More Microsoft Patents

An anonymous reader writes "One of the editors of LinuxWorld Magazine has an entry in his blog detailing more patents that Microsoft recently acquired. No, this isn't a rehash of the sudo patent. The new patents include one that seems to patent the use of the keyboard to navigate a web page! See the article here."

Comments

It ends when they get some tech folks in there

[erick99]

This silliness ends when the Patent Office puts together a group specifically to deal with technology patents. It's important enough to warrant it's own dedicated group of industry experts.

Cheers,

Erick

Re:It ends when they get some tech folks in there

[dpilot]

No. It ends when US IP Law gets to silly that innovation is completely stifled in this country. At that point, real innovation will have moved overseas, and the USPTO will be irrelevant.

Re:It ends when they get some tech folks in there

[Bagels]

And who do you think they'll turn to for "industry experts"?

Re:It ends when they get some tech folks in there

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the problem is not that they don't have a dedicated group of industry experts -- it's that they don't have *enough* people to handle the huge deluge of patents.

I think that another problem with this, too, is that patent disputes are often handled "incorrectly". Instead of disputing patent infringement through courts, I think that all patent-related disputes should be settled through a special (out-of-court) mediation system run by the patent office.

Perhaps I would suggest a system with 3 mediators per "settlement session" -- 2 who are highly-trained, skilled individuals with specific experience in the area of the patent dispute, and perhaps 1 who has some formal judicial experience.

Their jobs would basically consist, on a daily basis, of hearing patent-related complaints. Part of this effort could be funded through fees collected as a result of patent submission. (Hence, to fund this, I recommend that patent application fees be raised by some nominal amount.) That way, even "little guys" can go to this settlement session without having to have legal representation (and having to pay the large fees associated with them).

Of course, there are many other things that would have to be considered in order to implement such a system, but you get the point. I suspect that this "forced arbitrage" would render the patent system a bit "leaner" and less worrisome for the "little guy" who might be threatend by large, enormous patent-wielding multinationals.

Re:It ends when they get some tech folks in there

[beh]

No - it will end once they put legislation into place to also punish abuse of patent laws.

(e.g. introduce a blocking period for a company/holding if they introduce an abusive patent; e.g. a patent that clearly violates obviousness restrictions, or patents that have lots of prior art, like the TAB-links patent seems to have; if a company were denied even filing additional patents for a year of so after trying patent abuse, it would definitely put more pressure on the companies to only submit sensible patents; because otherwise they might forfeit the possibility to patent something that might really warrant a patent).

Re:It ends when they get some tech folks in there

[gaijin99]

Not a bad idea, but I don't think it goes quite far enough. After all, MS can spin off as many daughter companies as it wants to to file patents for it.

I'd argue that extending the block period to two years (more damaging to the false filers), as well as extending it to all daughter companies would be more effective. Personally I'd like to see a more vendictive clause put in: you file a false patent and three of your existing patents will be placed in the public domain. I don't see that happening, but I'll bet that'd stop this crap cold.

Re:It ends when they get some tech folks in there

[betelgeuse-4]

An interesting idea, but it requires somebody to identify patents that are attempts to abuse the system. The USPTO should do this at the moment but they don't (if they did there wouldn't be much need for your suggestion).

Re:It ends when they get some tech folks in there

[danila]

This silliness ends when the Patent Office puts together a group specifically to deal with technology patents.

Techology patents?.. As opposed to what?

But, seriously, don't kid yourself. The "silliness" as you so eloquently put it (I would have outright called it corruption or sabotage) will only end when the conflict is resolved by means of confrontation.

The only reason for them to mend their ways would be a giant smack on the head by the society - something on the scale of Enron. Unfortunately, the public seems unwilling to be cross with the Patent Office even in spite of the most ridiculous patent mishaps.

So, given that the publicity fiasco seems unlikely, the other possibility is economic fiasco. When (and only when) the patents truly and obviously grind the American economy to a halt (and not before) will something be done. Needless to say, it will probably be too late. :(

Re:It ends when they get some tech folks in there

[Ender Ryan]

At that point, real innovation will have moved overseas, and the USPTO will be irrelevant.

What do the major American CEOs care? They're moving it overseas anyway! Maybe that's what they want. They don't even have to worry if it costs them a few hundred million USD every now and then, they're still richer than the whole rest of the world combined(possibly an exaggeration, but maybe not...).

I predict that only until the U.S. itself becomes irrelevant, economically, nothing here will change.

Paranoid raving? Justified cynicism? Entirely right? I don't know...

Re:It ends when they get some tech folks in there

[runningduck]

I think there should be a three month public review system with bounties. Patent applicants should issue a non-trival bond. If someone is able to prove the patent to be invalid, they should be compensated by grant of the bond.

Basically, we create an insentive for public review, maybe even create a cottage industry, while at the same time creating a penalty for abusing the system or failing to do basic research.

Re:It ends when they get some tech folks in there

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of the wealth is now only bits of paper (or even numbers in a computer). The rest of the world could suddenly decide to stop recognising the US Dollar fiat. Okay, the Us would immediately start world war III, but their wealth is mostly a matter of faith.

Re:It ends when they get some tech folks in there

[Ibag]

If companies were barred from filing for patents, i think they would then have their employies file for patents that they are obligated to turn over to the company if it gets granted.

It would be unfair to bar employees of a barred company from filing for patents, because its entirely possible that they came up with ideas on their own time that have no relation to the company (although, that hasn't stopped companies from claiming they own all thoughts of their own employies before).

As long as patents are transferable, and perhaps as long as employees can be coerced into doing something like this, this won't work.

What is needed is some way to discourage people from filing obvious patents that can't be circumvented. Unfortunately, I can't think of anything (stiff fines, bar you from buying/selling patents, invalidate current patents) that couldn't be solved by hahving the patents file for by individuals and then either transfering the patent or forcing the specific liscensing/prosecution strategy upon the person who filed.

Of course, you might make forcing someone else to apply for your patent and then confiscating it illegal too, but I fear there would still b loopholes.

Re:It ends when they get some tech folks in there

[Reteo Varala]

Here's a thought...

Perhaps there could be a law where any company whose patents have more than X amount of prior art then receives an audit of all its patents. Any with Y percent of junk patents are barred from registering patents for Z years.

Of course, any junk patents that are discovered in the Audit are placed in the Public Domain.

Re:It ends when they get some tech folks in there

[Anonymous Coward]

...said the ill informed humanities major at a third rate liberal arts college.

Re:It ends when they get some tech folks in there

[Titusdot Groan]

What do the major American CEOs care? They're moving it overseas anyway! Maybe that's what they want. They don't even have to worry if it costs them a few hundred million USD every now and then, they're still richer than the whole rest of the world combined(possibly an exaggeration, but maybe not...).

There is some hope -- the current generation of young people can't get jobs except at Walmart or McDonalds -- they're just not out there. People are starting to clue into this.

The problem is that the US (and Canada to some extent) is shipping all the blue collar jobs to 3rd world countries, good for CEO's etc. Bad for the lower middle class.

Next election I think this will be the biggest issue in both Canada and the US.

Re:It ends when they get some tech folks in there

[hamishmorgan]

Its a good idea but I think that in reality it probably wouldn't work. The problem with arbitration is that there is NO guarantee of a solution. The parties involved must come to some agreement, and the arbitrators have no real power over them. While the arbitrators can try and help the parties to see sense, there is often a big difference between legal/moral/ethical sense and the economic sense that large companies have in mind. When things can't be resolved then the case just goes back to the court room. While it is clearly in the interest of the "little guys" to clear the whole thing up as cheaply and quickly as possible, this simply isn't the case for large companies. They have large legal teams and are quite happy to throw huge amounts of money at getting what they want.

Also, Having arbitrators with experience in the particular field is somewhat irrelevant. Eg. Whilst a small software company might send their head programmer to argue their case, Microsoft would send as many lawyers as could fit in the room to unflinchingly repeat their claims.

In my opinion the solution is: Tell the patent office to take all the time they need over each patent. Very soon a huge backlog would form and nobody would be able to patent anything for year and years. The more big companies patented stupid stuff the worse the situation would get. They would effectively hang themselves on their own greed. :-)

Re:It ends when they get some tech folks in there

[lspd]

I think the problem is not that they don't have a dedicated group of industry experts -- it's that they don't have *enough* people to handle the huge deluge of patents.

Call it what it really is.

Patent Spamming

Throw enough crap at the USPTO, and they're bound to approve some of it.

Re:It ends when they get some tech folks in there

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah!

Greetings from Europe.

Re:It ends when they get some tech folks in there

[magefile]

So ... they have the daughter file the patent. Then, no retribution. Or, they have employees register the patents in their own names, then sell 'em (for $1) to Microsoft. Doesn't matter if it's the same (set) of employees who came up with the idea; they're just strawmen.

Re:It ends when they get some tech folks in there

[dpilot]

Don't feel so smug. As far as I can tell, Europe is following the US down the same silly path.

Greetings from the Far East.

Re:It ends when they get some tech folks in there

[killjoe]

"I predict that only until the U.S. itself becomes irrelevant, economically, nothing here will change."

And the US will not become irrelevant until the rest of the world stops buying pepsi, nike and britney spears CDs.

it just amazes me that millions of people protest US foreign policy but go see an americna movie or buy american cigarettes.

Re:It ends when they get some tech folks in there

[smugfunt]

it just amazes me that millions of people protest US foreign policy but go see an americna movie or buy american cigarettes.

Why? If you like Ben Affleck you have to like imperialism too?

Re:It ends when they get some tech folks in there

[sumdumass]

thats the way the job market has been for a couple generations now. All the good jobs have been filled for a while and the only way to get them was to know someone and apply at the right time. Nothing has really changed in the last dozen years that i know of.

One of the problems is that we have marketing people for industry that attemps to convince lots of kids to train in certain areas by stating all the saleries that people get paid and shit like that. Now were there was a downfall of workers in a certain area and the jobs paid well for lessor peole, all the sudden an influx of too many workers come about and they don't have jobs. Whats worse is that people that once had good paying jobs with lots of security now have to look for work at mc donalds or walmart. The amount of industry that has went over seas is nothign compared to the amount wanting of what people would consider good jobs. Yes there has been a shift in the locations of the jobs but the fact is that jobs just don't pay anymore or there are too manyy people in those fields.

Jobs like construction workers and such generaly require certain qualifications now. Most of industry that is left is automated and you need some degree of above highschool education to land most of them. This isn't even touching on the lack of work-ethics in some of todays youths that forces businesses to higher more people for less money to get the job done. The job market has just shifted and it cannot be blamed or fixed by one president or 8 years. People have to realize that this is an entirely different world then what thier father grew up in as his world was different then his fathers time.

