Microsoft Patents The Task List

theodp writes "'Better not get too fancy with your grocery list, now that Microsoft has patented a glorified form of the to-do list.' Issued Tuesday, the patent covers the use of a 'task list' generated from 'TODO' comments in source code."

Comments

Perfect Setup

[Mz6]

Microsoft's "to-do" List:

1. Patent double-clicks.
2. Patent this list.
3. ???
4. Profit!!!

Re:Perfect Setup

[Anonymous Coward]

This is another news post that throws crap into the face of the public. I could write the whole day comments like this and never be off-topic.

Remember our tea-throwing ancenstors. Corporations, governments cannot, must not control the people. This is another disgusting move to get to own each and every aspect of the peoples lives.

Remember the phrase "divide et impera" - it's used again one fringe minority each time. "No one cares about Microsoft but the zealots", "No one cares about civil liberties but the conspiracy nutcases", "No one cares about media consolidation but the art freaks", "No one cares about the environment but the rabid tree huggers", "No one can think $something but $fringe/criminal/outcastgroup_X"

Stop being indifferent about it. "First they came for the jews, then for them and for them and last for me", you remember that poem.

Ever asked why no one in Germany resisted Hitler? They always thought "it's not gonna be THAT worse, calm down!". They didn't believe the thing about Auschwitz even if they saw it afterwards.

Re:Perfect Setup

[Klanglor]

TO-DO LIST UPDATED:

3. Patent Profit*

4. Rule the world**

NOTE:

*It will be unprofitable to try to make profit for anyone else than MS. Injunction, will be deposited as soon as you try to make money.

**Patent the world if required.

Re:Perfect Setup

[Anonymous Coward]

No, they were all conditioned and believed firmly they are being attacked and threatened by the Jewish minority. No kidding, they would have sworn it was them who began the aggression and could have counted a looong list what they had done to them. That it all was faked and made up by the regime to incite hate and to create a scapegoat would not have sprung to their minds. And yes, they believed their newspapers were still independent. They believed anti-semitism and the assault on neighboring Poland was a kind of revenge on those who attacked them.

And so many people believe it is the Arabs who started a kind of war with the US and that a war on terror or torturing them in concentration camps is fair "revenge" for something "the Arabs" (all 800 million of them?) had supposedly done.

Add to that the incarceration without lawyer or notice, torture, prison camps outside the borders (like many German camps back then, most of them were in former Poland!) media and population control, a "war on everything" and you're pretty close on what kind of state 1936's Germany was in.

Re:Perfect Setup

[lacheur]

3. Patent Profit!

Re:Perfect Setup

[Coneasfast]

don't slashdot users ever READ THE MOTHER FUCKING PATENT! it is NOT on a task list, it is the METHOD that is being patented.

quote:
A method, apparatus, and software are disclosed for assisting a software developer in managing tasks to be completed by providing a task list as a unified location for developers to locate errors and warnings in code, as well as specify user-defined tasks. The task list is updated in "real time" as the developer completes tasks and generates new tasks.

Re:Perfect Setup

[pseudochaotic]

In accordance with Godwins Law, i hereby declare this thread over.

Re:Perfect Setup

[JohnFluxx]

Sounds like a task list to me. You add tasks from the code, and tick them off when done.

Re:Perfect Setup

[cshark]

In defense of the beast, they've been getting hit with bad patent law suits worse than anyone.

To name a few from the last couple years:

There was the incredibly broad Eolas patent.
There was the burst patent.
There was the down right stupid DRM patent.
There were a couple hand held device patents.
There was the supposed "relational database" patent, which really offended me.

And others.

If I were getting sued anywhere near as much as they are, you better believe I would patent every stupid feature I came up with.

Yet, in most of these stupid patent cases that actually make it to court, they lose. And they keep losing.

Not that they can't afford it.
It's the principle, I guess.

Re:Perfect Setup

[tenco]

In accordance with Godwins Law, i hereby declare this thread over.

I don't think so:
Meme, Counter-meme

Of course...

[Anonymous Coward]

I haven't read the patent (it is Slashdot after all), but the Eclipse development environment does this.

Re:Of course...

[dasmegabyte]

I use both. The eclipse development environment got this feature WELL after the dot net betas had it. However, I think they both cloned it from NetBeans...

Re:Of course...

[RealityMogul]

Delphi 5 had that feature in it. I know 4 was 1998, not sure of 5's release date, and I'm too lazy to look it up.

Re:Of course...

[Angst Badger]

I use both. The eclipse development environment got this feature WELL after the dot net betas had it. However, I think they both cloned it from NetBeans...

I hate to point out the obvious, but this is a lot older than Eclipse or NetBeans. I don't know what it's called where you're from, but my people call it "grep".

Of course, our grep is a generalized tool, so not only can we build lists of "TODO" comments, we can hunt down "FIXME" and even "This is an ugly hack" and "I am so ashamed of this".

Re:Of course...

[zhenlin]

This patent specifically applies to automatically generated lists in an IDE.

I wouldn't worry about your grocery list...

[datastalker]

...unless you generate it from comments in your source code. ;)

Re:I wouldn't worry about your grocery list...

[MoonBuggy]

It's not as broad as it might have been, but arguments about software patents in general put aside for now, the fact that you can patent something that you do (linking a list with source code comments) rather than the way that you do it (using XYZ type of code to create ABC functionality) shows that the patent system is broken.

Take, for example, the Dyson cleaner - it was a completely new way of making a vaccum cleaner and they patented their way of doing it. Other companies also did cyclone vaccums in their own ways. If Dyson had been able to patent the idea (cyclone based cleaners) rather than their implementation it would've locked out the competition completely. Why can't the patent office see this? It's what they're paid to do, after all.

Re:I wouldn't worry about your grocery list...

[SillyNickName4me]

For as far as I am concerned, they can come back when they have found a non obvious way to make a task list out of TODO comments in source..

For now it sounds like a glorrified form of
grep -r "TODO:' * >tasklist
Or similar.. I bet there is a lot of prior art also..

Re:I wouldn't worry about your grocery list...

[SlashdotKeefey]

Exactly, the idea of patenting an idea is nonsensical. Why software cannot be covered by anything over and above copyright law is beyond me. Look at Amazon, and the "One-Click Shopping" debaucle - how is the idea of a company storing credit card information patentable? Why is this something that other companies would not want to do anyway?

At the moment none of this applies to Europe, but this will soon change for the worse.

Now, where did I put my "Non-face-to-face communications" patent application?

Re:I wouldn't worry about your grocery list...

[noidentity]

I wouldn't worry about your grocery list unless you generate it from comments in your source code. ;)

It's so convenient to make notes in source code. Isn't that what our computers are for, to manage our data? Compare this

need more jolt (emu.cpp line 2)
pay electric bill (emu.cpp line 11)
out of potato chips (emu.cpp line 24)

with the verbose

// start emulating a track
// TODO: need more jolt
assert( rom );

// clear all memory
cpu.low_mem.assign( 0 );
sram.assign( 0 );
eram.assign( 0 );
unmapped_page.assign( 0 );

// TODO: pay electric bill

// set memory mapping

// start out unmapped
int i;
for ( i = 0; i < page_count; ++i ) {
cpu.data_reader [i] = read_unmapped;
cpu.data_writer [i] = write_unmapped;
cpu.code_map [i] = &unmapped_page [0];
}

// ROM
// TODO: out of potato chips
for ( i = 8; i < page_count; ++i ) {
cpu.data_reader [i] = read_rom;
int rom_bank = initial_banks [i - 8];
cpu.code_map [i] = &rom [rom_bank * page_size];
eram [0xFF0 + i] = rom_bank;
}
// ...

Oh man, I need to pay my electric bill...

Re:I wouldn't worry about your grocery list...

[Dareth]

Personally I like to write my grocery list in X86 assembly. Funny how once I get past the data section I know what I am going to buy before I push it to all my registers.

Wasn't it in Eclipse first?

[SIGALRM]

// TODO: remove this line or face retribution

I seem to remember using the TODO list feature in Eclipse before it showed up in Visual Studio. Am I wrong?

Re:Wasn't it in Eclipse first?

[NekoXP]

Eclipse wasn't released until 2001 at the very very earliest.

