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Microsoft Wants More Credit for Inventions
theodp writes "Bill Gates said Thursday that Microsoft expects to file 3,000 patent applications this year, up from a little over 2,000 last year and 1,000 just a few years ago. 'We think--patent for patent--what we are doing is, if anything, more important than what others are doing,' said Gates, perhaps referring to 'Organizing and displaying photographs based on time,' which the USPTO published just hours before Gates spoke."
Is it just me, or is the display of photos by time on a calendar exactly what Photoshop Album 1 did?
Hurrah for innovation!
Microsoft really wouldn't be where it is today if software patents existed back when they started.
http://lpf.ai.mit.edu/Patents/knuth-to-pto.txt
They should have a little more respect for the name of Technology.
Of course, upon reading the patent (gods they are boring to read) it says that the sorting is based on the following potential factors:
So technically, they have a valid patent. Unless of course the meta data already exists in common file formats to allow date information to be extracted.
Sorting by system create/modify dates isn't really valid in this case. If, say, you cropped an image, maybe added a border, then the image either has a new modify date or a new create date (saved as another image). But assuming the meta-date is preserved it would work. Hmmmms.
Damnit, I also sounded pro-MS there. Still it is a cool idea, and better than their apple.
"That is not dead which can eternal lie...."
Nimheil
Microsoft Research China is where almost all of MSFT's multimedia researchers live. When competing in NIST's Video TREC, MSR China are the people who go. Granted, all the cool stuff comes from either IBM (New York), Berkerley, or CMU.
Check out ExIf data. Digital Cameras have been storing tons of meta data for years. Shutter Speed, Lens Speed, tons of other little things.... including date/time.
Jeremy
Although I don't endorse patent whording done by microsoft, the title for the patent is grosely misleading. It makes it sound like Microsoft just patented all motion pictures... but not quite.
The patent application states:
"For instance, the technique determines whether the time information is digitally encoded in the image file, or whether it is embedded within the image data itself. The technique next includes extracting the time information from the photograph image file using a technique appropriate to the identified manner in which the time information is stored, to produce extracted time information."
Simply put, the pictures are organized and displayed in a manner according to data embedded in the image file itself... which is halfway innovative.
Although pretty basic and easy to do on your own, it, I assume, can warrant a patent.
Almost all digital camera store EXIF metadata in their jpegs, which contains, among other things, the date the picture was taken. It also contains things such as shutter speed, apature, and whether or not the flash was used. The full spec is available on exif.org here
It's very simple: 'Software' ideas should never have been made patentable in the first place. Look at the monitor in front of you and ask yourself this: "Is this a general purpose electronic computer I see before me or is it just another consumer appliance?" Are you free to use it as the invention it was originally intended to be or have large corporations now almost managed to metamorphose it into just another consumer appliance - a box into which you may plug only the software products that they deign to supply? Are you free to programme it as it was meant to be programmed or are there daily more and more restrictions on what code you can type in? Is this an acceptable state of affairs - do novelists and musicians have to put up with this kind of 'ownership' of the ideas of their crafts? Could 'inventions' like this one and many others like it only have been made by expert software designers or could a child have done it - or a law firm? And don't even think about the usual: "Well there are some clever mathematical algorithms that deserve to be patentable" - no there are not, they are mathematical ideas and belong to mathematics, which in turn belongs to us all. How many times need it be repeated that software is properly and appropriately a copyright protectable area of endeavour?
gaul = the area now known as France; a person therefrom.
Gall = temerity, boldness; a type of bile.
I believe there's already prior art with digital encoding of information within a image. It's been done.
Almost all digital camera store EXIF metadata in their jpegs, which contains, among other things, the date the picture was taken. It also contains things such as shutter speed, apature, and whether or not the flash was used. The full spec is available on exif.org here
And from the patent claims:
6. A method according to claim 5, wherein the digitally-encoded time information comprises information recorded according to an EXIF standard.
I suppose this basically means that all our base are now belong to Microsoft.
It has to work - rfc1925