I'm not saying that it isn't right were 3 or more generations get involved in maufacturing and all report to the same plant for different shifts. I'm saying it just isn't practicle anymore and those wanting to do what thier parents did, unless it is a trade or educated career, is out for disapointment. You can thank regulations and general over taxation for times like this too. Some of wich is/was neccesary though.

Re:It ends when they get some tech folks in there

[eric76]

My suggestions on how to fix the problem:

1) Publish all patent applications immediately.

2) Require that the patent application identify anyone against whom an action may be brought or anyone that the applicant may want to put on formal notice about the patent. Under this scheme, I would think that any company filing a patent would provide formal notice to all known competitors from the very beginning.

2a) If an alleged infringement is identified after the patent is filed, but not issued, ammend the patent to include the newly identified alleged infringers and restart the entire procedure from the date of the submission of the ammended patent.

2b) If the patent has already been granted when the alleged infringement is identified, begin a patent review process. This review proecess should include the same steps as the original application.

3) Require a public, working demonstration of the invention not less than three months after the date that the alleged infringers have been notified. Make sure that the date of the working demonstration is publicly available and that the alleged infringers have been made aware of the date of the demonstration.

4) Following the public demonstration, allow a period of at least six months, preferably twelve months, during which the public and the alleged infringers may provide comments and objections to the patent. All comments and objections would become part of the patent and would be publically available to any interested party.

5) Following the period available for public comments, the patent examiner would then review the patent and the public comments.

6) If the patent examiner requires changes to the patent, for example, changes to the claims, allow a further period of public comments on such changes. Two to three months after proper notification would be sufficient.

7) If all the claims are rejected, the patent should be rejected in its entirity and the company seeking the patent should be precluded from reapplying for the same patent, but with different claims.

8) Before the patent application is accepted, require a final public hearing during which time final objections to the patent may be made known.

I think that this would allow plenty of opportunity for truly novel and useful inventions to be patented, but would significantly cut down on the number of silly patents.

One of the primary purposes of the above process is to require that every possible defendant be given proper notice of the process and have opportunity to bring objections to the patent prior to any infringement action.

For example, suppose XYZ Widgets invented a new widget and wishes to patent the invention. Suppose that Widgets R Us is the company's primary competitor and seems likely to build something similar once they see the product. Then, in the patent application, XYZ Widgets could provide notice to Widgets R Us just in case. Thus, Widgets R Us would have been put on notice of the patent and will be able to object.

During the patent application process, another company, Mr Widget Inc, comments on the application. In spite of those comments, they would need to be formally notified of the patent application prior to any infringement action. Thus, XYZ Widgets may elect to ammend the patent application to include a formal notification to Mr Widget Inc. This would effectively restart the timetable for the application process.

After the patent has been granted, XYZ Widgets finds that a brand new company, Western Wyoming Widget, is infringing on their patent. Since they did not provide notice to Western Wyoming Widget of the application, they would file for a reexamination of the patent with a formal notification of the reexamination to Western Wyoming Widget. The entire proecess including the public demonstration, the period of public comments, and the final public hearing would begin again.

If, during this time, XYZ Widgets learned that Widgets R Us were violating the pat

Re:It ends when they get some tech folks in there

[JakeThompson1]

Now were there was a downfall of workers in a certain area and the jobs paid well for lessor peole, all the sudden an influx of too many workers come about and they don't have jobs.
he amount of industry that has went over seas is nothign compared to the amount wanting of what people would consider good jobs. Yes there has been a shift in the locations of the jobs but the fact is that jobs just don't pay anymore or there are too manyy people in those fields.
This isn't even touching on the lack of work-ethics in some of todays youths that forces businesses to higher more people for less money to get the job done.

With your excellent spelling and grammar, maybe you could land a job as Slashdot Editor?

Re:It ends when they get some tech folks in there

[Ender Ryan]

If you like Ben Affleck ... then you've got SERIOUS problems :)

Re:It ends when they get some tech folks in there

[fluffybacon]

it just amazes me that millions of people protest US foreign policy but go see an americna movie or buy american cigarettes.

There's a big difference between not liking your foreign policy and not liking your culture.

Re:It ends when they get some tech folks in there

[MrBigInThePants]

Unless of course the US uses their "free" trade agreements to force all other countries to accept their copyright/patent/DMCA laws...

Oh wait! They are already doing that! (i.e. Australia and soon NZ as well)

Re:It ends when they get some tech folks in there

[Anonymous Coward]

Not too long before GulfWar2.0, Iraq was threatening to switch the currency it used to value its oil from the dollar to the Euro. Not likely to happen anymore.

Re:It ends when they get some tech folks in there

[LnxAddct]

Yea I mean I'm an American and I can't stand our foreign policy, but hell I love our culture:) Although you have to give us some credit, when the world needs us we are there, unfortunately we are there sometimes when we aren't needed either :/
Regards,
Steve

Re:It ends when they get some tech folks in there

[John Hansen]

And who do you think they'll turn to for "industry experts"?

They'll turn to a talking head whose sum experience working with computers came from a Computers for Dummies book, and whose speech is filled with meaningless buzzwords. In other words, a me-tooer.

Re:It ends when they get some tech folks in there

[Yaa 101]

No this is worse it is DDOSsing the patent system.

Re:It ends when they get some tech folks in there

[killjoe]

"Why?"

Why? Let me explain to you why.

If ten million people take to the streets and protest US foreign policy GW does not give a flying fuck. If the CEO of pepsi calls up GW because his european profits are down by 10% you can bet your ass GW cares.

Re:It ends when they get some tech folks in there

[killjoe]

"Although you have to give us some credit, when the world needs us we are there"

Really? The following people need our help desparately.

Liberians, Somalians, Sudanese, Chechnians, Palestenians, North koreans, Chinese, taiwanese, and billions more. Only if they had something we wanted...

Re:It ends when they get some tech folks in there

[killjoe]

"There's a big difference between not liking your foreign policy and not liking your culture."

As long as you keep buying our products you fund our foreign policy.

Re:It ends when they get some tech folks in there

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless of course the US uses their "free" trade agreements to force all other countries to accept their copyright/patent/DMCA laws...

Oh wait! They are already doing that! (i.e. Australia and soon NZ as well)

Actually, it's interesting to see that NZ isn't really showing much interest right now in free trade agreements with the US. There was a fair bit of talk along those lines last year, dealing with how the US perceived the NZ position on Iraq, but lately there's been more talk about dealing with China.

Re:It ends when they get some tech folks in there

[fluffybacon]

As long as you keep buying our products you fund our foreign policy.

Not sure I follow there. How does me buying a can of coke fund, for example, America blowing the hell out of Iraq? I would have thought that my money went to the CocaCola Corperation, and before you mention taxes, they pay taxes here too. In which case I'm funding more than just your foreign policy.

But to go back to your original post, you believe that people should stop buying American products because the current administration can't find their arse with both hands? I'm sorry but I just can't swallow the idea of liking all of America or none of it. Like any other country, america has its good points and its bad points. And like any other country when America messes up, people complain about it. You don't like it? stop listening to them.

Re:It ends when they get some tech folks in there

[MrBigInThePants]

China is a much more important trade partner at this stage, but they have already started negotiating with the US I believe.
http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/UNID/C9D099B97 7363DF6CC256EFC0029C894?OpenDocument

Re:It ends when they get some tech folks in there

[baggins2002]

That's all well and good. Until you realize that someone who has sat around and listened to computer patent disputes for a year is no longer an expert in the field.
That's just one aspect of the problem
Even if it was a board of experts, who do you think would appoint the experts
Look at the US environmental organizations.
Members of some of those groups are just lobbiest for lumber and mining companies

Yes it sounds like a good solution, but currently with some of the examples I've seen in environmental areas, it won't work.
It will just add legitimacy to there continual unethical crap

Maybe I'm just feeling cynical today.
I don't have a better idea, so I'm willing to try it. I just wish I/we could think of a better one.

Re:It ends when they get some tech folks in there

[weijiao]

Unless there are some significant differences in language usage in the US, this is not an accurate description of arbitration. Arbitration imposes a legally binding decision. Mediation OTOH, does require agreement.

Re:It ends when they get some tech folks in there

[famebait]

No, for US patents to become irrelevant you have to move the market as well. There is lots of stuff you can do in other coutries that would be infringing on legitimate US patents if it was marketed in the US. But these rarely become big, bacause most of the time, and especially in IT, you really don't want to exclude american customers from your market base. Of course you can still make a profit in other large markets, but the US is a lot of people with lot of spending power, and not easy to ignore unless your product is inherently local somewhere else.

Re:It ends when they get some tech folks in there

[Anonymous Coward]

But the Far East markets ar growing far faster than the US market. At some point it will be economically viable to ignore the US market. I saw one report that you could take away *every* US job and not fill the Chinese unemployment, they have that many people. I could see them moving to two IP policies in the future, one for domestic and one for export. Our businesses would have to accept that, or not participate in their market. Plus enough downsizing and the US market will diminish through reduced purchasing power.

Re:It ends when they get some tech folks in there

[Anonymous Coward]

it's own dedicated group

"its".

Re:It ends when they get some tech folks in there

[killjoe]

When you buy a coke some of the money for that coke goes to the local bottler who then pays local taxes. Most of the money goes to the coca cola headquarters and the corporation pays US taxes. Not only that but the corporation then pays each of the political parties in order to influence them.

So yes in a very real way you buying a coke does indeed fund the bombing of iraq.

"And like any other country when America messes up, people complain about it. You don't like it? stop listening to them."

You missed my point. I'll state it again.

Complaining (or what the americans like to call bitching and moaning) will do no good. You can complain all you like but George W does not give a flying fuck about what the rest of the world thinks. He only listens to two things. God and corporate america. If ten percent of europe takes the streets and protests GW will not change policy. If the CEO of coke calls up and complains that his european profits are down by 10% then he will change his policy.

The question is this. Do you merely want to voice your dissatisfaction or do you actually want the US to change it's policy? If you want to effect change then you MUST start boycotting US goods. All of it. Stop buying US music, US food, US drinks, US clothes, US movies, US everything. People here make fun of you if they see protesters with US company logos on clothes.

Re:It ends when they get some tech folks in there

[sumdumass]

Sure it is.

