MS Patents IM Feature Used Since At Least 1996

splorp! writes "Once again, a company is patenting a feature that another company implemented years before. C|Net's News.com reports that patent no. 6,631,412 grants Microsoft the rights to 'an instant messaging feature that notifies users when the person they are communicating with is typing a message.' Excuse me? Does anyone remember Powwow (now defunct)? I remember using that one back in '96 and it alerted the other people to whom you were chatting that you were typing. Or, alternately, it allowed you to SEE the other people typing in real time. Yeah, Powwow is gone, now, but that doesn't mean those features never existed."

Comments

Even older prior art

[Gzip Christ]

What about the UNIX "talk" command? That command allows you to see what the other person is typing in real time and it's been around forever. I wouldn't be surprised if there were cave paintings showing our ancestors using "talk" to tell their buddies how the wooly mammoth hunt was going.

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The fake Gzip Christ isn't not user number ~0xA6CA7

More text than code

[javatips]

What I find amusing is that it probably took a lot more time filling for this patent than implement the feature.

One must be very creative to describe such a simple feature in so many pages of text!

Re:Don't forget

[JohnHegarty]

...AOL and Yahoo were not available for comment.

but they were typing a responce...

Re:Don't forget (actually)

[vasqzr]

I remember it distinctly because my girlfriend's Yahoo wasn't working

Don't worry, it happens to everyone.