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

Re:Don't forget

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever think they are patenting it so they won't get sued like the stupid plugin lawsuit for IE. MS has shitloads of patents, most of which they never enforce.

It's the application date that matters

[Quarters]

Just because Microsoft was granted the patent now doesn't really mean anything. It takes years for a patent application to wind its way through the Patent Office. Because of that they are retroactive to the time of application.

The question shouldn't be, "How can they do this if had it in '96?" It should be, "When did Microsoft apply for this patent?"

No doubt the MS press release will say.....

[mormop]

This is another example of Microsoft's long history of "innovation".

Errrr, couldn't agree more personally.

Re:ICQ

[Snodgrass]

Heck, even Unreal Tournament made your character look like he was chatting into the radio while you were typing a message.

Another obvious patent

[GreenCrackBaby]

I'm not so much bothered by the prior art issue -- I have a much bigger issue with this patent. I'm willing to bet that if you were to take an average programmer and ask them "how can I modify this IM program so that the person you are talking to knows that you are currently typing without actually sending each character as you type it?", they'd come up with the exact same solution as described by this patent.

Unlike many on slashdot, I actually believe there are some scenarios where software/algorithm patents are applicable. However, the standard questions still need to be asked: does this do something useful, and is the implementation non-obvious? Why (aside from purely financial reasons) are patents like this being granted?

Re:Even older prior art

[Locutus]

The problem here seems to be that Microsoft is planning on using patents, simple ones, to attack OSS and the USPTO is helping. Just like SCO is banging its drum about IP when there's no proof of validity and is devised only as a stock price enhancer, Microsoft will use its patents to thwart OSS projects. Who can afford the court costs to fight these obvious patents? The USPTO is a major threat to OSS IMHO.

Anyways, to get around THIS patent, any IM application can device a single button which stays green when it receives the characters from a users input and turns red when a CR or LF character is recieved. Sure each character is still sent over the network but if it's buffered on every users machine, it can just be moved to the TALK window when the termination character is sent and thereby eliminating the whole message being sent out again when the sender has finished with the message.

This uses existing techniques and provides the notification mechanisms without seeing the senders thoughts as they are generated.

The OSS community needs a forum for debunking these patent applications. One where the USPTO trusts it for prior art inspections. Otherwise, Microsoft will litigate the OSS community into stagnation by killing OSS projects and improvements in the courts with bogus patents such as this one.

LoB