This patent was filed in 2000.

Microsoft wins.

Actually this is a bloody good patent, one that actually makes sense and is worth patenting.

Re:Wasn't it in Eclipse first?

[Atrax]

Yup, definitely there in my copy of J++ 6.0

yeah, I know. J++ 6.0. I feel suitably ashamed, thank you. ;-)

Re:Wasn't it in Eclipse first?

[FirstTimeCaller]

Actually this is a bloody good patent, one that actually makes sense and is worth patenting.

Yes. If it wasn't so bloody obvious.

I personally have been using $ToDo, $Review, and $Kludge comments in my code for a while now. I only recently started using a perl script to extract them. I guess that makes me in violation of the patent.

But the real question is... who's to know? This seems like an in-house development tool (that's how I use it). It's not like this going to show up in a shipping product (well I guess it could in some development tool).

Re:Wasn't it in Eclipse first?

[scmason]

"It's not like this going to show up in a shipping product"

Are YOU crazy? "TODO" items must be like 98% of their code base. Here is a sample of their kernel that I yanked off the internet:

int main(){
TODO: WinFS
TODO: Trusted Computing
TODO: Network Security
TODO: Usable Kernel
bsod();
exit(-1);
}

Re:Wasn't it in Eclipse first?

[NekoXP]

The thing about patents is, when one that gets granted that's obvious, everyone
runs around saying "WELL THAT'S OBVIOUS!!"

Yeah, and if you were really as smart as the inventor, you'd have patented it
first.

Just like someone patented sucking dust through a bit of cloth, and now every
house has one of these wonder-machines. There was a patent filed not long back
in the UK for using two little bits of plastic to stop shopping bags slicing
your fingers off. Now *THAT* was obvious - hundreds of people were doing that
with bits of plastic and cartons for years. Patenting it makes it commercially
someone's, as opposed to "used only in your own personal little world"

There are housewives and street bums inventing shit that is *so* obvious, but
they're the only people who go and try. Why? Maybe they're less cynical than
us. When we think "it's obvious!!!!!", we tend to think it's been done before.

Maybe it hasn't. Maybe it has. You gotta check first :D

By the way, your comments in code are not at risk. Neither is your perl script.
Unless by chance you had them all integrated into an IDE, which automatically
detected that you were typing a TODO comment, and added it to a pretty GUI list,
let you jump to the code in question, and so on, in real time. And then you
tried to sell it.

The Eclipse method may not even be at risk, since the patent MS have filed is
quite rightly quite specific in it's application, and does a lot of things
Eclipse does not.

Neko

Re:Wasn't it in Eclipse first?

[FirstTimeCaller]

Yeah, and if you were really as smart as the inventor, you'd have patented it first.

I figure that if I can (and did) come with it independently, then it must be obvious. The fact that the inventor chose to pursue a patent has no bearing on whether it is obvious or not.

This is not a case of hearing about an idea and saying "Oh that's obvious". This is a case of lot's of people (not just me) saying "I've been doing that for years."

Re:Wasn't it in Eclipse first?

[runderwo]

Mmph, shall we play Compare and Contrast:

Inventions that are obvious are equally patentable as inventions that are genius.

with the USPTO

Invention must also be:

Novel
Nonobvious
Adequately described or enabled (for one of ordinary skill in the art to make and use the invention)
Claimed by the inventor in clear and definite terms

Re:Wasn't it in Eclipse first?

[servoled]

You must be careful with which definition of the word "obvious" you are using. The dictionary defintion and the legal definition as interpreted by the US court system are fairly different. For example, the dictionary definition is given as "easily perceived or understood". The legal definition of obvious is a concept which must be proved and is not open to individual interpretation. See for example, MPEP 2142 Legal Concept of Prima Facie Obviousness which states:

To establish a prima facie case of obviousness, three basic criteria must be met. First, there must be some suggestion or motivation, either in the references themselves or in the knowledge generally available to one of ordinary skill in the art, to modify the reference or to combine reference teachings. Second, there must be a reasonable expectation of success. Finally, the prior art reference (or references when combined) must teach or suggest all the claim limitations. The teaching or suggestion to make the claimed combination and the reasonable expectation of success must both be found in the prior art, and not based on applicant"s disclosure. In re Vaeck, 947 F.2d 488, 20 USPQ2d 1438 (Fed. Cir. 1991). See MPEP 2143 - 2143.03 for decisions pertinent to each of these criteria.

Something may seem obvious to you (with the benefit of hindsight) and still be nonobvious according to the legal requirements of the term.

Re:Wasn't it in Eclipse first?

[quantaman]

Unless by chance you had them all integrated into an IDE, which automatically
detected that you were typing a TODO comment, and added it to a pretty GUI list,
let you jump to the code in question, and so on, in real time. And then you
tried to sell it.


You know what, that is obvious. If there isn't something that constitutes prior art already out there it's simply because the number of approaches a finite number of programs can implement is well finite, obvious things are going to be left unimplemented!

As to patents, vacuum cleaners as far as I know were a legitimate invention and deserved patents. You know what, if back at the very dawn of the computer industry someone had patented the idea of a compiler translating a high level language to machine code or making an OS to simplify the computing environment I may not object, as far as I know those were fundamental advances at the time. The best fundamental advancements I can think of recently are compile once/run anywhere languages (eg java) and tabbed browsing. But compile once languages are simlpy a natural extension of portable code and documents that can be opened by systems on different platforms, tabbed browsing is just moving tabs into a different part of userspace. Both were innovative but moreso made practical by the maturation of technology and their respective projects, heck I'm sure both ideas had been "invented" thousands of times before by a bunch of CS students blabbing to eachother after a few beers. Neither in my opinion are worthy of patents as it was just a race to implementation and this MS patent which is far more obvious, just more specific, is certainly not deserving of a patent.

Re:Wasn't it in Eclipse first?

[donscarletti]

If housewives and streetbums are creating things like this long before it is created by the patenter, then the patenter has created nothing new, just done the same as many people have done before. Thus if the patenter was entitled to the profits of the "invention" then all who have accomplished the same feat must also be entitled to the same amount. As the others are innumerable then why should the patenter be entitled to anything as the procedes cannot reach everyone else.

Patents were created to allow an inventor to have exclusive use of their invention for a limited amount of time to encorage people to put effort into inventing things. What the patent system was not designed for is to encorage people to take patents on things that other people have invented or are obvious through normal human intuition. An inventor is someone who creates something new that will really help consumers. An inventor is not simply someone who puts through paperwork for things that seem obvious. If this was what the patent system was for it would be pointless because it would only be a device for promoting monopolies rather than encouraging innovation.

Personally I think that if someone deserves a 16 year monopoly it is because they have put the time and persperation into an invention and achieved something that may never have been achieved if they didn't, simply marketing an obvious concept hardly qualifies.

Prior Art: Eclipse Project

[ruckc]

This feature has been in Eclipse for I can recall 2.5 years (not sure on date). The program automatically notices TODO comments in the code and creates a list for you.

What the hell is M$ thinking here?

Re:Prior Art: Eclipse Project

[molarmass192]

The @todo tag has been an unofficial part of Sun's javadoc utility since at least 1999, possibly earlier. However, I don't think javadoc generated a task list from them.

Re:Prior Art: Eclipse Project

[zurab]

This feature has been in Eclipse for I can recall 2.5 years (not sure on date).

Well, Eclipse and its users are in trouble then, because the patent application in question has been filed over 4 years ago. Just a reminder to every developer next time you try to implement a feature in your program, don't forget to search all existing patents and patent applications for possible violations. And another reminder to all software users - you are not immune from patent lawsuits if the software you are using (whether closed or open source) is violating other(s') patent(s) and neither you or your software vendor have a license to use or distribute the patented "technology."

Re:Prior Art: Eclipse Project

[rzbx]

"Just a reminder to every developer next time you try to implement a feature in your program, don't forget to search all existing patents and patent applications for possible violations."