I guess you missed the point of my comment wich might be why the outsourcing is troubling you more then others. You need to be flexible in you profesional enviroment and bring forth something to the table that makes you important enough to keep. Industry wether programing or assembly plants are looking for ways to save on cost. They need to make some type of profit in order to keep investors investing. Ususaly 10- 20% profit is needed just to e xpand and grow the company while investors need 10-20% profit in order to to determin if it is worth investing into the company. Some of both figure can overlap. When taxes go up, some type of regulation happens, or worker demand more money, the companie has to make that up somewere. If they didn't they would either have to stop growing wich would turn investors down, or stop paying a return on investment wich again loses investors interest. The alternative is to raise the price of the goods or services wich might lead to less sal es and triger the same. Whst is left is to either become eficient cut the cost in certain areaS. Out-sourcing Isn't much more then replacing higher paid employies with lower paid employies.

A disadvantage to this is were the workers being replaced are so eficient that it actually takes more employies to replace the ones already doing the job. If there is no money to be saved the cost would need to be saved somewere else. (wich sometimes means moving to a cheaper tax distric or a country with less regulations).

You as an employee need to do more then just show up and do your job. You need to do your job better then the next guy that will work for less. You need to be able to move from one position or company to another as needed. We need top stop listening to industry recruiters and start training todays youth to do more then program or develope web aplication. Todays youth needs to be able to go from programing the lastest aplication to managing a resturant to being the person the outsourcing is going to in the first place. You need to be in the group of people that can do instead of those having to do.

As far as nothign changing? Well i guess that comment was a little to general. This stuff has been going on for the 14 years I have been out of school. The only things that have changed is the type of work goin away. It comes and goes and moves from industry to industry but it is just the same as coke, heinze catchup, the auto maufacturers, or whatever else that has went thru the adjustment period. The moved jobs to mexico or germany or japan,or even another state because of a tax incentive or they automate most of the jobs with robots for consistancy. What is left over is a bunch of workers without a job and they are pissed (rightfully so too). This is exacly the same thing with outsourcing IT jobs or programing jobs. It just looks a little different and efects different people.

Re:It ends when they get some tech folks in there

[hamishmorgan]

I'm from the UK so there could be differences, also I could have been speaking out of my arse (ass) :)

Re:It ends when they get some tech folks in there

[Doc Ruby]

If every engineering license required pro-bono time spent in the patent review process, and every licensed engineering corporation were required to contribute management time to managing the process, the oversight system would scale up with the industry. As long as the government is issuing a monopoly to the inventor for the purpose of recovering their risked expenses, the industry that these inventions support should pay the other expenses, not just the general taxpaying public.

Lynx

[SpaceLifeForm]

How obvious does it have to be for the USPTO?

Re:Lynx

[Tim C]

What makes you think that anyone working for the USPTO has ever heard of lynx?

Re:Lynx

[Tablizer]

How obvious does it have to be for the USPTO?

It just may be missing from their prior art database because Lynx never filed a patent (i assume), and the doofus reviewing the patent probably never heard of it.

What is frightening is if they are sloppy with big-name high profile patents from big companies, imagine how sloppy they are with patents from obscure companies or people.

Re:Lynx

[Anonymous Coward]

Either we need to shut down the USPTO, or amend the process so that those who submit fraudulant claims can receive criminal penalties, not just the obviously ineffective civil recourse.

Consider if you went down to city hall and filed paperwork transferring ownership of several dozen properties into your name, as well as the city park and other "public commons" properties. You then went out and notified the legitimate owners of the properties you just stole that they either pay rent to you or you're evicting them.

In this scenario, you're going to jail. But when Microsoft fraudulantly claims ownership to other persons property and public commons property, their only risk is having the paperwork undone and the application expense wasted.

It's time to pursue criminal penalties. Balmer's obviously perpetrating fraud and theft. Let's see him spend time with Bernie Ebbers. And if our government doesn't see it this way, then they should not be surprised when we come and close down the USPTO and other enablers of this crime. Certainly they know they're accessories to this crime by now? Either fix the problem folks, or we're going to lump you in with the other white collar criminals.

Re:Lynx

[jack_csk]

You can assume that USPTO only uses Windows

Re:Lynx

[mindriot]

Well, it gets even better - some guy in Australia has patented the wheel (credit for that link goes to one of the comment posters on the article page).

I wasn't entirely sure if I should laugh or cry.

Re:Lynx

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, at least he did it to draw attention to the poor IP laws. Pretty sad that it was granted in the first place. You'd have to be pretty dense not to realize prior art for a wheel.

Re:Lynx

[Everybody]

This is not the same, Australia has switched to a patent system that expressly does NOT test for prior art.

Slashdot covered that - and the wheel patent - at the time (approx. 2 years ago).

I'd believe that consequently Australian style patents are more difficult to enforce, since the owner can't argue that the patent offices verified his claims.

Re:Lynx

[Anonymous Coward]

My guess is that they probably haven't heard of Opera either. "What, a text-based web browser, did they ever make such a thing?" Yeah, some one with some tech saavy definitely needs to go into the USPTO and clean things up a bit. I would reccommend a board o comprised of members from various companies and foundations set to strategically hunt for prior art when tech/software patents are up for grabs.

Another point would be, who cares if Lynx filed for a patent or not, they expressly produced prior art and therefore should be granted first dibs

Re:Lynx

[thogard]

This is one of the problem with software and business patents... they don't have any prior art to search so everything they see is new.

Another thing is they are very limited in where they can search. If I patent something and they do a google search to see if its already out there, they could be telling my competitors about my invention and that is a problem for the patent office.

The solution to the problem is to get someone like the EFF to sue the dirctor of the patent office for the actions of one of the inspectors.

Re:Lynx

[4of12]

obviously perpetrating fraud and theft.

No, not obvious.

You'd be surprised at just how hard it is to actually prove intent to defraud.

Especially when the alternative defense is there that it was "just an honest mistake".

Incompetence and stupidity are good legal defenses and for good reason. There's just so damn much of it out there that it's entirely credible.

Re:Lynx

[arb]

IIRC it was merely a new class of patents, Innovation Patents. These were introduced to make it easier for small businesses and inventors to secure a "holding" patent on their invention at a much reduced cost and smaller amount of paperwork. (Plus no patent lawyers.) These Innovation Patents are only valid for eight years and cannot be enforced in court until it has been properly examined and certified (at an extra cost).

(I found a link from the Australian Patent & Trademark authority, IP Australia, which has more details.)

Re:Lynx

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds more like a prior art registration than a patent to me.

Old Patent

[sangreal66]

This patent was filed 7 years ago. They use IE 3 as a reference.

Re:Old Patent

[MikeMacK]

With as little as IE has changed over those seven years, referencing IE 3 is probably just as well.

Re:Old Patent

[FLAGGR]

Still, that "invention" (the tab navigation one) has been used WAYYYY before IE 3

Re:Old Patent

[MarkByers]

I agree that referring to IE3 implies that it is an old patent, but why is it dated 'August 31, 2004'. Perhaps the application was written a long time ago but it was only just submitted recently? Am I missing something?

Re:Old Patent

[Progman3K]

Wouldn't Mozilla predate their claim, rendering it worthless?

Re:Old Patent

[drawfour]

No, the patent was given on August 31, 2004. It was filed on March 6, 1997. However, it seems that since Lynx has been around since 1995, there is prior art. I don't use Lynx, but I would assume it uses the "tab" key for navigation and has since 1995.

Re:Old Patent

[MarkByers]

Thanks for clearing that up. It seems unbelievable that it would take 7 years to get a patent through the system, and even then they have not checked it for prior art. But I reread the patent and, yes it is true. If they had reviewed it immediately instead of waiting so long, maybe the prior art would have been easier for them to find.

Re:Old Patent

[drawfour]

IMO, this is exactly the problem with our patent system. It's not that companies patent what we consider "obvious" ideas. It's that when they finally get granted, EVERYONE and their brother is using it. If patents were resolved within 6 months, or some other reasonable time frame, there would be less time for other companies to infringe on those patents. Having 7 years of patent protection when it was never really issued is a big issue. It means if a (valid) patent were submitted and then not granted for 7 years, and 3 years down the road, a company starts using your idea, you have 4 years worth to sue them and get back-money. When there WAS no patent when they were doing it! I think that's lame.

It also seems there was a slip-up when awarding the patent, as I'm sure Lynx used this concept since it was started in 1995.

Re:Old Patent

[mgcarley]

Software Patents are bad... mmmkay?

America, we salut you!

[hhg]

In Us of A, patents patents you! Oh, wait..

Netcraft confirms it

[moro_666]

Lynx is dead.

However i wonder, how can microsoft get these patents althrough software that uses the features has been created ages ago ?

Re:Netcraft confirms it

[Anonymous Coward]

but links is still very alive!

Re:Netcraft confirms it

[KingPunk]

hah. lair. i use lynx. its dead. well hell, i guess i should stop using it now.. eh?

Debunking theories here...

[Anonymous Coward]

In virtually every slashdot story about patents, some wiser slashdotter debunks the popular theory about the patent. The patent doesn't cover moving the mouse. It covers moving a mouse that blinks every second or so if you're browsing msn.com. Please post the real patents in this thread.

Re:Debunking theories here...

[Halo1]

Said "wiser" slashdotter will have a hard time doing that in this case. What is covered by a patent, is what's in the claims. This is claim 1 of the patent:

1. In a computer system having a video display, a keyboard device for providing a key input, a method of discovering each of a plurality of hyperlinks in a hypertext document, said input device having keys, comprising:

(a) displaying the hypertext document on the video display;

(b) organizing the plurality of the hyperlinks in the document into a sequence in an element list, wherein the sequence of the hyperlinks is based on the disposition of each hyperlink in the document, and wherein the element list comprises information describing a location of a next hyperlink and a type of the next hyperlink; and

(c) when a predefined key on the keyboard device is actuated, giving focus to the next hyperlink of the plurality of hyperlinks in the sequence.

So as long as you have

• a computing device, a display, some key-input device, an algorithm to discover all hyperlinks in an html document;
• a) a way to display to the html document on the display;
• b) a way to organise the links into a sequence in a list based on their disposition in the document (e.g. add them to a linked list as you encounter them), with the location of the next hyperlink (pointers!) and the description of the type of the next hyper link (typ: hyperlink_type_t);
• c) when a predefined key is pressed, shift focus to the next hyperlink.

Apart from that you have to keep track in your url list of the types of the links (regardless of the classification you use), all it does cover is indeed plain and pure going from one link to the next by pressing a key.

Re:Debunking theories here...

