reason not to post unless you have something to SAY. Anyway, on to the point:

IANAL, but I readthe 338 Patent and a couple of the others. This patent references pre-existing technologies and - my reading - basically says that they're patenting their feature set and particular implementation. Nothing new here. Yeah, they may be over-reaching, but that despends on your point of view and what they do.

It's something that, yes, a company can whip out and club another one over the head with. Yeah, it can be used to squeeze royalties out of someone for an infringement. Any patent does that, for a while anyway.

All patents are designed to squeeze the maximum claim for the maximum legal "protection" and financial gain. You stand on the shoulders of prior art, but ultimately what decides whether you violated patent rights or not is a judge or collection thereof, the size of your bribe, and/or your legal budget. There are whole business that do nothing but hold patents and sue the crap out of any industry player that does what that paper says (e.g. link to a document) and make them pay a fee that will be large enough to satisfy the blood sucking leeches, but cheaper that going to court over it. They may allege something STUPID, like they invented the wheel or the hyperlink, but it's often cheaper to pay than litigate and risk huge leech fees and huge damages. This is patent law, friends. Blah.

Anyway, my personal opinion is that patents are freaking stupid. They don't protect what they should protected. Instead, they're used like clubs to beat other companies with. Another tool in the legal arsenal.

I'd rather see a return to trial by combat. Each company chooses a champion who fight it out to the death (or tap-out) or whatever. If only Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Xerox Parc squared off in an arena with axes or something. Panem et Circenses.

Here are the USPTO's entries for Tivo, with many patents filed before August 7, 1998.

Here's the patent in question from the USPTO's website. Note that it was filed August 7, 1998 - long before TiVo went into operation. I also notice that I don't think it reference's the 1992 patent on pausing a live TV feed (as other posters were asking about) - I could be wrong on that though.

-"Zow"

The patent. This reads as if it's only the interface they're patenting IMHO.

Best line:
13. The method as recited by claim 10 wherein the default channel is CNN Headline News.

Since programming language vocabulary and syntax is the human side of a human -> machine translation process (a process of translation through an interpreter, compiler, whatever etc.. to 0's and 1's), and usually requiring human "logical" thinking, isn't the real objective here one of identifying and defining abstraction manipulation functionality, the logic of translation mechanics?

Certainly if the target is to be an optimized sequence of 0's and 1's then is it not the translation mechanics responsible for getting it there, and from whatever vocabulary(s) and syntax(s) used?

This is where I believe genuine computer science and software development research got seriously distracted by the carrot of money. And as it was mentioned in the article regarding not doing it right in a tradeoff of getting it out the door, getting back to genuine computer science may be difficult to do! But it also seems to be an ongoing and growing problem in genuine Software Engineering. The latest version of a need to solve the software crisis?

Note that IBM presents a white collar high dollar I/T solution direction intent, but without any identification of the base functionality mechanics of translation.Read Written Comment #4 after reading the "Manifesto" at the above IBM link.

With all this in mind, what are all these "Lightweight Languages", but examples of how many ways you can create a custom vocabulary, syntax and translator that outputs 0's and 1's not always in the optimum sequence?
.
.

'Come, come, Mr Clarke,' said the people at the Patent Office. 'We're a serious outfit, we haven't got time to waste on fantastic ideas like this.'

I seriously doubt this would have been their reaction. IMO the real stumbling block would have been this, from the General Information Concerning Patents page at USPTO:

A patent cannot be obtained upon a mere idea or suggestion. The patent is granted upon the new machine, manufacture, etc., as has been said, and not upon the idea or suggestion of the new machine. A complete description of the actual machine or other subject matter for which a patent is sought is required.

In other words, the details of implementation must have been worked out in sufficient detail to allow implementation without requiring further innovation. Usually this means that a working prototype must exist, although that's not strictly required.

ACC's idea for geosynchronous satellites, however brilliant, did not meet this standard for patentability.

Interestingly enough, the BT patent credits a 1965! patent awarded to UIUC Professor Don Bitzer for his PLATO work that sure seems like suitable prior art on its own for hyperlinks.

Don Bitzer is the true unsung hero of computer science - his work touched virtually everything people love today about computers and the Internet!