This is NOT what one should do when implementing a feature in a program. First of all, developers should not be wasting time with the legal side of software. Most developers do not care for patents. Second, the moment a developer starts sifting through patent portfolios, they are both seeing a solution from the point of view of another developer(s) (or lawyers) and may have a hard time getting past this "better" option and sticking with their own, and they now can not legally say they had no idea the patent existed. I have heard before that even patent lawyers suggest that an inventor/developer not search through patents. What is a developer, a lawyer? No, they are interested in solving problems. Engineers are not interested in making things more complex (and you can not argue that law is about making things simple). Although the process itself may be complex, it is not in the interest of developers and such to complicate things. Fear is what I see in your entire post. Scare tactics. FUD, whatever you want to call it. Let me repeat, DEVELOPERS, ENGINEERS, SCIENTISTS, etc. ARE NOT INTERESTED IN COMPLICATING THINGS. They seek the truth and/or they build machines/software/ideas to solve problems or understand a problem(or event). How many great scientists/developers/engineers do you know that support the patent system? Yes, some will say that we need it, but that it is currently flawed. Yet, even they will admit that they don't have the solution. There have been economists and various other social science professionals on the other hand that are against the idea of the patent system. First you must understand the reasons the patent system was created and why it still exists. You can spout the old myths about progress due to the patent system, but I dare you to show me scientifically (or any other possible, but convincing way) that patents are directly related to progress and I'll give my apologies. I'm very sorry for the rant, but I'm tired of the ignorance behind this patent issue. It is bad enough that people support the system, but to recommend that developers go spend their time sifting through patent files? If the patent system was unenforced though, it would be a great system for sharing knowledge related to inventing/engineering/etc.

Re:Prior Art: Eclipse Project

[zurab]

It is bad enough that people support the system, but to recommend that developers go spend their time sifting through patent files?

Sorry that you misunderstood the point of my post. It was not to make every developer look through the patents and patent applications before they write each function. Neither was it to make every software user look through the same databases before they start using a piece of software, and make sure with the software vendor that all relevant patents are licensed.

This is a problem with the patent system in general - you cannot know you are violating anything, even as a user of a product, before someone sues someone else and you. I mean how can you possibly be expected to know if your product vendor has properly licensed and paid for all patents? While patents and patent applications are public, corporate licensing agreements regarding them are not. Even if they were, it would not make any sense for every product consumer to hire a patent attorney to check for "legality" before using the product. The argument that all patents and patent applications are public does not hold water.

It does not make sense for developers to check for patents either, even though they are risking infringing on someone else's patents by not doing so. What corporations are doing is not only applying for "defensive" patents, but also creating an artificial and legal barriers to entry in the market.

Re:Prior Art: Eclipse Project

[Pseudonym]

First of all, developers should not be wasting time with the legal side of software. Most developers do not care for patents.

Can I quote you on that?

Yours sincerely,
Ken Brown, AdTI

eclipse

[vinnythenose]

So when did eclipse do it?
We just need to beat 2000 (when the patent was filed)

Easy...

[Karpe]

3. Sue itself!

Re:Easy...

[southpolesammy]

No, not quite.....

3. Sue everyone else.

This is what they're up to. I've been pondering what it was that they've been doing over the past year or so with all these settlements of lawsuits, and now we see all these patents being granted -- they're going to bombard the USPTO in patent applications hoping that given the sad state of affairs there that a fair amount like this will be granted, regardless of any prior art.

Then, once a critical mass of patents have been built, they'll bury the US legal system and competitors in so much paperwork for patent infringement that neither the courts nor the defendant parties will be able to react. With patents in hand (legit or not), there's little that the courts can do to them for bringing frivolous lawsuits, and the people being sued won't be able to keep up with the sheer amount of litigation in either time or cost.

Then, once a sufficient amount of patent lawsuit success is obtained and precedents are set, they launch the blitzkrieg against IBM. What better way to fight a patent war than to have your own arsenal of battle-tested patents.

And while all this is going on, they'll be able to do just about whatever the heck they want, a la the bully days of the 90's. Gobble up companies, steal ideas, squelch OSS innovation due to FUD over whether or not a given product is free of proprietary code....it all makes sense....

Damn....it's just one of those things that is so obvious and so simple, yet so well hidden. It may be worth doing a lookup of pending patents with the USPTO to see what's coming up -- I'm guessing the backlog from Redmond is substantial.

Re:Easy...

[afidel]

Dude, no one competes with IBM on patents, they have averaged more than a patent a day for as long as any currently enforceable patent has been in existance. That is one game even Gates won't try. It would be like trying to win a land war in China, you might suceed for a while but eventually the sheer mass of your opponent will wear you down.

Re:Easy...

[Gyorg_Lavode]

Lets be fair. We all know microsoft loses a lot of money from copying other people's IP. MS is creating a huge portfolio of things everyone who writes software will be in violation of one of them. MS is creating these patents not to attack innocent people, but to defend it's illegal activities.

Re:Easy...

[mr i want to go home]

7. Kill yourself because your GIRLFRIEND is a fat virgin Slashdot troll who lives in YOUR basement =>

Hehehe. Sorry. Couldn't resist. But it'll be worth it even for the negative mods.

Re:Easy...

[WhiteDeath]

A patent a day?

At that rate surely IBM (and/or others) have patents for just about everything MS are trying to patent... or for most components of the patents.....

Is "somebody else patented that before you did" a valid argument in patent law?

IBM won't enter into it unless MS are stupid enough to take them on directly, but the little people MS are using as a leg-up for their argument might just be able to say "your patent is just the combination of all these patents, all owned by other people" - which might remove any argument they can throw at you. (obligatory: IANAL)

All that remains is finding time to find all the necessary patents. Perhaps this is a good open project: looking up the patents that cover stuff MS has patents for/is patenting. Make the info available on a web site so anyone under threat has a ready-reference of defenses, and cases they hae been successfully used in. People will still get dragged into court, but it will only take them an hour to do the research, rather than possible years.

Who knows, maybe one day there will be a ruling of "invalid as listed on the Many Silly PATENTS web site - mspatents.net"

Re:Easy...

[nacturation]

Dude, no one competes with IBM on patents, they have averaged more than a patent a day for as long as any currently enforceable patent has been in existance.

I think your numbers are just a *tad* off. Yes, they do a bit more than a patent per day. In fact, according to IBM, they get over 6,000 patents per year. That's over 16 every day of the year, or about 24 per business day.

Re:Easy...

[gilroy]

Blockquoth the poster:

It would be like trying to win a land war in China, you might suceed for a while but eventually the sheer mass of your opponent will wear you down.

Next, I hear, Microsoft plans to go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line...

Re:Easy...

[afidel]

Actually that number includes all of their partners in that area.

In 2003, IBM received 3,415 U.S. patents from the USPTO. This is the eleventh consecutive year that IBM has received more U.S. patents than any other company in the world.
linky.

So not quite 6K, but more than I thought (almost 10 a day!) Their 10 year average is closer to 7 a day, and if you go back 26 years I'm sure it's even lower. Of course the rediculous number makes my point even more clear that fighting IBM in a patent battle is sheer stupidity.

Re:Easy...

[southpolesammy]

I forsee http://patents.groklaw.net/ coming soon to a web browser near you....

Re:Easy...

[RickHunter]

What's even scarier. Not only does IBM have a massive patent portfolio... But, since the antitrust trial in the early '80s, they never, ever abuse them. They know just how much damage attracting the government's attention and earning the ill will of the techies can cause. So instead, they take the simplest, most direct road to success. They play fair.

Re:Easy...

[loyalsonofrutgers]

Don't forget "invade Russia in the winter." That's always a classic.

Re:Easy...

[ThaReetLad]

I think you're wrong.

The point is, if Microsoft can patent things like the double click (its actually rather more specific than that), and this automated TODO list, then so can NPCs like EOLAS. Comparing EOLAS to microsoft quickly leads us to one being a parasitic swarm of lawyers looking to get rich of sueing companies that invest in R+D, and the other, rather surprisingly, is Microsoft, who have aparently never filed a patent violation case.

If The Trend continues

[Anonymous Coward]

This is only going to get worse for developers.

A beuracracy of legalities to work through before your project can ever be put in the public domain and Microsoft sueing people who bring us OSS.

Navigating all this will disuade a lot of potential help, and will only stifile Microsoft's competitors.

I can't be the only one seeing this coming.

