Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Patents Timed Button Presses
ScooterB writes "According to TechDirt, Microsoft has patented having the action of a button determined by how long the button was pressed. From the patent listing, it seems to be targeted towards PDA's and other handhelds." Whether patents like this are the chicken or the egg, this relates to an MSNBC article submitted by prostoalex which says "United States Patent and Trademark Office is overwhelmed with incoming requests," and that "Unless the budgeting increases, the review process for a patent could double to 5 years."
Damn, another stupid patent. Yes I looked at the application and saw that the scope was narrow, but come on, just in front of me right now I have:
Sharp Zaurus: The "Cancel" button sends an ESC char to the OS, but if you press and hold it, it turns the unit off. Also if you press the button while it's off, nothing happens, but if you press and hold, it turns on again. I believe the various application buttons can also be programmed with different apps for press vs. press-and-hold.
VIA Mini-ITX motherboard: I have it set in the BIOS to sleep when the power button is pushed. But if you hold the power button for several seconds, the power light flashes and it powers down.
CRT iMac: power button does sleep, unless you hold it down, then it blinks and powers off.
APC SmartUPS: holding down the power-off button turns the unit off, but if you press-and-hold down for several more seconds, it turns off the battery charger too (you can hear the relay click off inside).
And of course SOFTWARE buttons have been doing this for years (click vs. double-click vs. click and hold). My KDE konsole application has a button that you click for a new session or click and hold for a menu.
The patent office needs to get a clue. PLEASE!!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Even on desktop systems, this is old. Plenty of games have used this technique for a long time. Golf, for instance, in which your swing is determined by how long you hold your click.
The EFF Patent Busting Project: http://eff.org/Patent/20040419_eff_pr_patent.php
I filed several patents - the last of which was filed in the spring of 2001. 3 years later NONE of them have issued (including one that is passing 4 years now). I don't see a doubling to 5 years, just an increase to 5 years.
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them
"every single watch i have ever owned has done this! you have to hold the set button for a number of seconds before it lets you set it...this by far predates microsoft's empire! "
Perhaps, but thanks to the way patents work, using it on a PocketPC or mouse driven PC is different 'enough'. Not saying I support it, just saying I've talked to patent lawyers before about those little kinds of deviations.
"Derp de derp."
What about the whole apple macintosh computer system? A computer with one mouse button. There were so many things that were done by holding the mouse down instead of clicking. And double clicking? That's older then Windows.
I wonder how many of the junk patents that have been approved lately were done by the same people. It would be nice to have a better feedback system for Patent Examiners then expensive lawsuits.
Mod this one -1 obvious.
press ctrl-click or *gasp* plug in a regular 2 button mouse.
Jisho - A Japanese English German Russian French Dictionary for the rest of us.
If you take the time to actually read what's claimed in this patent (on /.? yeah right...) this isn't as broad a patent as a lot of readers seem to think it is.
Basically, they've patented the following (all being done on a "limited resource computing device"):
Not ingenious, and of doubtful usefulness in my opinion, but certainly not as bad as patenting the very general "having the action of a button determined by how long the button was pressed" where that action could be anything.
(I read the patent)
even if this is meant to apply to virtual buttons, prior art exists in many places: a friend of mine
used to work for Symbol Technology, the bar code scanner folks. he told me about how you determine
if a button is pressed at all; there's an effect he described as "button bounce" where as the button is
depressed, the electrical contact is intermittent for a while until it becomes constant - i.e. don't do anything
until the button has been "on" for 1200milliseconds. he's had to write customized timing code for a variety of
vendors' buttons, since they are all have a bit different 'action'; and since there's generally only one button(trigger)
on a hand-held scanner, they'd have done the same as described in the patent. the extensions
they've applied for seem completely "obvious" to anyone who's had to use/work/design a product with
"limited resources", i.e. buttons.
anyway, deciding what what to do depending on how long a button(real or virtual) has been done for
many, many years:
elevators, digital watches/clocks, PDAs, Apple Newtons and many others previously mentioned.
maybe the patent office should 'open source' the research of prior art(like groklaw?) since they seem to be
incapable of handling any more than a couple of applications per day.
c
"...that's as white as it gets; all the bits are on..."
If you click on a dock icon in OS X, the default is that that application will become the current app and its windows moved to the fore. This is unless it's an object that's been dragged to the dock (like a folder or document) or the trashcan in which case it'll open.
If you hold down the mouse button instead of simply clicking, after... (tries it) two seconds a context menu for the object refered to by the icon will appear. For folders, this is actually a pop-up menu containing the folder's contents, which is cool as you can drag your Applications folder there and use it as a quick launch. For apps a variety of context items will appear, such as Show In Finder, Hide, Quit, etc.
The only reason this might not count as prior art is that some people are saying (I haven't read the patent yet) that the patent only applies to handheld devices. OS X doesn't yet run on any handheld devices.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Microsoft's USP 6,727,830 is for using the length of time an application button is pressed, in various broadly-specified ways. It was issued April 27, 2004, and filed July 12, 2002, as a continuation of an earlier application filed Jan 5, 1999. So the timeframe for unconditional prior art status of printed publications and uses in USA appears to be the timeframe ending on Jan 4 1998.
My HP41 programmable calculator, in use since 1981, was and is a "limited-resource computing device" with (physical) buttons associated with applications (functions). For every button and application there was a period during which the application's name would be displayed for a predetermined period if the button is pressed and held down, and activated if the button was released during that period, but if the button was held down longer, the display would go to 'null' and the application would not be activated on release. (It was a valuable HP41 feature to enable the user to check and get a reminder of what a button would do, without committing to the operation.)
It seems to be only on the last point -- what happens after delayed release -- that the Microsoft patent claims appear to differ
in detail from the HP41.
But the actions specified vaguely in the MS claims do not appear to be matters of principle, let alone invention, they are just choices about which alternative action should happen after delayed release.
I hope this patent would be found invalid at least for obviousness if challenged. But like so many others, MS may calculate on benefiting from the doubt in the meantime, and from the effort and expense of mounting a challenge.
-wb-