Check out the patent - bitmapped graphics, audio and photographic quality images back in 1965!

Other (pre-1975!) PLATO innovations included instant messaging, near zero latency multiplayer network gaming, distance learning, groupware, newsgroups, online newspapers, animated email, network delivery of music, client/server computing, touch screen interfaces, flat-panel displays (the basis for the ones you're just now seeing at Circuit City!), and multimedia that were delivered across a worldwide educational network with satellite and cable communications.

In his ACM article on the early days of Smalltalk, Alan Kay states that he had no idea how to implement his Dynabook concept before seeing a demo of Bitzer's patented plasma display.

Search some of the early WWW documents, and you'll be surprised to see PLATO's influence. Here's e-mail inventor Ray Tomlinson and Ethernet papa Robert Metcalfe attending a 1971 conference that included a demo of Bitzer's PLATO system before their breakthrough work. And there's communication from none less than Tim Berners-Lee encouraging early Internet pioneers to try to meet Professor Daniel Sleator's challenge to try to provide the Web with easy-to-use PLATO features from two decades earlier.

Prominent users of Bitzer's PLATO system at the University of Illinois included Groove's Ray Ozzie (who credits PLATO with giving him the idea for Lotus Notes) and Brand Fortner, a founder of Spyglass, which produced the original Internet Explorer for Microsoft.

At the risk of overestimating PLATO's profound influence, it certainly is an odd coincidence that "ground zero" of PLATO just happened to be across the street from Netscape founder Mark Andreesen's NSCA gig (where Fortner also worked at one time).

For more info on PLATO, check out David Woolley's excellent PLATO: The Emergence of Online Community.

After reading it, you'll see that Bitzer's PLATO of the early '70s had far more in common with today's popular Internet that Berners-Lee's Web of the early '90s.

Don Bitzer's been the Rodney Dangerfield of the Internet for far too long - it's time to give the guy the proper respect he deserves!

...it's a damn shame that he's largely unknown by the public, not unlike Tesla.

He'd invented numerous devices, 165 of them in fact, many revolving around television. RCA screwed him out of their value- Sarnoff, the CEO of RCA at that time, did everything he could to destroy Farnsworth in the courts.

Because of this, devices like the Fusor, perhaps the smallest working hot fusion device ever devised, went by the wayside until recently.

Fusor Links:

Fusor Patent at the USPTO
A 1999 article in American Scientist about the Fusor
Richard Hull's webpages

They have a patent. 5,897,522.

The patent seems to be for a mechanism for allowing the escape of gases produced by the generation.

They give some examples of chemicals in the patent application and the chemistry of batteries of old technology, there are probably a number of different solutions that could be used.

They could be protecting the exact chemicals used just because they're an efficient set to use, not because they're the only ones which work; and the real invention is making the whole thing practical and long-lasting.

IANAL, but it looks to me very much like the idea here is to take obvious technology that 3dlabs has patented, an make it part of the GL2 spec. This would only allow the use of the technology if you pay your money and implement GL2, and prevent any other graphics implementation from using the technology without licenses.

Here's a concrete example:

3dlabs was recently awarded patent #6,313,845, which looks like it patents any graphics implementation that puts a graphics object buffer on the graphics adapter and only moves the graphics data across the system bus once.

Now go look at the white paper "Minimizing data movement and memory management in OpenGL". In section 4, they describe an API to use exactly this technique. This means that you can't write a driver to take advantage of this hardware feature of theirs unless you either participate in OpenGL or license the ability from them.

Now - Say I manufacture a card that competes with 3dlabs, and say I am part of the OpenGL ARB. It looks like I can build the memory buffer into my card, and use it in the manner described as long as it's for OpenGL. But - I can't use the same one-copy technique for driver support of any other graphics API.

Anyway, that's the way I read it.

This post did a good job of answering the root question of why they have a patent they don't intend to enforce. Go look through their 1500-odd patents; you will see many interesting ideas that they tend to protect, but also many of the kind of patents that poster was describing. No ones seems to worried about getting sued for using a Graphical user interface having sound effects for operating control elements and dragging objects ;)

e.g. The initials WTO are trademarked 6 times in the U.S. ALONE - please check yourselves in the other 200+ countries.