~ Jon

Re:If The Trend continues

[RatBastard]

And that, my names friend, is the entire point. Since they can't compete with OSS on price or quality, they are going to bury it a legal quagmire.

The one thing that people must remember about Bill Gates is that he absolutely can not stand competition. Period.

Actually a neat feature

[SilentChris]

They've actually had this in Visual Studio for a while: you can easily set any source or error (during the compile) as a "to do", which attaches itself to the project. In .NET, you can have "to dos" over different languages in the same project (which I haven't seen in too many IDEs).

Others may have it, but it's one of those quiet innovations MS has they don't make too much noise about. Like Autocomplete (can't run across a single browser nowadays that doesn't have this).

Microsoft Hit & Miss

[CHaN_316]

It feels like Microsoft just comes up with a list of things that have been implemented, and try to patent them. It's hit and miss, but boy, if you score one of the patents, great! If not, try try again... they've got the money to blow. All you have to do is inundate the patent office, and sooner or later, you'll hit the jackpot.

Microsoft's latest patents:

• Writing Code on a computer (rejected)
• Coding on a computer (rejected)
• Coding on an electronic medium (approved)
• Uhh...the Internet? (rejected, Al Gore invented that)
• The Internet (rejected)
• Inter.Net (approved)
• ...

It's a lot like submitting a story for slashdot, but easier, and way more double posts :D j/k.

Re:Microsoft Hit & Miss

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

Uhh...the Internet? (rejected, Al Gore invented that)
I hate this false urban legend because I believe it cost Gore a few votes. He never said it, and this was spread as a rumor to make Gore sound like a pompous jerk. (His personality did leave something to be desired, but get a guy for stuff he's done, not made up shit).

Yeah, he said he "creat[ed] the internet", and that's a stretch (outside forces helped a lot), but the Invented thing makes him sound like he pretended he was at Berkeley, sharing missives with Postel and Stevens, looking at packet headers, which he never meant to imply. The people who pushed this quote out are smart enough to know the connotation, but then play dumb when people challenge this "oh it means the same" when the connotation is clearly different.

Rant mode off.

Re:Microsoft Hit & Miss

[Tony Hoyle]

Snopes has it wrong this time. They even quote him:

"I took the initiative in creating the internet".

There is no other way to interpret this. He was just trying to sound cool and it backfired on him. Note he did *not* say "I took the initiaive in allowing the internet to flourish", as snopes would have you believe, nor did he say "I created the environment in which the internet was allowed to grow". He said "I took the initiative in creating the internet".

Re:Microsoft Hit & Miss

[thaddjuice]

Let's say I build a car from scratch. I created that car. No one in their right mind would say I invented the car or ever quote me as such.

Create is not a synonym for invent, plain and simple. This rumor, even though he is guilty of misspeaking, was deliberately put out to make him look stupid/snobish/(insert negative quality). And the saddest thing is that it worked.

Re:Microsoft Hit & Miss

[Chilltowner]

The full quote from the Blitzer interview is:

"During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country's economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system."

He's referring to his support for the Internet and the Web in it's early days. He made sure projects got funding and encouraged the use of the 'Net in government. Here's a quote from Peter Hallam-Baker:

"In the early days of the Web, he was a believer, not after the fact when our success was already established -- he gave us help when it counted. He got us the funding to set up at MIT after we got kicked out of CERN for being too successful. He also personally saw to it that the entire federal government set up Web sites. Before the White House site went online, he would show the prototype to each agency director who came into his office. At the end he would click on the link to their agency site. If it returned 'Not Found' the said director got a powerful message that he better have a Web site before he next saw the veep."

More links about this lovely little mind virus are here:
http://www.sethf.com/gore/

Hell, I had grave doubts about Gore in the last election--so much so that I voted for Nader. But give the man his due.

Re:Microsoft Hit & Miss

[Monkelectric]

Gore wrote and sponsored the legislation that payed for the development for the internet. Thats what that quote means.

Re:Microsoft Hit & Miss

[jeffy124]

you naysayer. Of course Al Gore invented the internet. It is, after all, based on Al-Gore-ithms.

Re:Microsoft Hit & Miss

[borwells]

Without Al Gore's hard work to turn the ARPANET of the 80's into the Internet of the 90's none of you closet perv Republicans would be fapping to Paris Hilton. Al Gore did take the initiative to create the Internet, and a lot of us on Slashdot have him to thank for our jobs because of it. Get over it.

Gore Speech before the Senate in 1989
"But I genuinely believe that the creation of this nationwide network and the broader installation of lower capacity fiber optic cables to all parts of this country, will create an environment where work stations are common in homes and even small businesses with access to supercomputing capability being very, very widespread. It's sort of like, once the interstate highway system existed, then a college student in California who lived in North Carolina would be more likely to buy a car, drive back and forth instead of taking the bus. Once that network for supercomputing is in place, you're going to have a lot more people gaining access to the capability, developing an interest in it. That will lead to more people getting training and more purchases of machines."

September 1, 2000, Newt Gingrich, during a CSPAN broadcast
"In all fairness, it's something Gore had worked on a long time. Gore is not the Father of the Internet, but in all fairness Gore is the person who, in the Congress, most systematically worked to make sure that we got to an Internet, and the truth is--and I worked with him starting in 1978 when I got there, we were both part of a 'futures group'--the fact is, in the Clinton administration the world we had talked about in the '80s began to actually happen. You can see it in your own life, between the Internet, the computer, the cell phone."

Prior Art

[chaffed]

I'm too young for punch cards however my folks aren't. My father just let me know he has prior art. I'm sitting here with a very dusty item processing program on punch cards. On the cards themselves comments are written about things to be added and depricated. So where do I mail this 10lb stack of yellow cards?

grep TODO *.c (of java, or obj-c, etc...etc...)

[borgheron]

There you have it folks. Patent infringment in one line.

GJC

Re:grep TODO *.c (of java, or obj-c, etc...etc...)

[lspd]

for developers to locate errors and warnings in code, as well as specify user-defined tasks. The task list is updated in "real time" as the developer completes tasks and generates new tasks.

while [ TRUE ] ; do sleep 1; grep ..blah blah.. ; done

Re:grep TODO *.c (of java, or obj-c, etc...etc...)

[pla]

grep is not done within an integrated design environment.

Many IDEs allow running shell/batch scripts, and outputting the results to an in-IDE window. So yes, it could run within such an environment. In fact, I have personally used grep in such a manner (though admittedly not to look for "TODO").

Microsoft May Help Everyone In The Long Run

[TheWanderingHermit]

Since Microsoft is going around patenting everything they can possibly think of, as long as Bush and his pro-monopoly group doesn't stay in office forever, they may help everyone else out.

If they patent enough simple and obvious ideas, that will make great fodder for the argument for abolishing software patents. They're going so far out of their way to stiffle competition that, at some point, the government will have to realize that software patents don't help competition, but hurt it.

(Yeah, I know it's the guv'ment we're talking about, but at some point congress will get enough complaints from everyone else that even they might wake up.)

WTF

[Supp0rtLinux]

Will it ever end? Funny that they get a patent on something I've been doing for 20+ years... I've always made it habit to use #TODO: in my comments for my code for pending things or things that need to be redone, then have a shell script parse my code for the comments and email them to me weekly prior to status meetings, etc. I wonder if any of these will count as "prior art" or its counterpart to fighting this atrocity?

Re:WTF

[Threni]

> Will it ever end?

Naah man, it's just beginning. I'm surprised Microsoft has taken so long to get on the case.

After a year or so more of this and we'll be ready for phase 2 - loads of legal action on patents (and not just in the software industry - I've seen cosmetics companies claim on huge posters that they patent n things a week).

Perhaps then there'll be a change in the law?

Re:WTF

[richieb]

I'd imagine it's hard to use something as prior art that was not made public. I made internet radio twenty years ago! Now excuse me while I change this timestamp...

You know, there must an Emacs macro that does this - probably from the 80s.

grep

[lubricated]

Microsoft just patented the use of grep.

grep -r TODO * > tasklist

hopefully they won't catch me, this post infringes.

This won't go over well at home...

[Black Jack Hyde]

"Jack, since you're off today, you can get to work on this to-do list I've written."

"Did you get permission to make this list?"

"WHAT-DID-YOU-SAY?"

