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

ICQ

[i.r.id10t]

ICQ had/has this as well, in the direct chat (not im) mode.

Prior Art may be the key

[matchlight]

Check out this site for complete details but to lift a few important parts:

a person is not entitled to a patent if the invention was "known or used by others in this country, or was patented or described in a printed publication in this or a foreign country" before the date of invention by the applicant for the patent

But later there is a brief comment:

Naturally, if an inventor abandons the invention, he or she cannot obtain a patent.

And finally in support of M$'s patent, and likely the way they got it:

In a fast-changing world, finding a single piece of prior art which discloses the same invention as that claimed in a patent is not the most likely scenario. What is far more likely to occur is that the prior art will be something similar but not identical to the patented invention. The patent statutes also provide for this situation--in a negative manner. Specifically, section 103 of the code provides that a patent may not be obtained "though the invention is not identically disclosed or described [in the prior art] if the differences between the subject matter sought to be patented and the prior art are such that the subject matter as a whole would have been obvious at the time the invention was made to a person having ordinary skill in the art." The test which is posed by this section is whether a worker of ordinary skill, knowing the prior art, would have found the patented invention obvious.

Re:It's the application date that matters

[Locutus]

what amazes me is that they filed this in Dec 2002 and in less than 10 months they were awarded the patent. AND there appears to be alot of prior art.

Mabye the USPTO needs to start getting emails, from us, pointing out the prior art.....

LoB