[rkww]

The final sentence tries to extend tabbing to any application:

"While the present invention has been described above in reference to a preferred embodiment thereof, those skilled in the art will appreciate that various changes in form and detail may be made without departing from the intended scope of the present invention as defined in the appended claims. For example, the tabbing may work with application programs other than the web browser."

Re:Debunking theories here...

[Halo1]

That sentence cannot extend anything, because it's not part of the claims. However, the claims themselves do not refer to a web browser, so it already covers any and all applications that work with "hypertext documents".

Re:Debunking theories here...

[aierwin]

hasn't this been possible in 'lynx' for years by pressing the down arrow?

Navigate with keyboard?

[lphuberdeau]

Just try to tell me lynx didn't do it before IE.

Re:Navigate with keyboard?

[ImaLamer]

Insightful? I hate to bitch about moderation but reading the article would let you know that it's already mentioned.

If possible, make this +5 Redundant because it's one of a million "lynx" comments...

Re:Navigate with keyboard?

[inaeldi]

The general order of operations:

1) voice opinion
2) read article (optional)

Re:Navigate with keyboard?

[ImaLamer]

While that comment is funny, my comment is 100% troll?

Actually you are rated "Insightful"

That is what I get about bitching about moderation.

My point was that I'm tired of hearing about lynx when it's mentioned in the *fine* article.

Re:Navigate with keyboard?

[inaeldi]

I was kind of surprised myself.

Quick, sombody please...

[Nick Driver]

...order immediate drug tests for the entire staff of the USPTO.

Patents

[backslashdot]

Patents are utterly ridiculous. The US Patent Office is profitable, so clearly funding isnt the issue.

We need to a have a period of public review before patents are issued. Then again, after the first couple months people will lose interest.
I suppose it's better than nothign. Does the US PTO have a permanent staff of patnet reviewers or do they consult out some of the work?

Re:Patents

[FooAtWFU]

Patents are utterly ridiculous. The US Patent Office is profitable, so clearly funding isnt the issue.

On the contrary: Perhaps funding is the issue. If they make money for every patent filed, there's no incentive for them to throw out or even discourage bogus patents.

Re:Patents

[rollingcalf]

The amount of funding isn't the issue, it's the method of funding.

The more patents they approve is the more people and corporations that will apply for patents. The more applications they get, the more money they receive.

The system promotes a cycle in which they approve patents easily because they don't have the staff to do sufficient reviews, and the increased approval rates attract more patent applications, which makes it even more difficult to do sufficient reviews.

There needs to be an incentive to reject stupid patents. Any patent overturned in court should have the court costs paid by the patent office, and/or the examiner(s) who approved it should be somehow penalized.

Re:Patents

[backslashdot]

Ok I was drunk writing the parent post. There is already a period of public review before a patent is granted.

Umm .. anyway, for the record .. inventors worldwide do need protection for truely original ideas cause they deserve it and plus it encourages more innovation. But I have problems with the period of that global monopoly being 20 years regardless of the originality of the idea.
Just cause someone got to an idea first doesnt mean otherwise would not have had it. Also to a large extent ideas stand on the work of others.

Experts in various industries should try to do stints at the patent office so you have fresh ideas in there. It works both ways .. Einstein worked there didnt here?

Re:Patents

[Anonymous Coward]

You were drunk and went sober in less than 29 minutes? you definitely should patent this method!

Re:Patents

[Proc6]

... because then if they approve a bunch of bogus patents and have to pay a bunch of court costs, they will lose all their money and... what... go out of business?

Re:Patents

[Zocalo]

I think this would be a good idea too; a period of a few months between submission and approval of a patent during it would be open to public review and any possible prior art submitted. This is in addition to the relevent PTO doing a thorough review of the proposal of course, and could also be used a means of annulling some of the more dubious patents already in existence. The fundamental problem with this approach though is that a key issue of patent infringement cases is whether the defendant knowingly infringed upon the patent. Obviously any damages are going to be much higher if that can be shown to be true, and it's this that leads to plausible deniability rearing its ugly head.

As the law stands now, companies try and remain ignorant of any patents filed by their competitors, thus (in theory) minimising their liability while enabling business as usual. The contingency plan in the event of being accused of patent infringement seems to be to be one of trying to fight the patent first, and if that looks like failing enter into a cross licensing deal with your own patent portfolio. Given that stance, even if patents are open for public review prior to approval, I doubt many companies would be willing to review and submit challenges if doing so might negate their claim to ignorance in the process. Sure, they might get patent application X annulled, but if they are found to be infringing upon approved patent application Y then they are going to find it much harder to show they were unaware if they are demonstrably reviewing patents.

The current situation with patents at the USPTO has gotten way too far out of hand, probably so much so that recovery isn't likely to happen no matter what is done. Even so, it's going to be better to at least make an attempt at reigning things back in than doing nothing at all, but I don't think that patent lawyers raking in the dollars are going to be too happy with that idea...

Re:Patents

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe the patent office ought to use the technique in exams where the examiner doesn't want wild guesses: Use negative bounties for patent errors

$1000 to the examiner for patents that are solid
$0 for patent rejection
$-1500 for silly patents/overturned patents, payable by the patent examiner.

The rest of the patent fee ($2000 - bounty) goes to the patent office.

I'm rich

[Paralizer]

Patent the use of TAB! That'll show those bastards who's running things..

*Ahem*

[Anonymous Coward]

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!

I'm sorry, I must of thought it was April Fools again...

Ian

Re:*Ahem*

[Anonymous Coward]

How the hell do you "of"? I didn't even know that was a verb.

Prior art found

[Aim Here]

"A user may discover and navigate among hyperlinks through the use of a keyboard. For example, a user may press a tab key to discover and navigate to a first hyperlink that is part of a hypertext document."

Replace the tab key with the cursor keys and you've got the Lynx browser. Jeez, what a pile of nonsense.

Re:Prior art found

[backslashdot]

You know the sad part is that some historian in 200 years may look through the patent office archives and conclude that microsoft invented the idea.

Re:Prior art found

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Actually, I think it has been a standard part of graphical web clients for a long time. Tab and shift tab to any particular form entry, button or link, press space bar or enter to follow it.

Re:Prior art found

[lucas teh geek]

only by that time they wont be known as microsoft, only as "the party". they'll also be attributed with inventing the airplane, cars, bombs... heck they invented EVERYTHING!

Re:Prior art found

[jacksonj04]

Sadly true - they will become even more synonimous with computing

Re:Prior art found

[TheNetAvenger]

Actually, I think it has been a standard part of graphical web clients for a long time. Tab and shift tab to any particular form entry, button or link, press space bar or enter to follow it.

Actually IE 3 was the first browser that allowed keyboard Navigation, and was one of the 'new' features of IE3 that gave it a lead on all the existing browsers of the time.

Just because it is COMMON in all broswers today doesn't meant that microsoft isn't the first software company to implement the idea in a Browser.

Which I am sure will anger a lot people here, but they were the first browser to have keyboard navigation features.

Some of us that were here when IE3 was released, remember this, and how handy it was at the time.

Re:Prior art found

[Anonymous Coward]

give me a fffing break! A standard feature of Motif widgets is tabbing between them - since the beginning of Motif time which is way the hell before the mickey-mouse interface known as browsers we have now. Microsoft no more invented tabbing as a navigational method than I invented using lists to model objects in a process control system although as far as I can tell I was the first to actually do so, the idea was an obvious implementation of the basic concept of lists. Software patents are an abomination.

Re:Prior art found

[TheNetAvenger]

A standard feature of Motif widgets is tabbing between them

Yeah, and tabbing between widgets has been standard on Windows since version 1.x back in the 80s, your point?

This is NOT ABOUT tabbing between widgets, it is about being able to fully navigate hyperlinks in an HTML document without a mouse. I.E. using the browser contents as if they were widgets...

Everyone here complains about the software patents, but yet the company that gets sued 99% of the time over patents is Microsoft, and how many times have they sued (other than to protect themselves) over their patents?

When you are a big target like Microsoft, I would be putting a patent on everything my company came out with until the patent laws are fixed.

Just like FAT, do you honestly thing Microsoft would have patented it if they hadn't started getting sued over even the simpleest and stupid patents. They could have patented FAT years and years ago, but it wasn'y until this last year that they did.

As you said patents are an abomination.

My part to end this foolishness

[IgD]

For the first time ever, I'm going 100% Linux. I'm getting ready to order my next PC in the next few days. I've got all the apps I need covered except gaming. Electronic Arts and other big game companies, I'd pay $100 for a Linux version of Battlefield Vietname for example.

The irony of the whole thing is that Linux is doing the same thing to Microsoft that they did to Netscape. Netscape should have run around patenting the browser I suppose...

If enough consumers give Microsoft the axe like me, maybe they will get the message.

Re:My part to end this foolishness

[Anonymous Coward]

Netscape should have run around patenting the browser I suppose...

They did actually. Patented many key concepts, including SSL and cookies.

Re:My part to end this foolishness

[FuzzzyLogik]

I don't think people switching to linux is really going to stop them. You're going to need to get Linux to over 50% market share before we find any type of interest from Microsoft to maybe stop doing the crap they're doing. It's a big company, they push and shove their way around.. it isn't going to change anytime soon. Slowly but surely the OS community will just have to squash patent after patent... i guess start thinking of it as a way of life.

Re:My part to end this foolishness

[Anonymous Coward]

Good job! Welcome to the club! It's good to see that there are intelligent people out there.

> For the first time ever, I'm going 100% Linux.
I did this 2 years ago and I will never use an MS product again. NEVER !

I even refused to touch my computer at work (actually, there was a small group of us) because it had Windows 2000. So, my employer allowed me to install Linux on it. Well, the fever has spread and my employer is slowly migrating all of our systems to Linux. YAY!!!

Hey Microsoft, put that in your pipe and smoke it. Haha.

Re:My part to end this foolishness

[FLAGGR]

I don't think people switching to linux is really going to stop them. You're going to need to get Linux to over 50% market share

and anyone with half a brain KNOWS that switching to linux wont help its market share. Better hit the preview button next time and take the contradictions out buddy.

Re:My part to end this foolishness

[bersl2]

Netscape should have run around patenting the browser I suppose...

I say that we should start doing this sort of thing in retaliation. Let's patent everything in sight, but allow for general use of the idea.

Re:My part to end this foolishness

[FuzzzyLogik]

not quite what i meant. it'll be a long time before linux reaches 50% market share is basically what i was saying.. switching now may or may not do a whole lot of good in the short term... if it works for you great, but i don't see linux on the desktop in mass anytime soon.

man you guys are so critical of things that you don't know how to think sometimes sheesh... instead of just reading it and taking it for face value use your brain and think for a second instead of being force fed any information from slashdot or whatever...