"Bill Gates owns the patent on to-do lists now. Tell you what, here's the number to Microsoft's licensing department. I'll be on the golf course. Later."

Have fun Novell

[maelstrom]

Its going to be a joy when something important implementing Mono gets patented. Do you really doubt they are going to do it? Heck, they probably already bought a patent Sun got while doing Java.

It will be even more interesting when all of Gnome is implemented with Mono. Maybe I'm the only one who finds it ironic that a desktop environment founded because the KDE license wasn't free enough is falling over themselves to implement Microsoft technology.

Re:Have fun Novell

[steveha]

It will be even more interesting when all of Gnome is implemented with Mono.

When will that be? References, please?

The GNOME project is not Miguel de Icaza, and Miguel isn't the GNOME project, and there are no current plans to junk the C code base and replace it with Mono.

Miguel thinks there is so much prior art that Microsoft cannot shut down Mono. At worst MS can wall off the .NET compatible libraries, and Miguel doesn't really care about those.

Maybe I'm the only one who finds it ironic that a desktop environment founded because the KDE license wasn't free enough is falling over themselves to implement Microsoft technology.

GNOME isn't Miguel, etc. And Mono is a free implementation of some Microsoft ideas.

If you are right, and Miguel is wrong, then yes Mono is a huge mistake. Obviously Miguel doesn't agree with you.

Given that Miguel can point to prior art dating back to the UCSD P-System and maybe older, it's not clear to me that you are right and he's wrong. Microsoft could sue, of course, but it's not clear to me that they would win.

See also the FAQ:

http://www.go-mono.com/faq.html#patents

steveha

Re:sigh there we go again-Prior art anyone?

[ron_ivi]

Actually that wasn't (just) an attempt at a 'funny' mod.

The second page of the linked article in the parent explains that this might even be technology that Borland did give Microsoft from the Delphi stuff.

• In exchange for a desperately needed $125 million cash infusion, Borland gave Microsoft the blueprints for much of its key technology, let Microsoft off the hook by settling long-standing patent disputes, and agreed to tie its own tools even more tightly to the Windows operating system. Inprise agreed to provide full access to more than 100 of its technology patents, including spreadsheet technologies and pending patent applications related to newer products. This transaction signified final victory for Microsoft in an epic battle to control the desktop database and development tool businesses.

Re:Oh for pete's sake ...

[floop]

I searched for your prior in comp.emacs.* on google groups but all I could find was this.

Re:sigh there we go again-Prior art anyone?

[sroddy]

1999 article discussing the ToDo features in Delphi 5:

Here you go.... From this page: http://www.marcocantu.com/papers/face5.htm

"The ToDo List is a great tool for tracking the progress of a single person or an entire team in developing and debugging a project. The ToDo Items window automatically scans the source code of the entire project, looking for ToDo comments and the project's special ToDo file. Its visual support is outstanding. I'm using the list frequently with my projects."

Re:Oh for pete's sake ...

[JabberWokky]

Hell, grep is the tool to *do* this. I know I habitually tag TODO, ALPHA, BETA, SECURITY and FIXME tags through my source, and then do a 'grep -r TODO >todo.txt' (repeat for other tags).

--
Evan "Didn't read the article, don't really care enough to"

Okay...

[Mz6]

So as we have all been reading Eclipse has been doing this since November 2001. Well, sorry! The Microsfot patent was filed on March 6, 2000. Does this mean we will see a lawsuit from Microsoft against Eclipse? Or perhaps forcing Eclipse to license that "feature"?

Patenting smilies!!

[maggern]

I heard that Microsoft has a patent pending on smilies! It's absolutely true!!! ;-)

:-M :-I :-C ;-R =O :-S ;-O :-F :-T

So smile while you can, tomorrow a Microsoft smilies-subscription may cost ya about 5$ a month if you're lucky!!

I can't wait! :-D

hehe

Huzzah!

[localman]

I cheer every time one of these insane patents is granted. There is a breaking point for all this, and every dumb patent brings us an inch closer to the mainstream calling it all into question. The dumber the better.

I just hope we don't destroy the economy beforehand.

Cheers.

I did this in Hypercard in 1997

[G4from128k]

I created this sort of system in Hypercard for a massive stack development project. With abotu 50,000 lines of script in hundreds of stakc object, finding "TODO"s was a real pain so I made my own search & task list tool. A search tool on a card for developers found todo tokens in the stack's scripts and listed them for me. Double clicking a list item took me to the item. The thing also had a visitation counter so I could see which items I'd done.

The little tool was actually more versatile than the Microsoft system because I could search, list, and visit on any token (it search scripts for a string) - great for finding all the places that used a certain variable or accessed a particular stack feature. It also had a pull-down list for sorting the "task list" in several different ways. Other tools let me quickly visit "Next" and "Previous" or cull the list by deleting task list items that met different criteria.

The only thing different from my stack search tool and the patent is that my little tool did not change the script code in response to anything. But I suspect that someone with "ordinary skill in the art" could easily have do that.

New Slashdot Policy

[torinth]

Good grief. I think we need to institute some kind of reasonable editorial policy here. As is so often the case in articles about Microsoft or patents, the lead is patently misleading.

The patent is on a relatively complex system that I've never seen or heard of before. It's about an IDE tool that dynamically identifies syntax errors and TODO comments throughout your code, associates them with named tasks and gives them priorities.

It is not about the little notebook you keep next to your computer, nor about running "grep //TODO *.c". It's about a smart IDE offering a useful and creative way of managing tasks. Should software processes be patentable? Maybe not. Are they? Yes. Does this infringe on prior art? Not really. So might this be a patentable software process? Sure looks like it.

If anyone of you out there have been working on this kind of thing for emacs or Eclipse 5 years ago, I suggest you speak up now...

I don't think we'll be hearing much.

Re:New Slashdot Policy

[QuantumG]

I hate to tell you this, but Post-It notes are patented. So are the little bits of plastic on the end of your shoelaces. It's common and normal practice to patent things that are obvious because everything is obvious after someone else has done it.

Re:New Slashdot Policy

[dammitallgoodnamesgo]

Yes, but once the idea of Post-It notes is out there, "Post-It notes on a computer" is then obvious. In the same way, little bits of plastic on the end of your bootlaces would also be rejected.

Re:New Slashdot Policy

[bwy]

This is the second or third story on /. this week that was basically a misrepresentation of the facts. Surprise, surpise- skewed against Microsoft. It is really getting old.

Re:New Slashdot Policy

[bit01]

Believe me, I create IP every day. I know exactly what copyright is for. Yes, copyright would only protect an implementation of this "idea". That's the whole point.

This "idea" does not deserve any other protection. It's trivial and variations have and will be created many times by programmers and software architects everywhere as they create software on a day-to-day basis. As a result on a day-to-day basis these intellectual property creators will be fucked over by these parasites. There is no hard research/development work to protect. There is no innovation to protect. It's just parasites stealing from the creators.

---

It's wrong that an intellectual property creator should not be rewarded for their work.
It's equally wrong that an IP creator should be rewarded too many times for the one piece of work, for exactly the same reasons.
Reform IP law and stop the M$/RIAA abuse.

Re:New Slashdot Policy

[torinth]

It's not quite that obvious. That's why nobody's done it. It's actually useful, so if it was obvious, you can imagine somebody would have done it.

Judging from your analogy: "putting a bunch of Post-Its in a book to come back later for review", I think you still misunderstand it.

It's more like the book intelligently analyzing itself, identifying where you'd probably like to put post-its, doing so itself, and then removing them when you don't need them anymore.

Granted, my description doesn't make it much clearer, but what the patent actually covers is relatively innovative and unobvious. Everything you currently do to manage tasks (which I assume are obvious things) you can continue doing. This just proposes a previously undocumented and unimplemented way to do it.

The real problem with most software patents isn't that they're obvious. It's that software technology is developing at an astounding place, but by granting patents to companies that abuse and mismanage them, exceedingly useful innovations don't get wide enough dispersion fast enough. Good patents are held onto for so long, or have licenses that are priced so high that further innovations that could be based on them don't have enough chance to develop. Ultimately, this means that software progress may be hindered by patents, at least until it slows down.

