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MS Patents IM Feature Used Since At Least 1996

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the uspto's-perverse-incentives dept.

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."

4 of 524 comments (clear)

  1. Unix talk by Kingpin · · Score: 1, Redundant


    How about unix talk? I haven't used it since about 96, but I seem to remember that either the text got sent real-time (which could be considered a notification..) or there was a status change.

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  2. Also.. by Conspiracy_Of_Doves · · Score: 2, Redundant

    it allowed you to SEE the other people typing in real time

    ICQ has done that for a while too

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  3. talk by too_bad · · Score: 1, Redundant

    Does anyone use the good old 'talk' program anymore? I know it was around for a long long time. Definitely before 1990. It used to give real-time indication of the other person typing, heck it used to show what the other person was typing, which most IMs couldnt for years (sigh)

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  4. Re:Don't forget by mkldev · · Score: 2, Redundant
    It's hard to beat UNIX talk, which became part of BSD in 4.2BSD, i.e. 1983. Microsoft was still doing MS-DOS back then....

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