Re:My part to end this foolishness

[Myrrh]

Fortunately you had a reasonable employer. I don't think a lot of people would have the luxury of saying, "Nope, that's a Windows box, I'm not touching it." I think in that case, a lot of employers would simply drop you like a hot potato. Especially since it's very easy to do when you've just been hired and you're still in your 30-90 day probationary period.

I like to be idealistic too, but not when it interferes with the livelihood of me and my family. The whole Linux-vs-Windows thing simply isn't important enough to me to place my job in jeopardy.

Fortunately, it's not an issue: I use both at work, and both systems are equally well liked.

Re:My part to end this foolishness

[vsprintf]

I don't think people switching to linux is really going to stop them.

People switching to Linux, and then convincing their friends and relatives to switch to Linux, is exactly what will stop Microsoft - in the end.

You're going to need to get Linux to over 50% market share before we find any type of interest from Microsoft to maybe stop doing the crap they're doing.

That's backwards. Microsoft is already scared by Linux, which is why they talk about viral licensing, TCO, and cut special deals to keep people from switching. MS has reached market saturation with nowhere to go but down. That's why they switched from selling software to renting it. They no longer give stock options as rewards to employees because the options don't get above water. As MS continues to lose market share, it will only increase its efforts to patent everything in sight in order to protect its territory and inhibit F/OSS. It hasn't gotten nasty yet - it will.

Re:My part to end this foolishness

[magefile]

No. Maybe 10-20% in the desktop market, and that twenty percent needs to not also own a Windows computer. I own a Windows box because I pretty much have to for certain types of software (games, Photoshop (no, GIMP isn't as good), certain media types) and because sometimes I like things to Just Work (TM). So it won't happen anytime soon.

Re:My part to end this foolishness

[Anonymous Coward]

Do we have 20,000$ per patent needed to file them?

Re:My part to end this foolishness

[Anonymous Coward]

Um yeah, actually you're wrong. They filed patents for those features but they were never actually granted. Check your facts.

Re:My part to end this foolishness

[runderwo]

Why bother paying for the patents? Just add each idea to a database of prior art which can be used to invalidate actual lame patents.

Re:My part to end this foolishness

[Anonymous Coward]

Um yeah, actually you're wrong. They filed patents for those features but they were never actually granted. Check your facts.

No, you're wrong:

• US Patent 5,774,670 (Cookies)
• US Patent 5,657,390 (SSL)

Re:My part to end this foolishness

[elegie]

Some things that you can do:

1. Support free (as in freedom) software, open-source software, and software such as shareware or freeware, produced by individuals.
   
2. Support open standards that are not patent-encumbered i.e. HTML, Ogg Vorbis (audio), and PNG (graphics.) Discourage MS Word attachments for e-mail.
   
3. In addition to the EFF, there is the League for Programming Freedom. They have a paper opposing software patents.
4. For engineers and software developers, it may actually be better to not search for or examine software patents. Willfully infringing a patent is said to be much more serious than innocently infringing a patent. See this article on patents. It was written by an attorney who comments that he can no longer deal with patents in good conscience. The article mentions that the risk of examining software patents serves to defeat the supposed advantage that patents increase public knowledge of technology. Also see this article about Linus Torvalds; he comments on the idea of not looking for software patents.

Re:My part to end this foolishness

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a really sound, sane, well reasoned, calmly presented argument. Oh wait. No, it's not.

The reason...

[remin8]

Microsoft is filing all these patents recently is that they see themselves losing market share to Linux. They want to keep their profitability (stock) high by licensing/litigation revenue. I see it as a sign of *cough* (the year of Linux on the desktop) *cough*! Maybe that is a little ambitious, but I think MS is affraid!

Re:The reason...

[sangreal66]

Microsoft is filing all these patents recently is that they see themselves losing market share to Linux. They want to keep their profitability (stock) high by licensing/litigation revenue. I see it as a sign of *cough* (the year of Linux on the desktop) *cough*! Maybe that is a little ambitious, but I think MS is affraid!

Filed: March 6, 1997

Re:The reason...

[westlake]

I see it as a sign of *cough* (the year of Linux on the desktop) *cough*

Today is September 10th. The "year of Linux" is ticking away fast, while SP2 is being pushed out in numbers that will ultimately reach around 200 million.

Re:The reason...

[Anonymous Coward]

> while SP2 is being pushed out in numbers that will ultimately reach around 200 million.

Oh, great. 200 million more fucked up computers. Sheesh.

Re:The reason...

[Anonymous Writer]

Microsoft is filing all these patents recently is that they see themselves losing market share to Linux.

Maybe it also has something to do with the fact that Bill Gates stepped down as CEO and has become the head of Research and Development at Microsoft, the branch dealing with intellectual property and patents. Gates has always seemed to bring a law-based approach to the computer industry in whatever role he played. He seemed to have an proficiency in that area possibly because his dad was a lawyer, as well as the fact he went to Harvard to become lawyer to follow in his father's footsteps. I think that's why, as CEO, Microsoft came out with all these restrictive legal contracts and licenses that gave them an advantage. Now that he is in R&D, they are patenting every little idea. As patenting is the legal aspect to R&D, it seems that he is bringing a legal slant to his current position as well. So in other words, instead of screwing around with antitrust laws, now Microsoft is going to screw around with intellectual property laws.

Re:The reason...

[Armchair Dissident]

And, unless I've misread this, approved August 31st 2004.

Which makes one wonder: how on earth can a patent that was filed in 1997 be granted seven years later in 2004 and still be valid? Especially when the basic techonology had been around since at least the early 80's (Text-based menus any one?).

Re:The reason...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Filed: March 6, 1997"

but at the top of the patent there is: August 31, 2004.

But who am I to disagree?

Re:The reason...

[lucas teh geek]

also, how do they calculate the lifespan of the patent? from the time it was applied for or the time it was granted? 7 years has to be a pretty large chunk of a patents lifespan

Re:The reason...

[Anonymous Coward]

Mockery is one of the best ways to overcome your fear. Heap up soldier.

Re:The reason...

[Anonymous Coward]

Today is September 10th.

Emmm. Actually it's the 5th.

Anonymously nit-picking since '99

Re:The reason...

[magefile]

Lifespan begins from the time it's granted. Specifically, because I recall hearing someone argue (quite rightly) that a simple way of eliminating submarine patents would be to make the patent date from the date of submission. Looking it up, officially the 20 year period begins from the filing date of the first application, but can be extended by a given length of time, based on how long it took to be approved.

IIRC, this is why many things are marked "patent pending" - that gives it legal protections similar to having the product already patented.

The keyboard navigation patent

[MntlChaos]

Apparently they have never used lynx or links. Those are about as old as browsers get and they have a key (the down key) that allows keyboard-based navigation and highlighting of the currently selected link (inverting colors). And they go over specifying in claim 6 that it basically be implemented in a linked list. As for claim 10 with image links, that's been around a good long time also. Someone must have been very high to grant that patent

Re:The keyboard navigation patent

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait a moment... you assume that patents are reviewed for prior art before being granted.

That is not the case. All patents are automatically granted, it is upon the one who has prior art to start litigation against it.

The system was made like this to make more money.

Does anyone wonder...

[Anonymous Coward]

...what will happen when a few companies have patented all the stupid, obvious shit that people have just been doing for so long, that in the short range seems to make sense, but in the end, ends up bringing down the whole patent system?

Is that what Microsoft really wants, to bring it all down so that it can get MSIP (Microsoft Intellectual Property) 1.0 codified into law, where everything is backed instead purely by contract law and the terms they put into all sorts of "implied by viewing", "implied by reading", "implied by opening", etc., EULAs that can be changed at a whim without notification to the other parties by Microsoft?

What next, patenting the idea of a "machine" that takes a textual, human-readable source of information and transforms it into machine-executable language, aka the compiler?

It almost reads like someone who just doesn't give a damn anymore, so they just start going to extremes in anything and everything, a scorched earth social (or business) policy. "Better to burn twice as bright than fade away!"

Re:Does anyone wonder...

[Gabrill]

20 years after the last Stupid Patent (tm) is issued, the entire system will be free for public use. Unless someone stupid (cough Congress cough) decides to extend the patent rights to match those of copyrights.

shoot itself in the foot

[jdkane]

Hopefully Microsoft will single-handedly make a mockery of the patent system (more specifically software patents) which will force the system to be reviewed sooner, and maybe some positive changes can come to it. On the other hand it's going to be tough in the meantime for the small developer to be caught up in small web page navigation patents and such in court.

Re:shoot itself in the foot

[ravenspear]

On the other hand it's going to be tough in the meantime for the small developer to be caught up in small web page navigation patents and such in court.

Nothing to worry about there. It will never happen. If M$ were to actually file a suit over any of these stupid patents, it would only draw attention to how completely baseless they are and might even cause their patent hoarding spree to come to a halt. Besides, there are too many people to sue. There were doubtless hundreds of infringers of this one the moment it was granted (pretty much every non-M$ browser).

Re:shoot itself in the foot

[Tim C]

might even cause their patent hoarding spree to come to a halt

Am I the only person to have noticed that this "patent hoarding spree" only started (or at least, started to be publicised) since they were sued by Eolas?

Looks to me like someone's taken a major disliking to that, and is making sure it never happens again.

Re:shoot itself in the foot

[vsprintf]

Nothing to worry about there. It will never happen. If M$ were to actually file a suit over any of these stupid patents, it would only draw attention to how completely baseless they are and might even cause their patent hoarding spree to come to a halt.

Since MS has already bought off the DOJ (and apparently the USPTO), what makes you believe they'd lose? Most companies would simply give in rather than face an expensive legal battle with MS and its bottomless bank account. When MS starts enforcing its patents to restrain OSS, the only thing standing in their way is the EFF.

Re:shoot itself in the foot

[ravenspear]

Since MS has already bought off the DOJ (and apparently the USPTO), what makes you believe they'd lose?

Since these patents are so laughable that dozens of sources of prior art could be cited immediately, what makes you think the judge wouldn't grant summary dismissal the moment he/she saw the case?

Re:shoot itself in the foot

[vsprintf]

Since these patents are so laughable that dozens of sources of prior art could be cited immediately, what makes you think the judge wouldn't grant summary dismissal the moment he/she saw the case?

Oh, it's probably the results of previous decisions involving Microsoft, Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, etc., where the perps walked away free or with a slap on the wrist. Money may not buy happiness, but it sure seems able to buy anything else.