Most trademarks share its name or initials with many others. When authorities could put trademark identity beyond shadow of doubt, they are either devoid of intelligence or corrupt.

Do not accept the LIES of Government and the authorities - question them.

The United Nations World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO.org) and the United States Department of Commerce (DOC.gov) are hiding the simple solution to trademark and domain name problem.

Please visit WIPO.org.uk to see it.

Of particular interest is the section:
During duplication the CD encoding circuitry merely sets the P-channel=0 while recording to the data are, and therefore the P-channel setting of portion 60 is ignored. Thus, during playback, the substituted audio data portion 58 is provided to the digital-to-analog converter as normal data, resulting in audio distortion and potentially damaging the output circuitry. (emphasis mine).

They also don't seem to be as confident about audio quality as I would have hoped:
Thus, the substitute audio data portion 58 of FIG. 4B is ignored, and instead an interpolation, substantially equivalent to the original portion 50 of FIG. 4A, is output, thus resulting in little or no net difference in audio quality between the corresponding track port 44 and 52 of FIGS. 4A and 4B (again empahasis mine).

If I buy music, I want the CD to be as close as possible to the real thing, not with any noise added.

The patent specifically disclaims coverage of alpha-blending. It's only their method of compositing using the full color space of all three images (source, destination, AND mask), where the mask is in the same colorspace.

• The patent mentions that a black pixel codes for source image. Does this mean that if I decide the opposite, I can avoid royalties?
  
• The patent mentions it uses full color mask images. Is a greyscale or black + white image considered a full color image?

But that argument, I would think, is moot here since you can NOT patent an interface. If you could, then Sun would have patented all of their Java interfaces. Hell, it's not even clear how far copyright applies to something.

So a reverse-engineered "work-alike" product is by no means necessarily infringing on a patent. It MAY be infringing on the patent, if it uses the patented mechanism (if it does not, it clearly does not violate the patent, even if it achieves the same results, i.e. can simulate/run ARM instructions). Furthermore, as mentioned above, it has to be established that the source code (which any HDL code basically is) is an implementation rather than a description. I don't know how this line is meaningfully drawn, but it's clear that it is pretty hard to convince a court in the US that something distributed for free in source form violates a patent (or else organizations like Fraunhofer would have tried to squelch the many free MP3 codec implementations out there).

If you want the exact wording from US Patent Law, see the USPTO summary document. An infringer is someone who "makes, uses, offers to sell, or sells any patented invention". Are you "making" an invention by writing an accurate description of it in an HDL? What about an accurate description in pseudocode? Are you making it when you encode it into an FPGA and deploy or sell a full product using it? Or are you just learning about it and testing a design for compatibility with it? The law just doesn't deal well with software/firmware/things on the boundary between digital information and physical stuff.

But despite Paramount's intolerance, there are a lot of unauthorized usages. Even fan movies!

MS holds this patent

I've been looking for a job in the DC metro area, and the USPTO is desperately trying to get more patent reviewers. In fact, I believe they offer bonuses to Comp Sci people (over us less useful mechanical engineers). Check it out here:

I just did a bit of digging around on the USPTO site and narrowed the search down to Macromedias patents: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PT O2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2Fsearch-bool.ht ml&r=0&f=S&l=50&TERM1=macromedia&FIELD1=ASNM&co1=A ND&TERM2=&FIELD2=&d=ft00 -Tim

1. He isn't a company.
2. He has made a joint statement that "patents as they stand now are a real problem".
3. Are you sure? What does it actually claim? The USPTO search page says no inventor named Torvalds has filed for a patent in the last 211 years. Are you thinking of his trademark (very different both legally and ethically)?

Sigh.

Why can't /. read patent claims? This patent (somewhat cleaner presentation of the text than the top link) has a whole bunch of claims, and it actually has a detailed descriptive listing as to what the program's supposed to do.

I reproduce the list here.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

One object of the invention is to overcome these and other deficiencies and drawbacks of existing web site creation tools, systems and methods.

Another object of the invention is to provide a tool for creating a Web site that minimizes or eliminates the need for a Web site creator to know or use HTML or other programming languages to create a Web site.

