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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."
if you look at the patent, it looks like december 2002.
"...today consumers have been conditioned to think of beer when they see a bullfrog..."
It should be noted that UNIX talk is specifically talked about in the patent and the advantages of this system over it are mentioned. This does not get around the apparant prior art of POWWOW. Remember that it is the claims of a patent that are important, not the abstract. It appears from quickly looking at the claims, that the broadest requirements are for client A to send a message to client B that client A is typing. Then client B must indicate that client A is typing. Finally, that message is turned off when client A sends another message that it is done typing. The initial typing message must be based upon typing within a predefined period of time.
Any prior art asserted against this patent would need to have been in use on or before July 21, 1998.
Come play Heroes of Might and Magic Mini online.
RTFP. From this week's "great innovation for customers":
As far as I can see from a quick reading, the idea is not that you see what people are typing, but that you have an indicator which lets you know that they are typing.
Using HTML in email is like putting sound effects on your phone calls. Just say <strong>no</strong>.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
So the claimed innovation here is simplifying real-time, continuous updates by just sending activity updates. Hmm. I'm not sure that really passes the tests for either "obvious" or actually "innovative", but at least they address talk.
Xentax
You shouldn't verb words.
If you read the patent, you will see that TALK and other prior chat systems are mentioned in the references and body of the patent. The specific "innovation" here is that the system polls for activity on a timer, and turns on and off the "user typing" message based on activity during the timer period.
/. as prior art. Even Yahoo's "user is typing" simply toggles on and never turns off if you abandon typing. Is polling periodically obvious? Surely. Remember, the USPO is a profit center, and granting obvious patents brings profit to both them and patent attorneys, so there is no motivation not to allow such simple changes to be patented.
While I think that it is absurd that this was granted, it is not any of the things being thrown around on
Sig under construction since 1998.
With those blue 'bubbles' that appear over the player's head when he starts typing, and disappear when complete.
This exact feature was in wide use at MIT in '89 if not earlier - the zephyr instant messaging system used by nearly all students at MIT when I was there ('89 to '94) had this feature, along with essentially every other feature currently use in IM clients. This is BS. I'm not sure if zephyr is still in use at MIT, but this is certainly NOT something new.
As I've posted time and again on every "patent on prior art" Slashdot post since 2000 at least: the PTO has gone on record (including in an interview here at slashdot a couple of years ago) to say that the only source they have or use for Prior Art investigations is their own database. If a patent application has been filed on it, there's prior art. If it hasn't, then there isn't any prior art and it never existed before.
The PTO just automatically assumes that anything one person feels worthy of patenting is something that everybody else should have felt it worthy.
That's it. No google, no interviews with field experts, nothing. If a patent's been filed, there's prior art. If not, then it passes the "new" test.
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
In my limited experience, that's not entirely true. I had to fight like crazy with a patent examiner over a patent I obtained.
He did nontrivial outside research in the field, much of it directed by the reference materials I included in the patent. At one point he stated that a particular claim was "obvious" after you've read five different sources in different domains which he only knew about because we referenced all five in the application. None of them were patented.
From the Slashdot "IP is bad" standpoint you'd have to give him credit for the effort. He worked very hard to ensure that my patent was in fact non-obvious and not prior art. You really want a patent examiner that hard.
Except I don't. If patents are being given out like candy, why should I have to fight for mine?