Re:shoot itself in the foot

[Anonvmous Coward]

"Hopefully Microsoft will single-handedly make a mockery of the patent system (more specifically software patents) which will force the system to be reviewed sooner, and maybe some positive changes can come to it."

Heh. Your favorite corps are making a mockery of it as well. Pity that Slashdot doesn't report other stupid patents. IBM, Palm, Apple, all have to have something that should have been booted out.

Re:shoot itself in the foot

[mvdwege]

They have been thinking of using patents, and specifically to attack Linux, since 1998.

So yes, you are the only person to notice, sorry.

Mart

Sheesh!

[keiferb]

There have been some silly patents covered here on slashdot, but these have got to be some of the silliest. What's next, a patent on the wheel?

Re:Sheesh!

[cynyr]

No No No!! the next one will be by me and it it will be for "The use of sexual intercourse to reproduce."....
I then plan on suing everyone with a child $0.02USD per child.

I've got my own patent idea...

[MiKM]

I'm going to patent Ctrl-Alt-Delete. Force Microsoft to use another keystroke.

Re:I've got my own patent idea...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, if you can't beat em, join em

Re:I've got my own patent idea...

[FLAGGR]

In all seriousness, AFAIK they beat you to it.

Re:I've got my own patent idea...

[vsprintf]

In all seriousness, AFAIK they beat you to it.

Then IBM is going to be a little upset.

Do they outsource to India ?

[Gopal.V]

Ok, I'm an Indian working in India .... but I see the "average quality" of software coolies are very very poor ...

Btw, Microsoft does outsource to India (thank god, Berne convention doesn't apply for patents).

one day

[zippo01]

One day will be rich, That is when i Patent The transmission of information through a medium of air. Oh i will be rich like microsoft. YAY!

Question

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it possible to patent an idea that's existed?

Re:Question

[Anonymous Coward]

redundantest. post. ever.

EU: Listen!

[BlowGish]

Hopefully this happened just in time to show the EU the sillyness of the patent system. I wonder how long the US can hold up a system with so many bogus patents...

Re:EU: Listen!

[Ploum]

If EU ministers were reading slashdot or listening to people, no doubt that EU would use free software and be against software patent.

Obviously, they don't..

Re:EU: Listen!

[julesh]

Hopefully this happened just in time to show the EU the sillyness of the patent system.

Sorry, this has been tried many times before with other ridiculous patents. They just laugh it off, and say "that's because the American's don't know how to run a patent system".

Re:EU: Listen!

[julesh]

s/American's/Americans/

Doh!

Re:EU: Listen!

[__aagctu1952]

... you're assuming that EU politicians are less corrupt than their American counterparts. As an EU citizen i can assure you that this isn't the case.

better still

[Anonymous Coward]

Patent Ctrl-Alt-Del!

Windows become unusable instantly!

p.s. if I decided to be nice and license my patent to MS my estimated royalties are:
1 cent per use (I'm a kind soul)
1 login, per day, per user = 1.8 billion per year, nice pocket money.
approx 10000 reboots per day, per user = 18 teradollars per year! Hooray, I'm so rich I don't even know what the units are called to describe how rich I am!

Anyone know a good patent lawyer?

[Anonymous Coward]

I am thinking of patenting the use of fingers to tap or otherwise press keys on a keyboard and also the use of the hand and fingers to move and operate a mouse.

Recommendations anyone?

How many USD..

[Anonymous Coward]

..do patents cost the U.S. per year? You have to pay lawyer to write the patent applications, you have to pay some more lawyers to trash the patent some months later..

I'll say it again! Statute of Limitation!

[theluckyleper]

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: We need a statute of limitation on patent infringement suits! They already do this in China!

One of the major problem with patents (in my mind) is the fact that patent holders are permitted to sit on their patents and do nothing, even when they are aware of infringing acts. Then, 10 years down the road, they spring out of nowhere with the infringement suit. This is what Unisys did with GIFs. Unisys allowed the web to become addicted to GIFs, without filing any suits. No, no... they bided their time! Wait until everyone is dependent on GIFs, THEN spring the trap; that's the key! I find this behavior to be underhanded and repugnant. UNISYS HAD TO KNOW! As if they were not aware that GIF was the image format of choice on the web. It's impossible.

An infringement statute of limitation would prevent possible future evils, too. For example, how long has Microsoft known about SAMBA, and not done anything about it? Might they not enforce their IP at some point in the future, when Linux is finally becoming accepted on the desktop? To kill SAMBA at that point would severely cripple Linux desktop adpotion. A statute of limitations would prevent this.

I'd even go so far as to suggest that a similar statute of limitation be applied to copyright violation suits. If a copyright holder IS AWARE of an IP violation, then they must file suit within a specified amount of time (2 years?), or lose the right to do so, in that instance. It's easy to see how this would benefit society: SCO.

Kudos to Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Now there is a company that is an example of what a technology company should be today. They are not trying to imitate anyone but are innovating constantly.

I mean just image how great it will be when those innovations are actually implemented and we can use them. Simply run a program as an other user, I mean, wow, just think of the possibilities.

Or simply navigating a browser with the tab key, can it get any better?
And in case you missed it, you can't only navigate with the tab key, it will also be visually indicated where in the hypertext document you are. I mean, talk about brilliance. They simply think about every little detail! whoa!

I just can't wait to see these new features on my desktop.

I love this company!!!!!!1111!!oneone!!1

Re:Kudos to Microsoft

[Soul-Burn666]

NOW I get it!
Browsing with the TAB key --> TABbed browsing!
That's just brilliant! Now MS can say IE innovates and adds TABbed browsing!
Oh?? That's not tabbed browsing?

News?

[dyarid]

Seriously; how is this news? I've lost count at how many times 5+ year old patents have been posted as 'news' on slashdot.

Re:News?

[FLAGGR]

*sigh* They're posted as the patents are approved. MS just APPLIED for that patent 5 years ago, and for some dumb reason, they're finally starting to get approved. It's news because this means something to open source. Should everyone just nod their heads and ignore it all? I'm sure thats what Microsoft would want.

Re:News?

[black mariah]

Should everyone just nod their heads and ignore it all?

Why not? They do it for IBM.

I think .....

[jdkane]

... this old joke isn't so funny anymore. :(
SO IT WAS A PREMONITION!!!!

"Self Defense" Patents

[msobkow]

Many people like to use the excuse that such patents are for "self defense".

It's also said the best defense is a good offense, so I really don't trust any company that keeps trying to patent the obvious. Instead of wasting money "defending" against bogus patents, how about investing in fixing the patent system?

Re:"Self Defense" Patents

[Tim C]

Instead of wasting money "defending" against bogus patents, how about investing in fixing the patent system?

Two questions:

1) How exactly does a company do that? Sure, they can lobby, but despite common opinion here that often comes to nothing, and they wouldn't be lobbying unopposed. Also, given that this is MS we're talking about, the company that everyone loves to hate, the politicos may well be wary of being seen to be too cooperative.

2) In the meantime, they're still just as vulnerable to attack, with the added bonus of not being able to fight back as effectively. How does the CEO explain to the shareholders why they're deliberately avoiding taking out patents (thus reducing their assets relative to the rest of the industry) and simultaneously potentially leaving themselves open to costly litigation?

Re:"Self Defense" Patents

[Anonymous Coward]

Bush's justice department dropped the anti-trust case against Microsoft. It is easy for big companies to get corrupt government to do things their way.

Re:"Self Defense" Patents

[haxor.dk]

-1 Bullshit and the usual anti-Bush bashing.

There is such a thing as the Separation of Powers, and the President (Bush) has no power to dictate what the Judicial Branch does. Once the courts are engaged in a case against Microsoft, the Executive or Legislative branches of gov't has no way to interfere.

Re:"Self Defense" Patents

[Rasta Prefect]

-1 Bullshit and the usual anti-Bush bashing.

There is such a thing as the Separation of Powers, and the President (Bush) has no power to dictate what the Judicial Branch does.

The grandparent said that Bush's Justice Department dropped the suit against Microsoft. The Justice department is not part of the Judiciary, it answers the the Attourney General of the United States of America. The grandparent is in fact correct that the Justice department under Bush caved on the Anti-trust suit. Whether Bush had anything to do with it is another question.

Re:I'll say it again! Statute of Limitation!

[Anonymous Coward]

I find this behavior to be underhanded and repugnant. UNISYS HAD TO KNOW!
I guess the problem is proving that they knew of a patent infringment. In politics, they call it "plausible deniability".

Obligatory Simpsons Quote

[Xero_One]

I think I'll order a Tab. [Presses Tab key, puts cup under disk drive]
-Homer Simpson

Seriously though, this is ridiculous and scary. How can anyone in their right mind not see the faults of the US Patent system? And better yet, why is nothing being done to rectify this?

-01

Remember when...

[jogbra]

I remember back in the day, earlier browsers did not have the "tab to hyperlink" feature. IE was the first that did.

Re:Remember when...

[atcurtis]

IBM WebExplorer... It was fully keyboard navigable - used the Tab key and all the hyperlinks were also made available in the Links pull down menu.

IIRC, WebEx predated any MSFT browser. Unfortunately, only available for OS/2.

But it was excellent at rendering pages before they had completed loading... even giant HTML tables can be rendered before all the html was loaded.

Re:Remember when...

[ztane]

Well... lynx has supported navigating around using keyboard since its beginning. Changelog confirms that "tab" key could be used to move the focus from one item to another at least as early as in 1994...

Re:Remember when...

[Reziac]

Acto http://homer.ssd.census.gov/doc/lookup/bugs_webexp lorer.html 1) bug references to V0.95 are dated back as far as 6/22/95, and 2) there seems to have been a version for Win95.

[Sounds interesting, must see if I can track that down... ]

Re:Remember when...

[Anonymous Coward]

I worked on WebExplorer in the summer of '95, doing bugfixes and enhancements on OS/2. It certainly had a pull-down menu with the URLs.

Yes, there was a Win95 version. It was mostly a one-man job, IIRC. (JRS, are you out there?)

I didn't think the Win95 version was ever officially released, though. Am I wrong?

This is pretty lame

[Keeper]

Though I suspect the 'novel' aspect to this patent lies no in the concept of navigating to different links using the tab key, but rather how that selection is indicated (they contually reference a non-rectangular shape). Lynx won't count as prior art.

Well, here's how I feel about it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft can file a patent for every material object on the planet, they will NEVER stop me from using my Mandrakelinux distro.

