Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Patents Your Local Weather Report
theodp writes "After a seven year wait, Microsoft was granted a patent Tuesday for the Customization of network documents by accessing customization information on a server computer using unique user identifiers, patent lawyer-speak for using preferences stored on a server for such purposes as "displaying stock quotes for the companies in which the user is interested, and displaying the user's local weather report.""
Not quite. Many of us know how the system is. We just think it's dumb. There is no reason that something so vague should be patentable. If anything people that attempt to patent obvious or excessively vague concepts should be penalized. Patents are great in areas where someone is developing something revolutionary or new. Unfortunately today people are busy patenting many very obvious concepts and they are not having trouble receiving those patents. We know how the system works. We just think it's a bad system in need of major restructuring.
Even if the claims held any wieght, the patent term (20 years) is rediculously inappropriate for software patents, as by the time the patent expires, any claims made within it are of little use to the public.
Computer technology changes far too quickly. 20 years protection on a software patent allows far too much protection for the 'inventor' (who decreasingly *is* the inventor, and usually just the first to file) and not enough benifit for the public.
"Old man yells at systemd"
This is only because of the idiotic US Patent system that microsoft has to buy a bunch of dumb patents because if they didn't some moronic company would come along sueing them for having a web browser that supports plugins.
From the last claim: "A method of providing customized documents to multiple users on client computers; the method comprising the steps of:
obtaining customization information from a first client computer;
This isn't broad? That's huge.
And patents effectively give the holder a monopoly on the idea. "The right conferred by the patent grant is, in the language of the statute and of the grant itself, "the right to exclude others from making, using, offering for sale, or selling" the invention in the United States or "importing" the invention into the United States."
You've got it backwards.
According to the US Department of State
"The United States is unique in its approach to the allocation of patent rights. In the United States, patent rights are granted to the 'first to invent' rather than the universally accepted approach of the 'first to file.'"
"...what constitutes prior use or public knowledge -- 'prior art' - differs considerably [in the US] from standards commonly adopted elsewhere. Although subject matter described in a printed publication or patent will constitute prior art, whether or not it is published or patented in the United States, the same is not true of subject matter in public use or known to the public. In these latter cases, only use or knowledge within the United States or its territories constitutes prior art. Many countries determine the applicability of prior art without geographic limitations."
"Jesus saves, but everyone else in a 10 foot radius takes full damage from the fireball."
Let me see here... (scrolling down)... "This HTML or network document customization is capable or providing each user who accesses a network address with an HTML document that is matched to that user's preferences. This customization adds to the strength of linked information provided by HTML documents by providing each user with the information, or links to information, that the user actually wants."
That's from the description, which translates claims 1-20 into real English. It sure looks to me like they're basically patenting My Yahoo! and every other site that ever used a customized home page.
This isn't a complaint about Microsoft; if my sister was issued this patent I'd be equally astonished. This sort of thing has been going on ever since CGI and cookies, when Microsoft was still deciding whether the Internet was worth their while. How it could ever get issued is utterly beyond me.
The fact of the matter is, OldMiner, that each claim of a patent can be considered as an individual patent. Each claim serves the purpose of notifying the public the scope of the monopoly rights granted to the patentee.
As a member of the public I am compelled by law to assume each and every claim is valid... not just claims 11-20.
Claim 1 - whether it is valid or not - requires the public to take action (design around, take a license, etc.) and exposes the public to risk if they ignore it. Even if MS chooses to not enforce the claim, the act of granting it causes economic harm.
The patent office should not grant patents containing "widly broad" claims. Period.
Lets just take Slashdot. The server has state. It knows who I am and I can leave a cookie on a system so that Slashdot can know that I am the normal user on that system. Slashdot tailors its output depending upon my stored preferences.
I don't know when Slash started all its per user customisations, but there were definitely other web systems that could deliver content based on user preferences seven years ago.
See my journal, I write things there
Actually, patents were invented to promote what today is called "piracy". It began in the early renaissance with glaziers and silkmakers; governments granted them exclusive national rights to the industry in return for their ripping off foreign inventors' processes. It was only later expanded to include genuinely "novel" inventions, but patents' national character still allows the original intent of reducing imports by ripping off foreign ideas.
You seem to be implying that patent schemes are the only way that people can have a prospect of financial reward and benefit from their inventions. This claim is absurd on its face.
Patents are a governmental intrusion into the free market. Like any governmental intrusion, they can be good or bad depending on how they are done. And like any governmental intrusion, "less" is usually better unless a clear case can be made that the particular intrusion in question will be of benefit to the market.
All's true that is mistrusted
Hmmm... I have read claims 11-20. There is as much as the writer implies. To sum up their claims:
On first visit to a website, return a session cookie.
Associate this session cookie with preeference information stored on the server, as configured by the user on a preferences setting web page.
Customize the web-site based on this.
Do this for more than one visitor at a time.
These claims, if enforced could make the web Microsoft's own little feifdom. What makes it most frightenin g is the filing date. Was anyone doing this prior to December 6, 1996? does anyone have proof? (CVS logs for Netscape or NCSA Mosaic with support for cookies might be good enough)
Even if the claims held any wieght, the patent term (20 years) is rediculously inappropriate for software patents, as by the time the patent expires, any claims made within it are of little use to the public.
.gif patent on compression? The patent has expired (in much of the world), but te technology is still used today, despite the availability of tiff, .png and .jpeg.
What, like Unisys
Remember, simply doing something which is already common on a new medium SHOULDN'T justify a patent. For instance online auction patents, almost all of them have a real world counterpart that has existed for centuries, and therefore there is nothing about them that should be patentable. There really isn't any room for a revolutionizing patent in online auctions.
Taking two existing ideas and combining them into one should be a no go as well. Storing of preferences FAR predates computers, hotels and retail stores for instance have been doing this for aa couple centuries, and long before that human beings did so simply by remembering each others favorites foods etc. This is obviously not patentable. A patent should require something NEW that will eventually be returned to the full public domain that would be the default if patent law didn't exist as a compromise.
Since software is typically just an automation of already existing things there isn't much in terms of software that should be patentable even if you do believe software should be. And it shouldn't... the software itself is rightly covered under copyright, and ideas were never supposed to be patentable in themselves (if I remember correctly the inventor used to actually have to provide a physical functional copy of the invention! These filled huge warehouses before this was stopped).