Generally speaking, patent rights provide a valuable incentive for investment into creative research and development. However, it seems that in very-fast-growing industries, they may impede overall industry development.

Re:New Slashdot Policy

[Halo1]

The patent is on a relatively complex system that I've never seen or heard of before.

That says more about you than about the quality of the patent.

It's about an IDE tool

Wrong, it does not have to be an IDE tool. It could even be a daemon that works constantly in the background, or -as other people pointed out- even something like "while true; do sleep 1; grep ... > ...; done"

that dynamically identifies syntax errors

The first claim does not say anything about syntax errors. Besides, you might have heard of this complex tool called a "compiler" which does exactly that, among other things.

and TODO comments throughout your code, associates them with named tasks and gives them priorities.

The first claim says nothing about the naming of the tasks (simply using consecutive numbers would be enough to violate the patent) nor about assigning them priorities.

If there's someone misrepresenting the situation here, it's you. If someone against software patents wrote such an uninformed and plain wrong comment, he'd be toasted by you and your colleagues in follow-up comments.

Yes, the first M$ appologist!

[twitter]

A nifty feature it is, thanks for the M$ product info! It also happens to be obvious, well known and implemented by everyone. Give me a break and keep M$ advertising off Slashdot unless you pay for it.

Your attempt at making it seem like an innovation is dissappointing even for Microsoft standards. Where's the jargoned up spiel about M$'s new paradigms and methods? That .NET reference and the mention of different languages, as if other compiler collections did not exist is a start. Oh wait, a new method is not something that deserves a patent is it? Now I see part of the problem. Let's see what you have again:

Others may have it, but it's one of those quiet innovations MS has they don't make too much noise about. Like Autocomplete (can't run across a single browser nowadays that doesn't have this).

Noise? Do you mean documentation? M$ surely has enough advertising.

Your claim that Microsoft invented this feature which is just now getting stuck into their products is preposterous. People have been doing this forever and it's outrageous that Microsoft would attempt to steal such an obvious idea from everyone else.

I like the way that KDE's IDE autogenerates html helpfiles and other documentation just like this. I'd like to see those morons at Microsoft try to extort money from anyone who would like to use or distribute KDE. Actually, I would not. I really want them to just take their ill gotten gains and leave the rest of us alone.

Re:Oh for pete's sake ...

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean in the 70s you had a integrated, interactive development environment that automatically parsed the code while you worked on it and maintained a networked, shared database of task items which could automatically update the code for you when you checked off a task as completed, or automatically update database when you changed the code?

Wow, you were really ahead of your time. Too bad you didn't share all the nifty graphical multithreaded network technology with us. We had to spend a couple of decades inventing the infrastructure you had all the time.

Or maybe you should just read the patent before blindly accepting the Slashdot spin on it.

(And for all the other posters: no, "grep TODO *.c" doesn't count. That does not match the method described in the patent, which is fairly specific and thus narrow. It does not cover any form of todo list or stylized way of commenting the code.)

More Prior Art

[Revvy]

In 1998-9 I created a system that would automatically update the company's bug database (arguably a TODO list) whenever a developer checked in code with the proper comments inserted. It was obvious to me, and it's been obvious to thousands of developers for many years.

Sigh.

Just waiting for someone to patent the concept of Prior Art itself.

Patents, and what they are and aren't

[NekoXP]

A patent is a description of an invention. It covers the WHOLE invention, and the
requirement of the patent office is that the description of the invention is very
very specific.

Microsoft's "double click" patent you all keep going on about does NOT patent
the double click. It patents differentiating between different lengths of time
holding a button on a PDA, in order to start different applications or
application methods - for the sole purpose of reducing the need for 100 buttons
on devices with crap input and no screen estate.

That they mentioned the double click does not mean they patented it. They may
have patented the use of the double click when combined with time-based
selection of the application to be launched, but that is FAR from the same
thing. And as far as I know - hasn't been done on any system anyway. Personally
I think it'd be rather unwieldy which probably explains why nobody did it :)

What THIS new patent covers is, and if you go PAST the f**king summary and
actually read the PATENT:

In an IDE (interactive!), adding /* TODO */ comments or suchlike are
automatically, and in real-time, added to a task list. When comments are removed
or the task is clicked off on the GUI (and possibly in combination with revision
control) you can see what stuff has been done and has not been done. In real
time. From an IDE.

Note that manually running "grep" does not act in real time as you type, display
it in an IDE or generally do anything listed in the patent.

It does not patent TODO comments merely because of their mention. Nor is it
patenting any other COMPONENT of the patented methods. Just the methods themselves
when brought to a whole.

It was also filed in 2000. People are whining that Eclipse is prior art. Sorry,
but Eclipse came about 18 months after the patent was filed.

The next time I read a "Microsoft patents wiping ass with soft paper" story on
Slashdot, remind me to explain this again. I'm sure I'll have to, because the
amount of goddamned idiots here who can't or don't read past the headline (and
that includes you, story submitter and mr. moderator) and jump to conclusions
is incredible.

Before we get started on this whole patent argument: yeah I think Amazon's
one-click shopping thing is a bit rich. But that's different, it's a feature we
can all remember using since the dark ages when cookies first arrived, the
current batch of MS patents are actually quite original thinking from people,
and generally well thought-out well-defendable inventions.

Neko

Re:Patents, and what they are and aren't

[steveha]

It patents differentiating between different lengths of time
holding a button on a PDA, in order to start different applications or
application methods - for the sole purpose of reducing the need for 100 buttons
on devices with crap input and no screen estate.

Kind of like the digital watch I had in 1979? Or the bike computer I had ten years ago?

I really don't understand how they got that patent. It flunks both the prior art and "obvious" requirements.

steveha

Re:Patents, and what they are and aren't

[gewalker]

A couple of people have mentioned Delphi. Maybe you did not notice, but Delphi 5 released in 1999 Takes comments typed in source code, of the form:

// todo 1: blah

And converts this to a todo list idea subject=blah, with priority of 1.

It does this in real time, as you type in the todo comment. This is prior to when the patent was filed by MS. So yeah, I think this is patent law abuse. I think it is primarily the government's fault (to date, MS is apparently playing the defensive patent game -- though I may have missed news where they attempt to enforce patents -- if so, shame on MS again).

Now, maybe you can argue that MS has a better, more complete implementation that Delphi did/does. But that is the purpose behind copyright law, not patent law. Surely MS is protected adequately in such a case by copyright law. I can't pirate/steal their product legally when protected by copyright instead of patent.

U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 8:
Congress shall have the power ... To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;

Congress has the right (not the requirement) to grant patents with the intent to promoting science and the useful arts. Please, explain to me how granting MS excludsive use of automated todo lists advances science or the useful arts. If that's not good enough, give a single example of a software patent that advances science or the useful arts. Specifically in ways that are better than copyright protection.

Software patents are the result of a revisionist judge deciding that he (not Congress) had the right to grant software patents.

Patents must also display "more ingenuity" than the work of a mechanic skilled in the arts. Usually this is referred to legally as novelty again, I ask what is really novel in this patent.

The patent system, as applied to software does not serve the purpose to which constitutional authority grants Congress the priviledge of patents. State of the art in software advances in spite of software, not because of patents. Only real advantage that I can see in the U.S. patent system is lining the pockets of patent attorney's and giving large corp with a patent portfolio a bigger stick with which to beat up the competition.

I feel better now at least.

The Patent is not as bad as the Topic suggests

[jayslambast]

The topic seems a little alarmist concerning patenting #TODOs in source code. After reading the article, it doesn't seem that outrageous of a patent. Putting code/greps in to find TODO's and saving them off is trivia. Going the extra mile and cataloging them, managing them and "removing after the task has been completed" is complex and a little ingenious . While I appreciate the article, who ever posted this to slashdot should have summarized it without all this chicken little tactics.

Re:The Patent is not as bad as the Topic suggests

[SlashdotKeefey]

I hope by complex and a little ingenious you were being ironic... this is hardly the most complicated of tasks to achieve, and certainly doesn't warrant anything near the extremity of a patent.

Looks like MS is preparing to go the SCO way.

[deniea]

In this build-up of patents lately, to me it looks more and more the way they will be going is the way SCO has been going for a while now. And as by now everyone knows the lawsuit against IBM is payed by MS in the end, it's of use to keep things so indirect, just get down it directly is more easy.

