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."

Comments

Can ideas be patented?

[kavau]

According to what I learned from various extremely unreliable sources, ideas as such cannot be patented. Only implementations of those ideas. So Microsoft is not going to patent the timed button press, but only one (or more) ways to implement it. Obviously, for this simple example, there are a zillion different possible ways to implement it, and they can't patent them all.

The upshot: Everybody can use timed button presses in their applications, without paying royalties to MS. They only have to think for themselves how to do it.

Unfortunately I actually know next to nothing about patent law. Anybody with a fundamental knowledge is invited to set me straight on this.