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Microsoft Receives Patent For Double-Click
kaluta writes "The Sydney Morning Herald is reporting that Microsoft was granted a patent for double-clicking on April 27. The patent in question is 6,727,830 and says, amongst other stuff: 'A default function for an application is launched if the button is pressed for a short, i.e., normal, period of time. An alternative function of the application is launched if the button is pressed for a long, (e.g., at least one second), period of time. Still another function can be launched if the application button is pressed multiple times within a short period of time, e.g., double click'. So this is what we have to look foward to in the E.U. now?"
Suddenly all those "I'm patenting peanut butter and jelly sandwich" posts are seeming more and more prophetic...
I'm hoping that such insane uses of patents will result in the USPTO and Congress waking the hell up and fixing this mess.
--- It is not the things we do which we regret the most, but the things which we don't do.
Now here we have the powers that be granting patents based on how we move or interact? One more reason Patenting process should be thoroughly revised.
Activists United
WHO CARES?
They can have so many patents that they have to start holding them in their asscracks. Exhibit 1: IBM, the Little Linux guy's friend on Slashdot.
They problem is not that they GET them. The problem only occurs if they can actually ENFORCE them. Which, in any sane court (yes, I know those are in dwindling numbers these days) won't happen.
By all means, let them run amok and waste money on BS patents. Just make sure that the first time they get challenged they actually go down. If the challenge fails, THEN there's a problem.
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
Hence general-purpose PCs and bigger embedded systems are safe from this, but small devices such as handhelds are vulnerable?
for mouse movements. Any patent on mouse movements will supercede Microsoft's double clicking, and Amazon's 1-click.
:|
Not impressed....
"There is no spoon." - The Matrix
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Stephen Hawking's speech synthesizer, operated by one hardware button clicked for different lengths of time.
Gamers Europe - Gaming News. Reviews.
At the moment when I press and hold my mouse button, nothing happens. Sure, stuff happens when I release it, but I don't get anything pop up just by holding. That stands true for both left and right buttons.
Now, this first time I did see this happen was on PocketPC 2000 software where a click and hold popped up the context menu. That's a 'hardware limited' device, i.e. it has no second button, just a stylus.
In any case I'd just like to point out that I'm not defending it - it's another silly patent - merely stating that the story has it wrong.
I guess size really does matter after all.
We've seen too many patents where everybody already does X, and the patent is to "do X on the Internet".
Or the recent patent on burning a CD of a concert, the same night as the concert and selling it after the concert. There's prior art on making music CDs -- but I guess you can patent making CDs in a specific situation.
Now double-clicking isn't patented, but double-clicking the hardware buttons on a PDA is patented.
So we can just patent anything if we specify a narrow domain and apply it there?
I suggest we patent double-clicking with a mouse... on an application with a "metal" skin that looks like a PDA. (Meh. Maybe Microsoft's patent would already cover this one!)
How about patenting the idea of recording a DVD of your vacation... while on vacation.
How about patenting the idea of an SQL database... on a PDA.
How about patenting video conferencing... on a PDA.
It's stupid, but the pattern suggests this might be possible. Start filing your applications now!
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
"Still another function can be launched if the application button is pressed multiple times within a short period of time..."
Sheesh. As if double click wasn't annoying and contrived enough. How about as many as five clicks, and the duration varies between long and short clicks? Is there a prior art in this, like freaking MORSE CODE?
I call "Prior art".
I don't know about any other phones, but my 5510 had the facility that I could press '1' and it would enter the #1, but if I held down '1' it would call the speed dial entry for #1.
Clearly this fits into the "limited resource environment", the "hardware button" and everything else. If this isn't a very, very specific example of prior art that is meant to be covered by this patent then I'm screwed if I know what else could be.
Yes Virginia, the patent office is staffed by morons.
Aaahh, somebody explain to me why Microsoft would want a patent that applied only to clicking on their own hardware?
So if I make a PDA and doubleclick on an app to run it, I don't owe Microsoft money?
Yeah, right...that's how Bill thinks.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Just out of curiosity, since a button on a computer is still a button. Compared to a button on say a watch or alarm clock. Don't cd players, alarm clocks, watches sometimes require you to hold the button down for a short or long period of time to make it do something? I know my watch a Timex Ironman watch requires me to hold a button down for like 1-2 seconds to reset the stopwatch feature. Isn't this the same idea, arn't they taking a previously used idea and trying to patent it?
yes go ahead and -1 offtopic but i want it at the top...
This might be so, but regardless of whether they enforce it, Microsoft still has an unfair advantage over other companies.
You could as easily argue that competitors who might actually have a fair reason to take Microsoft to court could be unfairly put off by Microsoft's overly inflated defensive patent portfolio that could be unleashed on them at any time. That is what defensive patents are there to do, after all.
I think you can pick an example a bit closer to home with that analogy...
Computer power buttons - Short period = sleep, Long period = Hard off.
this will will get shot down if it's ever 'enforced' legally. I recall using the Apple IIgs and certain applications had a rather Macintosh OS Finder like interface. And one had to double click things to make 'things' happen. IE: Launch an application etc. So prior art will shoot them in the face... then again, Microsoft invented the internet, the GUI, and viruses... so might as well say the invented religion, politics and the world as well. Stupid patent office, somebody seriously needs to beat down whoever runs that joint.
20 years of a monopoly on an obvious idea?
Give it to the caveman who discovered that if he pushed the rock longer, it went further.
But maybe there should be. Take Disney's handling of folk tales and out-of-copyright stories.
In the case of Snow White, everyone now calls the Dwarves by the names in the film -- Disney owns a copyright in those names.
Pinocchio -- Disney added the stupid little cricket, and consequently have copyright on it. Many of the Italians hate what has been done to their classic children's book.
The Little Princess -- Hans Christian Andersen's classic tale of "Can't always get what you want" -- characters renamed, happy ending added, and (a lesson learned from previous releases) the name changed to The Little Mermaid to stop other kids video companies releasing a competing product.
...and now children worldwide refuse the original versions of each of these tales because they're convinced that the Disney way is "the right way," and Disney thus has appropriated the rights to some of the most enduring Public Domain works known to man.
A similar thing happens with folk/public domain music. Do a popular arrangement, and suddenly people will refuse to listen to the original way -- the new way is the "right way". Then anyone wanting to sing it has to buy it off the arranger.
Public domain work misappropriated. Not technically theft, but I contest that it should be.
HAL.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
I'm not so sure about you, but my computer is a "limited resource computing device". My computer doesn't have unlimited ram, hard drive space or cpu power.
The main problem with patents like this is that you can patent something in such broad terms that it can be stretched to fit any definition they want it to fit.