We all know development at microsoft has stopped for IE, Longhorn is not comming along, we know MS market-share is falling, and recent ./ articles have hinted that it's not the way for the future.

With all that cash lying around, and 'doing business' gets you problems in the EU, it might be better to change from a 'software' business to a 'investment'-business...
Less hassle, less employees, less lawsuits..

To keep it in a ./ fashion

1. Make lots of cash
2. Use cash to patent everything that exists
3. Fire all programmers, and become a legal firm
4. Sue anyone that has cash or can loan money to pay settlements
5. Result: Even a better profit/ROI, to make even more cash !

Visual Studio has had this since 1998...

[burnsy]

The TODO, UNDONE, and HACK tokens have been in Visual Studio since at least 1998.

See here...

Task List Window

I've said it before....

[TastyWords]

...and I'll say it again:

"Someday, Microsoft will patent the alphabet. And when that happens, we'll find ourselves paying royalties every time we sit down at the keyboard."

Be Fair

[nick_davison]

Hey, be fair to Microsoft!

I'm all for the usual baiting of Micro$oft as the evil monopoly that they are but this one's legitimate.

I think anyone who ever installed a copy of Windows ME will agree that Microsoft need all the help they can when it comes to itemising the TODO list in their source code.

Re:Be Fair

[cryptor3]

But what they need to do is spend less time patenting the TODO list and spend more time shortening it.

Re:Be Fair

[DataPath]

How can this one be legit? I've been doing this for years! /* TODO: add extra format checking */

hostname$ grep TODO *

Re:Be Fair

[Koguma]

That's an awsome idea. I think we should setup a fund to create dumb patents to piss off the original holder. How about a utility patent for a method to shorten the TODO list? We can call this a WORK patent. Seriously, let's patent WORK as a way to decrease teh size of the TODO list patent.

Re:Be Fair

[arkanes]

Borland IDEs had this long before any MS product did (Delphi 6, at the very least, which is... 5? years old now).

Only Microsofts most recent products have this (VS 2003 and up) and it's not as good or as reliable as the implementation in Borlands.

Ugh! Usefulness makes it worse.

[twitter]

Granted, I don't know if it's patent-worthy, but it is a helpful tool that I've not seen elsewhere.

Of course it's helpful, that's one reason it's an outrage that it's been patented. There are lots of ways to do this and it's a common practice. Oh yeah, that it's obvious and common practice is another reason it's an outrage.

Is Microsoft now going to demand that KDE not distribute similar features with their IDE? Are posters here going to be threatened for recommending "grep TODO *.c > tasklist"? What dorks they are.

BS like this is the death rattle of any IT company. The sooner they go away, the happier everyone else is.

Can I play too? Microsoft's To-Do List

[SnappingTurtle]

1. create 100 element array
2. populate array with 101 elements

Re:Don't blame Microsoft

[davidsyes]

No, it IS the fault of ms, too. To use your analogy, I could go and rape someone on an island not governed by law. Nevermind her citizenship on another land, right?

That ms has an army of purportedly non-stupid (however arrogant or greedy) lawyers says they surely must come to a consensus that it's ultimately a toss-up, a grab bag. So, why not go for it, right? They're so voracious a bunch of ogres that they must not have bothered looking for prior art.

One problem with the patent law is that a broad enough, baseless, yet awarded patent could cause untold grief and stop-development/stop-ship out of fear that ms will come along and demand royalties or outright cessation of work.

Yes, the blame goes to the USPTO for upholding questionable practices or rule/regulations, but the business or individual filing when said filing is specious or warrantless at best also shares part of the fault.

No, microsoft is NOT off the hook, not by a longshot.

(Lower-casing/deprecation of microsoft (aka microshaft's) name is intentional, irreversible, and enduring. I guess they'll go and get a patent on forcing the proper-casing of electronic representation of corporate and other propernames in any electronic medium, whether search engine, home computer or PDA or cell phone, or LED signage... Sheesh)

Give us a break, USPTO/desperate/frivolous patent filers.

Doxygen has this

[SignalFreq]

Doxygen has had this since release 1.1.4. Here is the changelog (grep down for 1.1.4). I'm not sure when v1.1.14 was released, but v1.0 was started in 1997 I think. This should be prior art...

Thankfully...

[inkswamp]

Thankfully they didn't patent the "FIXME" list.

In related news

[stox]

Microsoft patents the exchange of Oxygen and Carbon Dioxide via breathing. A spokesman was heard saying that with this innovation, the competition will be smothered.

Re:Prior Art: Doxygen

[helioc]

Doxygen http://www.doxygen.org tags can be used to do lists on TODO since 1997. A nice example can is http://www.stack.nl/~dimitri/doxygen/lists.html

Do you idiots ever read the CLAIMS section?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want to know what the heck patents cover, read the damned "CLAIMS". If it isn't in the CLAIMS then the patent doesn't cover it.

Sheesh, just because a patent describes something in the abstract or specification section that sounds rather broad doesn't mean that is what the patent ACTUALLY covers.

rtfm

Patent abuse... is a lot of hot air.

[Roman_(ajvvs)]

If Dyson owned that patent, and a tornado destroyed the Dyson factory, would Dyson be able to sue for patent abuse?

enough of this

[BinLadenMyHero]

Right now I'm excluding stories about patents in my preferences page.

Missing the point

[Mostly a lurker]

A lot of the comments thus far are attacking the wrong issue. Microsoft is not claiming that they are the first to consider embedding comments and keywords in source code to identify needed actions. What they are claiming is that they are the first to use the information for maintaining task lists in real time.

I am unsure if their claim is correct but, even if it is, it should have been thrown out as a totally obvious extension to routine, long standing software development methodologies.

The new MS - Linux strategy

[argoff]

FYI - you are now beginning to get a tase of the new Microsoft Linux strategy.

That is - patent the daylights out of everything, hopeing to catch, snag, and delay Linux somewhere along the way. (Well you didn't actually expect them to innovate did you?)

The next frontier in liberty - Project Libertopia

Prior Art - Easy!

[SpongeGod]

Borland Delphi had this feature in version 5, which was released 1999, and was definitely in use by October of that year.

prior art

[gregbaker]

I've been doing this for years:

grep "TODO" *.tex

It's probably in my history right now.

Seriously, how is this different? Check off the task and the source code changes. Wouldn't it be easier to just delete the comment since you're already editing the source code?

Correct prior art date

[lothar97]

This granted patent came from a patent application claiming priority to a provisional patent application filed in 1999, so you need to find art prior to Mar. 5, 1999.

Re:Other IDEs

[sangreal66]

As far as I recall, Eclipse didnt start doing this till well after 2000 when this patent was applied for. That being said, I dont think Microsoft has ever filed a patent lawsuit?

Time to dump MS stock...

[PatHMV]

Not on political, pro-Linux grounds, but because the company is starting to look a little desparate. First was this article where MS announced they were significantly lengthening support periods for older software versions. This was a dramatic reversal of its previous practice of using strong-arm tactics to force corporate customers into frequent and regular upgrades.

Then there was this article, discussing how Microsoft has begun making changes to its previously onerous licensing terms in favor of its customers.

Now we've seen two patents in recent weeks which seem to be the overly-broad type normally associated with companies who are desparate to produce licensing revenue, and not real products.

Combine this with the fact they have been forced to delay much new product development because they must finally start focusing on security, and it all adds up to clear indications of bad times coming for them. (Of course, they have plenty of cash to tide them over for quite a long period.)

Doing a service.

[SumoFanAgain]

Not that most of you weasels would believe it, but BillG was originally against software patents. But once they started being issued he said words to the effect of "We've got to have them or we'll be put out of business." One might add, "by litigation" from every podunk nitwit with $10k to spend playing lotto investor in the fleece Microsoft game.

So, if Microsoft patents every little thing it will do one of two things:
1) protect it from endless lawsuits by hapless dweebs;
2) get them to reform the !#@$#!@ Patent Office have them stop issuing idiotic patents which are "OBVIOUS TO THE SKILLED PRACTITIONER OF THE ART".

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Because it's not what they're actually paid to do

[weston]

What they actually get their money for is issuing patents.