Another object of the invention is to provide a tool for facilitating the creation of Web sites and pages based on stored templates that enable personalization and customization of the Web site and pages without the need for a user to change or write any software code.

Another object of the invention is to provide a tool for facilitating the creation of Web sites and pages by taking a web site creator through a series of views, each having one or more options/features, to enable the site creator to select from a plurality of options/features available for the web site layout, content and functionality.

Another object of the invention is to provide a tool for creating a Web site where the tool comprises a library of stored templates (including fields) associated with different options/features for a Web site, the tool prompts a user of the tool to select desired options/features from a list of possible options/features. Based upon the option/features selected, the tool determines which of the stored templates (and fields) are to be used and the user is prompted to supply data to populate those fields. The tool uses the templates and user supplied data to create the web pages that make up a Web site. The Web site may then be posted on a network, such as the Internet.

Another object of the invention is to provide a tool for facilitating the creation of a Web site and pages based on stored templates having predetermined fields, wherein the tool comprises a dynamic look-up capability to automatically populate one or more fields with data.

Another object of the invention is to provide a tool for facilitating the creation of Web pages with templates for predefined Web pages that enables personalization and customization of the Web pages without the need for the user to change or write any software code, and facilitates the inclusion or modification of graphical and other multimedia objects.

Another object of the invention is to provide a tool for facilitating the creation of a Web site based on stored templates having predetermined fields wherein one or more fields can be selectively marked as a required field, and where if data for a required field is not provided by the user, a predefined message may be presented to a user identifying what information is missing and a cursor may be positioned at the missing field.

Another object of the invention is to provide a tool for facilitating the creation of content for a Web site with an automated content approval feature whereby authorized content creators (specified during creation of the Web site) can create proposed content for the Web site. Upon creation, the proposed content may be automatically, electronically routed to one or more content approvers specified during creation of the web site for authorization before posting the content on the Web site. The approved web page may be automatically posted as appropriate.

Another object of the invention is to provide a tool that facilitates the modification of Web pages in a finished Web site including one or more of the above objects, without requiring a content creator to change or write any software code.

Another object of the invention is to provide a tool for facilitating the creation of a Web site based on stored templates whereby once the site is created, a content creator can selectively modify individual pages or groups of pages without using HTML or other software programming code.

These and other objects are accomplished by various embodiments of the invention. According to one embodiment of the invention, a software tool is provided for use with a computer system for simplifying the creation of Web sites. The tool comprises a plurality of prestored HTML templates, each having various fields. The templates preferably correspond to different types of Web pages and other features commonly found on or available to Web sites. Each feature may have various options. To create a web site, a Web site creator (the person using the tool to create a web site) is prompted by the tool through a series of views stored in the tool to select the features and options desired for the Web site. Based on these selections, the tool prompts the web site creator to supply data to populate fields of the templates determined by the tool to correspond to the selected features and options. Based on the identified templates and supplied data, the tool generates the customized Web site without the web site creator writing any HTML or other programming code.

The features and options may include, for example, site areas, specific security features, enablement of distributed authorship with the ability to specify approved content authors and content approvers, the specification workflow/approval procedures, enablement of automatic workflow routing, and a graphical design center with a plurality of predetermined user selectable features.

According to another embodiment of the invention, the software tool provides a series of menus or views to guide the user through the creation of a web site, where the views comprise screens to enable the site creator to select the various features and options for the Web site and forms for entering text that is used to populate fields of stored templates.

IOW, it's more than just single-page templates. This system is multi-user, it supports a web page approval structure, and it supports web SITE templates.

That is, the templates will generate a whole bunch of pages.

Agreed. I've only seen 2 mainstream solutions to the text input problem:

-- Shrink the standard QWERTY keyboard, and wait 10,000 years for us to develop super skilly thumbs
-- Cell-phone style keypads. This is great if you like hitting the same key 1-3 times per character.

Why not make a, say, 32-ish key pad. 13 (x2) for characters, 10 for nums, plus enter, meta keys, etc. Set it up 6x5 plus 2 on the side/bottom.

OK then, now that this is archived, I'm off to fill out my patent applications.