Anyone who comes after my Mandrakelinux distro had better bring the US Army and a very good supply of body bags because I will never give up.

Bill and Co., you just don't understand.

How the system works.

[darkmeridian]

Hey, All.

Apparently, the US patent system is quite loose with issuing patents. Yes, it asks for unobviousness and prior art, etc., but basically anyone can get a patent.

However, patents are as worthless as the paper they are on until they are defended against infringement. Because of the precedent doctrines, once you lose a patent defense, you effectively lose the patent. So while this may seem scary, MS probably will not prevail in a lawsuit.

The question is whether MS will sue someone poor and can't defend themselves. This is bad PR for them. Additionally, it doesn't get rid of all the infringers. You have to enforce your patents in order to keep them.

Re:How the system works.

[B2382F29]

For the gazillionst time: You DON'T have to enforce patents to keep them. That only applies for Trademarks.

Re:How the system works.

[DMNT]

It's not like they're ever going to court with that patent. It'd be just silly. Instead, they have other uses for the patents they've filed recently.

I guess they will use the Patenting the Obvious ad Nauseaum for keeping Linux out of the desktop. Researches have told that one of the main reasons Linux isn't adopted to the companies is the fear of patent and IP lawsuits. By adding some patents that are more ridiculous than [insert funny thing here] they can add +1 to their patent stack and say: "Hey, Linux violates more than n+1 of our patents." They never have to worry about if their patent will hold in court, it's fear that keeps people in (MS) line.

FUD just keeps on changing form. TCO is old news, now it's patents.

Re:How the system works.

[Builder]

The problem is that the people that MS are suing have to win _EVERY_ suit. MS won't care if it loses one or two along the way and has patents ruled invalid, as they have enough to just keep coming back with more.

News in the discovery, not in the application

[SnakeStu]

Are you aware of every single patent application in the past 30 days? Yeah, me neither. There are so many patent applications, even those who are being paid to keep track of it all seem unable to accomplish that feat. Thus, patents get into the system without much notice. When someone runs across an "interesting" one and brings it to light, it is that "shedding of light" that makes it "news."

To use an overly-blunt analogy, it's not the death of a dinosaur that makes the news, it's the discovery of its fossil remains. The death event is "many" years ago, but it's still worth reporting today when the fossils are discovered, especially if there's something unusual about it, since we're all pretty familiar with fossils in general. (This analogy won't be as useful for those who believe dinosaurs didn't exist and that their bones were planted in the ground by Satan to confuse us and turn us away from our Holy Creation origins.)

Re:I'll say it again! Statute of Limitation!

[Swedentom]

We need a statute of limitation on patent infringement suits!

Heh, I first read that as 'statue of limitation'. Would look great next to the statue of liberty, eh? :-)

Re:I'll say it again! Statute of Limitation!

[Anonymous Coward]

They also force abortions and shoot dissenters in China. So what?

Technology patents?

[grouse]

What other kinds of patents are there?

This just in...

[KoolDude]

The USPTO has just granted Microsoft a patent for "novel method to foster innovation". Using this new method, inventors will submit an application describing their invention to an authority which will then search through all previous inventions and judge whether the application is indeed novel. All succesful applicants are given a legal monopoly for their invention. Microsoft hopes this novel method will motivate inventors 768.8% more than currently used methods.

Re:This just in...

[Tablizer]

The USPTO has just granted Microsoft a patent for "novel method to foster innovation". Using this new method, inventors will submit an application describing their invention to an authority which will then search through all previous inventions and judge whether the application is indeed novel. All succesful applicants are given a legal monopoly for their invention. Microsoft hopes this novel method will motivate inventors 768.8% more than currently used methods.

Well, there certainly ain't no prior art.

Re:This just in...

[julesh]

Actually, I think there is. Just nobody's done it in America yet.

I have a cunning plan

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, here's the plan: I'll file for a patent on "Bill Gates pants" and then inform Bill Gates that he is either never to wear pants again or change his name. Naturally, in the end he'll want to sign a license agreement allowing him to wear my patented Bill Gates pants (TM). Much to his delight, the licensing fee will cost him just a few million, but unbeknownst to him, there will be an implicit GUA (Garment User Agreement, usually sewn into the garment along with washing instructions) stating that whoever wears those pants irrevocably gives the garment patent holder ownership rights to all possessions in any form, shape or size belonging to the garment user.

Oh, just in case he decides to change his name, I'll surreptitiously put a bug on him during our meeting, so that I can file a patent on his new name before he manages to legally change his name.

Either way you look at it, his ass is mine!

Oh and as soon as I get all that money I'm buying Slashdot and personally thanking all the moderators who mod this post. -- Shotgun Bob

Try cedega/winex

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a link to description of this game running under winex. It has a 4 rating, which means it works almost flawlessly. I haven't tried it myself, but it appears to be playable

http://www.transgaming.com/gamepage.php?gameid=117 1

It is very possible to play windows games on linux, and I do it a lot. I think the meme that linux can't play games is wrong. It won't play all games, sure. But it sure plays a lot of good ones.

IBM patents?

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone with a blog about all of IBM's stupid patents? Or do we only care about morally wrong patents when it's the "enemy" who holds them?

Never mind that the "enemy" is the biggest target for software patent claims...

Actually...

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, Microsoft shot itself in the foot when they created and distributed a Windows operating system. And, it seems, they are stupid enough to continue making the same mistake over and over. Can you say SP2? Don't they ever get tired of having their heads up their asses? My family and I don't use Microshaft products, but I hear the daily complaints from their victims - whom I am trying to switch to Linux.

There are plenty more waiting to be approved

[The Evil Bit]

Over 1000 more actually...
http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=P TO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch- bool.html&r=0&f=S&l=50&TERM1=microsoft&FIELD1=AS&c o1=AND&TERM2=&FIELD2=&d=PG01

Re:There are plenty more waiting to be approved

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow... Microsoft seems to have a patent pending for everything, even a "Flowerpot equipped with light-shade".

Lynx doesn't work like this!

[Anonymous Coward]

I am posting this comment with lynx. It works simimlarly to the Microsoft patent but not exactly the same.

When you use down arrow it moves to the next hyperlink - but only if that link is on the current page or the next page!

If there are no more hyperlinks until later in the document, down arrow doesn't skip down to them. Instead, it takes you to the next page. You can go through the whole document with down arrow and you will see all of it.

Microsoft's patent describes a process where a key always takes you to the next hyperlink. Lynx doesn't do this; sometimes you go to the next hyperlink, but if there isn't one nearby you go to the next page of content.

Just wanted to clear up the misconception about how lynx works.

Re:I'll say it again! Statute of Limitation!

[Stevyn]

However, I believe Apple is using samba also, so they've got money to defend its patent. There are a lot of technologies that big companies either help developed or support and they're not going to let microsoft pull the rug out from under them.

I'm going to write to my congressman

[kbielefe]

I'm planning to write my congressman about the problem. He was pretty responsive the last time I wrote about another issue. Does anyone have a pointer to accurate sources I can refer to in my letter?

Re:I'm going to write to my congressman

[Halo1]

If you want an overview of studies on software patents, have a look here. Clickable links to the referenced studies are provided in the bibliography at the end.

Re:I'm going to write to my congressman

[Anonymous Coward]

No accurate sources but this is the analogy I use when discussing software patents:

Suppose I own a supermarket and decide to display all my products in shelves that form square islands instead of long aisles. Should I be able to patent this idea and stop all other stores, museums, etc (and not just other supermarkets) to use a similar configuration? That's what a lot of software patents do.

What's worse, suppose I don't even use the new configuration, I just file a bunch of patents for arranging my products in squares, star patterns, circles, triangles, squiggles, ...

Now stop browsing

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop Browsing with your keyboard Use Onscreen Keyboard / GTKeyboard (using mouse) or else you will see law enforcing agencies at your doorstep and a big bill from M$

Re:Now stop browsing

[Varun Soundararajan]

Thats true

Turn-around

[Anonymous Coward]

By the time we get everything turned around with all the Big Businesses, it will strictly be a game of catch up.

Ten years. At that point, it'll be in full avalanche. Either it gets solved, and not just abated, in ten years or the game will be in China. Possibly Germany and a spattering of European nations. India and America will be the next contenders to un-seat the Throne.

Wh00t for Intel. And Microsoft. And Time-Warner. And Orin Hatch and his motley clan of Mormons. And CIGNA. And Pfizer...

Prior Patents == Prior Art

[HermanAB]

The USPTO only considers prior patents to be prior art. So someone can patent the keyboard itself and pre-empt MS's use thereof for everything...

Re:Prior Patents == Prior Art

[servoled]

The USPTO only considers prior patents to be prior art.

Untrue. Any published document with a provable date or product with a provable date of first sale or public use is considered prior art. Hell, if you look at the art cited in the 6,785,865 patent you will see a few web pages and books listed along with prior patents.

YATWSDNARTPA

[xigxag]

Move along. It's just Yet Another Topic Where Submitter Did Not Actually Read The Patent Application.

It doesn't patent "the use of a keyboard to navigate a web page." What it patents is, as far as I can tell, the use of the tab key to navigate to and to place a non-rectangular highlight over a weblink, or to place any-shaped highlight over an imagemap.

Re:YATWSDNARTPA

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes it does. Every claim is a little patent of its own:

What is claimed is:

1. In a computer system having a video display, a keyboard device for providing a key input, a method of discovering each of a plurality of hyperlinks in a hypertext document, said input device having keys, comprising:

(a) displaying the hypertext document on the video display;

(b) organizing the plurality of the hyperlinks in the document into a sequence in an element list, wherein the sequence of the hyperlinks is based on the disposition of each hyperlink in the document, and wherein the element list comprises information describing a location of a next hyperlink and a type of the next hyperlink; and

(c) when a predefined key on the keyboard device is actuated, giving focus to the next hyperlink of the plurality of hyperlinks in the sequence.
Then follow the other claims. So they do patent "the use of a keyboard to navigate a web page."

Re:YATWSDNARTPA

[Anonymous Coward]

"It doesn't patent "the use of a keyboard to navigate a web page." What it patents is, as far as I can tell, the use of the tab key to navigate to and to place a non-rectangular highlight over a weblink, or to place any-shaped highlight over an imagemap."

and you think it's better? You are crazy, sorry.
And the dummies that modded you up too.

Re:YATWSDNARTPA

[Anonymous Coward]

It would depend on the definition of "giving focus to the next hyperlink" (see step (c)). However, I think step (b) is somewhat interesting in its own right and may overcome lynx as prior art, although I don't really know how lynx functions in the background. Perhaps someone can shed a little more light on how lynx decideds which link to jump to next.