And they are proud of the fact that they're one of the few parts of government that is a revenue center.

And other parts of government are hungry for their revenue.

This is one of those cases where following the bottom line is going to get you the wrong result.

What's next?

[CompSurfer]

Original thought*

*Parent Pending

I suppose we'll start to see "Microsoft Brand Bread(TM)" on the stores next. "Because "Microsoft Brand Bread(TM)" is the right bread for your "Microsoft Brand Smart-Toaster(TM)".

"Microsoft Brand Smart-Toaster(TM)" .... somehow I doubt I'll get used to burned toast no matter how much jam is on it.

Re:Oh for pete's sake ...

[Openstandards.net]

Exactly! I've been doing that with grep since Borland packaged it with their C compiler, which was before Windows 3.1 came out. I haven't read the patent, but since patents apply to the concept, not the copyrighted code itself, I'd say there's a good chance that this is prior art.

Easy to overcome

[Maljin Jolt]

The patent is titled "Task list window for use in an integrated development environment" at the patent office. So, run your grep on other machine. Then, you will have a DISTRIBUTED, not INTEGRATED development environment. Do not show results in "window", but call it "virtual screen". Patent showing results in window, especially if you have a 30 years old prior art.

Or, use emacs. That's a platform, not IDE....

Allow me.

[OneIsNotPrime]

To the poster: I agree that many of the MS patents that have been popping up as front page news on Slashdot are ridiculous at face value. Whether that is because they are really so ludicrous, or because the details of a 100+ page patent can't be bioled down to a 1 paragraph summary by one of Microsoft's opponents, I can't say (because I am too lazy to read the stinkin' article). Perhaps it is a 50/50 split. Anyway, this patent doesn't look ludicrous to me from the summary. MS didn't patent a grocery list. They patented the autogeneration of coding task lists based on 'TODO:' comments in the code. This doesn't seem like a glaringly obvious idea to me, and I'm not aware of any prior art. If you are, or it seems glaringly obvious to you, speak up. But don't overgeneralize the patent just to make it sound overly ridiculous - that delegitamizes your argument.

Re:Allow me.

[vidarh]

I wrote a script that "auto generates a coding task list based on TODO: cmments in the code" 6 years ago. The idea did seem glaringly obvious to me when I did it then, and I'm sure I was nowhere near being the first. My script was a bit more fancy than just doing a grep - it would extract the comment from XML style tags, and would create a nicely formatted HTML page from them.

However, that said, this patent has a lot of claims. Keep in mind that the invention patented is described by the full set of claims, so taking one or two of them and describing the patent based on that is flawed. There's no way a basic todo list extracted from source code with a simple grep or similar is covered by this patent.

First of all, the patent requires that the extraction happens during an interactive development session. I would argue this likely means "in an IDE", though IANAL :). This is in claim 1. The patent also requires that the task list is modified on completion of the task.

Further claim 5 includes monitoring the comments in the code to change the task list. This, together with claim one seems to make it quite clear that batch processing to regenerate the task list from scratch would be in the clear, and this covers most methods I've seen referenced in this discussion.

Already at this stage, the "invention" differs quite obviously from the description in the article summary.

That doesn't mean it's can't be bloody stupid, but at least it's nowhere near as troublesome as it could have been.

Microsoft should patent buggy code...

[Samah]

...that way all future non-MS applications would be bugfree for fear of infringing patents.
Suddenly no-one uses MS's bugged products anymore! :)

Oh No!!

[Anonymous Coward]

I just double clicked my TODO list and Clippy popped up and said "Looks like you just broke a couple Microsoft Patents. Would you like to settle this out of court?"

Already been done.. its an illegal patent

[auzy]

Last time I checked, http://www.nat.org/dashboard/ has been doing this for a very long time.. So this patent probably isn't legal.. http://www.nat.org/dashboard/fixme.php3 thats their automatically generated todo list.. So, I guess this patent wont last long...

Re:Can I play too? Microsoft's To-Do List

[proj_2501]

or the buffer overflow

Re:Avoiding the TODO

[Bombcar]

s/TODO/FIXME/g

This sed script to avoid this patent is released under the GPL.

Actually it's much older than that

[msobkow]

I've seen programmers littering the code with initialed comments like "FIX ME [NAME]" and running the highly complex "grep" and "find" utilities under *nix and Windows for a couple decades.

The fact that someone formatted it in a pretty dialog box is about as innovative as changing the color of your shoelaces.

The fact that anyone would apply for such a patent just demonstrates how sad and pathetic the American legal system has become as it self-destructs on a diet of lawyers and political kickbacks feeding on the very businesses that used to drive the economy. It's a shame, really. Probably no more than 10-15 years before the nation starts looking to India or Poland for handouts.

OTOH, maybe we should worry. Broke bullies with guns tend to become muggers, not beggars.

The problem is simple

[jonwil]

The problem is that the whole way the USPTO works is that it is geared towards passing patents.
Specificly, its better finantially for the PTO to pass a patent than to reject it.

This has to change before anything good will happen.
Simply change the way the PTO works so that its no longer finantially better for the PTO to pass a patent than it is to reject it.
Then (assuming they do what they are supposed to and use patent examiners who are qualified in the field they are examining patents in), crap like this wont be granted patents anymore.

It's about time

[Nikker]

That Microsoft is compiling an even bigger list, legal one at that too. This list will show evrey one who has ever written "Hello World" about innovation. From now on *no one* will be able to make the same mistakes as M$ or well they will sue you.

The great thing about this is that it will not stop people from coding or collaborating on a job it will just make evreyone aware of what they can't do and do something else. With as far as we've come do we really want to reinvent the icon and desktop. Not really. Slowly but surely M$ doesn't even realize what they are doing. The feel they are "protecting" their "investments" but what they are really doing is influencing something people have wanted since they mastered the SINGLE click ;)

Innovation...

fellow Europeans!

[VanillaCoke420]

Vote this weekend so that the software patent law is stopped by the EU parliament. If you're planning on not voting, go do it anyway, for this reason if nothing else.

#WARNING

[Whatever Fits]

I can't be the only person who uses #WARNING statements in his code to do just that, create a task list.

Getting a task list from source code

[MntlChaos]

grep -r '^TODO:' source/
so complex.

Rate companies by their patent abuse

[sonamchauhan]

I had enough of such worthless patents. Whenever one thinks of
a simple obvious idea, one is forced to think "is this patented already?".
What a waste of time!

Here's an idea:
- a independent patent-rating site
(cross-linked to various gov patent sites worldwide)
- free membership
- members rate patents
- not all patents to be rated. reasons to rate a patent could be outragiousness, and history of patent abuse by patent holder
- members belong to various 'groups' which have their own
(enforceable) philosophy on admitting members, and rating patents
- patents ranked by 'patent worthiness rating' (as ranked by group you subscribe to)
- corporations ranked by 'patent abuse ranking' (as ranked by group you subscribe to)
- members to a 'default group' that (hopefully) would rate
the RSA 'PK crypto' patent valid, but the Eolas 'ActiveX' one invalid.
- maybe a federation of such sites internationally

I'd LOVE to see companies I buy things from, 'utilize' the patent system.

Re:sigh there we go again-Prior art anyone?

[spectecjr]

1999 article discussing the ToDo features in Delphi 5:

I see your 1999 article, and raise you a 1998 article on Visual J++'s ToDo features:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/vjsharp/productinfo/vi su alj/visualj6/datasheet/default.aspx

"Annotate and prioritize source code using TODO comments and track them using the Task List."

Actually, I have some earlier prior art too...
http://www.microsoft.com/mind/0798/j/vj.as p

AutoDoc did this 10+ years ago

[Anonymous Coward]

For AutoDoc references, Google search for:
autodoc source code todo

Also I (and others) emailed Microsoft about 10 years ago, asking them to add what sounds like the patented functionality to their C++ compiler. They were keen on the idea, but eventually it wasn't high enough priority to make the cut.

No way is this a recent Microsoft invention.

- Pete Austin

PRIOR ART!!

[Y Ddraig Goch]

Borland has had this feature in Delphi since at least version 5. I don't use C++ Builder but I'm sure that it has a similar feature. This whole patent thing is out of control.