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Microsoft Patents 'Phone-Home' Failure Reporting

Posted by michael on from the uspto-funding-based-on-number-of-patents-granted dept.

theodp writes "On Tuesday, the USPTO awarded a patent to Microsoft for its Method and system for reporting a program failure, although a much more sophisticated version of this technology has been standard on IBM mainframes for years. Maybe prior art searches will improve once the USPTO moves into the new two million square foot USPTO campus, which includes five interconnected buildings, a twelve-story atrium, a landscaped two-acre park, and a museum."

3 of 361 comments (clear)

  1. Here we go again... by Max+Romantschuk · · Score: 4, Insightful

    A bit from the abstract: Method and system for reporting program failures. The system extracts information about a failure in a program module, such as the location of the failure, and establishes communication with a repository, such as a server.

    Don't you just love how vague this is? It could cover almost anything, including embedded things like elevators, automated ovens and whatnot...

    OK, I didn't read the whole thing, but the abstract just goes to show how little is needed these days to patent software. Argh.

    --
    .: Max Romantschuk :: http://max.romantschuk.fi/
  2. There is NO prior art by swissmonkey · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Neither IBM's method nor Netscape's method were able to diagnose the failure and point the user to a fix.

    This feature is clearly specified in the patent, which the moderator obviously didn't read before making his comment about IBM's prior art.

    So this patent is perfectly valid, as no other bug reporting system known currently has this capability.

  3. By definition by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "So this patent is perfectly valid"

    There's no such thing as a valid software patent.

    What most of you snot-nosed kids don't realize is that before the 90's, there was *no such thing* as software patents.

    And despite this, lets look at what was invented:
    Mainframes
    PC's
    The Internet (yes!)
    Client/Server
    Web Browsers
    Routers
    programming languages

    Holy cow, why would people invent all this software if there was no patent?

    Since we've had software patents, we've invented...uh.... Well, One click shopping and Microsoft Phone home.

    I'll let the reader decide which is a better environment for innovation .