Re:YATWSDNARTPA

[julesh]

Perhaps someone can shed a little more light on how lynx decideds which link to jump to next.

The logical way of doing this is to build a list that has the hyperlinks ordered according to their position in the document, and then move on to the one in the list after the one which currently has the focus.

Ahem.

Re:YATWSDNARTPA

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you prove that's how lynx does it though? The tricky bit with patent law is that everything must be provable, even obviousness. If it can't be proven then it doesn't count as prior art.

So, can you offer any proof that the method described in step (b) is actually used in the prior art?

Re:YATWSDNARTPA

[black mariah]

Whether it is better or not isn't the issue. It is factually correct, which is more than anyone could say for ANY Slashdot story on patents. Or anything else, now that I think about it...

Re:YATWSDNARTPA

[xigxag]

Please mod up the above reply. My original comment was wrong. There are a variety of claims here, not just regarding highlighting the weblinks or imagemaps (as I mistakenly said), and the very first claim is in fact a method to use the keyboard to navigate the hyperlinks on a webpage.

Regarding that first claim, Microsoft is claiming to have come up with a different (unique?) method for doing what Lynx and other browsers already did. It is commonplace to patent a distinct method of achieving something which has already been patented in the past. Microsoft's behavior (in this instance) is nothing unusual or improper.

Speaking of hyperlinks, it's both interesting and informative to follow back the trail of references cited in this patent. You'll come across some surprising stuff.

Re:YATWSDNARTPA

[YU Nicks NE Way]

No. Claims are cumulative. So Claim 1 is a basic claim, which is narrowed and refined in subsequent claims. An attorney will tell you that you should always make the most sweeping claims conceivable in your base claims; it does no harm, and might protect you in a later infringement suit. (By the way, a patent is narrowed by strinking down base claims and derived claims until there is held to be no reason for invalidation. Relatively few patents are ever completely invalidated; most are merely narrowed on appeal.)

Re:YATWSDNARTPA

[magefile]

But that fails the obviousness test, right? What if I submit a patent for a mouse that is a rectangular prism? Or patent a method of highlighting such that "the text selected, in the word processor mentioned above, is modified to match the background color, whilst the background of that text is modified to match the former foreground color in a non-rectangular shape around the text".

Re:YATWSDNARTPA

[Julian352]

In Lynx, if you press a tab key, the highlight immediatly jumps to the next links within the document. (The same is done for the press of the down key) That would put it as sufficiently similar to the method described within the patent. I am not 100% sure as to the method used to select the next link within a complex table-driven website, but it seems to be going through each cell within table and selecting links based on that.
Thus I really doubt that it would be possible to discredit lynx as prior art for that claim.

Re:YATWSDNARTPA

[Anonymous Coward]

Prior art must disclose all limitations to invalidate a claim. Since you can't prove that lynx uses the method in step (b) or prove that step (b) is obvious, then lynx doesn't invalidate this patent.

Sorry, but thats how the law works.

Re:YATWSDNARTPA

[Anonvmous Coward]

'and you think it's better? You are crazy, sorry."

After that little incident with Eolas, I'm not the least bit surprised at MS for patenting this stuff.

Re:YATWSDNARTPA

[rhysweatherley]

It doesn't patent "the use of a keyboard to navigate a web page." What it patents is, as far as I can tell, the use of the tab key to navigate to and to place a non-rectangular highlight over a weblink, or to place any-shaped highlight over an imagemap.

Which, if the USPTO was actually following its own rules and procedures, would be unpatentable.

It is obvious that some way of highlighting the current link is necessary for this kind of feature. Strike 1: obvious.

The method of highlighting is immaterial. Whether it is a rectangle, inverse video, non-rectangular, or whatever. The USPTO rules state that merely changing a color, or substituting one material for another, is not patentable. Strike 2: substitution on something otherwise obvious.

Every Internet set-top box known to man in the mid to late 90's implemented something like this in their TV Web browsers. Not to mention Lynx. Strike 3: prior art.

Another example of why the USPTO must be hauled to account for not doing their job!

Re:YATWSDNARTPA

[AnyoneEB]

Huh? Why would it be at all difficult to find out what method lynx uses? It's open source. Look at the source for a version of lynx dated (significantly) before this patent. Look for its method. Simple.

Re:YATWSDNARTPA

[Anonymous Coward]

Go look at the source and report back whether lynx uses the claimed method or not. The previous poster couldn't do it and only offered conjecture. The main point is that the method which is used must be proved, not assumed.

Patent cluedroppers

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it any coincidence that the music snippet patent shows "Lie" as one of its inventors?

MS and patents.... when will the nightmare end?

[Goeland86]

Ok, I've read about this countless times, where MS acquires patents about anything and then the rest of the world is stuck. Surely this time the patent will be revoked. Lynx uses the keyboard to navigate, and lynx has been around quite a while, so I'm hoping that THIS patent will disappear, otherwise all general web browsers are in trouble, not only mozilla, but safari, netscape, konqueror, opera...
The entire world of browsers risks severe consequences if this patent is left into being.
Someone please do this? I'd be willing to help, but I don't know where to start.

In other news . . .

[Gabrill]

A new consortium of keyboard makers have replaced the old, patent encumbered "Tab" key with a new key in the same location, labelled "Over".

One more nail in the Patent Office's coffin

[jinxidoru]

Maybe this is a good thing. If some of these ridiculous patents try to be enforced by Microsoft, they'll meet with some stiff legal competition. GNU/Linux and OSS in general has a lot more more behind it than most people realize. Attacks of this nature will fail just like all other under-handed attacks have failed. The blessing comes as people realize how silly patents are becoming. Then we'll hopefully see some strong patent reform, or just a removal of the agency all together.

Next up for patent

[bairy]

Ms patent 8,000,000: the colour blue
"The colour blue, specifically the Blue Screen of smack your keyboard up the wall for the fifth time today is our latest patent. We thought as we'd pissed enough people off already by causing systems to hit it, we'd piss them off more by sueing them to look at the sky"

Ms patent 8,000,001: The moron dept
"We hereby patent the usage of one department to think up the absolute bleedin obvious, then apply to patent it!"

Ms patent 8,000,002: Microsoft patent tracker(tm)
"An application that tracks all the patents we've ever filed allowing you to search through and browse past patents
System requirements: Linux (it er, kinda sorta, er, crashed under Win32), 3GB hard disk space, and a written letter to let you bypass patent 8,000,174 so you're allowed to look at your monitor"

Re:Next up for patent

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, colors are patentable. For instance, a Finnish sweets manufacturer Fazer has patented a certain shade of blue used in their chocolate packaging(that chocolate is their best known product and is referred by most as "Fazer's blue"). Obviously they don't now own the color blue, they only forbid it's use in similar products.

Isn't tabbing part of the HTML specification?

[iammaxus]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't tabbing through links part of the DOM or HTML specification? At least for filling out forms, there is an HTML parameter specifying what order form objects get tabbed through.

accountability....

[andrejs]

There should be accountability for examiners that approve these obvious type patents. If they are found after a complaint by an independent board of knowledgeable experts to have not done their homework so to speak; they should be fired with no benefits.

Re:accountability....

[BigRedFish]

Step 1: Make patent examiners personally responsible for approving bogus patents. If found to have done so, fire them without bennies.

Step 2: Starve patent office for funding, so examiners don't have the time and resources for real due diligence on every patent application.

Step 3: Employee benefits have been eliminated!

Sounds like a Republican wet dream to me.

BTW, do you propose a statute of limitations to protect the employee also, or can a bogus patent be held and not used against the employee until, say, two weeks before retirement, or if he is in an accident and needs to file a major medical claim? Just wondering.

Well..

[Hooya]

i started out in computing with DOS 4/5. i loved MS.

fast forward a decade or so..

am a diehard debian fan. hate MS. (i'm using the word 'hate' here.)

what drove me to it? nobody on either side paid me.

i think the post partially answers it. blatent rip-offs, redefining the meaning of 'innovation' to be 'predetory compitition squashing and conveniently swallowing up them whole'. disgusting. just plain disgusting. a two bit company that was at the right place at the right time.

i still use links and lynx occasionally. if MS invented (and are thus now eligible for this patent), they can suck on my hairy ball-sack.

MS-Free since 95. they'll have to pry my debian from my cold dead hands.

sorry about my near non-articulation of my frustration and resorting to various things i've resorted to. every day my disgust for the corp grows leaps and bounds. i mean, don't they *know* that lynx does it and has been doing it for years and thus they are relying on USPTO being overwhelmed and thus not checking on the prior art? this is the most obvious application of the "INNOVATION" at MS. it's been done before. but the rest of the world doen't know better. fuck 'em. rome fell too.

Finally, a nice operating system.

[Anonymous Coward]

I used MS Windows for years and got fed up with the viruses, trojans, worms, spyware, malware, crashes, expense, etc. I installed and attempted to learn 17 different GNU/Linux distros and settled on Mandrakelinux. I installed Mandrake on all 9 of the computers in our house, including two that are in the kitchen which the wife uses for recipes and cooking, one for each of our three children (they love the games and educational programs) and the remainder for myself - including a new laptop - for leisure and work.

All GNU/Linux distros are good for what they do, however, Mandrakelinux is the best GNU/Linux distribution that I have ever seen and I've not had any problems with it. I found it easier to install, configure and run than any Windows OS.

This is a link to the Mandrakelinux website. And, here are some cool Mandrakelinux screenshots. Did you know that you can install software in Linux that will allow you to run Microsoft Windows programs? Or that most GNU/Linux distros are free to download and install? So, now there is no reason not to install and use Linux.

Do yourself a favor and install MandrakeLinux, or whichever GNU/Linux distro works for you, and throw Microsoft Windows in the trash. You'll thank yourself in the long run.

I challenge all Windows users to try a GNU/Linux distro today.

Next, let's offshore INNOVATION to the third world

[sevinkey]

of course I don't mean the buzzword "innovation" either.

Make it easy for big, slow corporations to own all of the ideas in the world, and that's exactly what will happen... innovation will shift to areas of the world that aren't covered by the patents, and unfortunately that's only going to be Russia, the Orient, and Africa soon. (hell, those people do need SOMETHING though)

However, as many others here have pointed out, regulation is a swinging pendulum and it will most likely swing back toward something more fair.

Either way, I tend to follow the advice that my dad, and a lot of my friends parents learned in engineering school in the 60's and 70's: don't worry about people suing you, just do it and see if the lawsuit happens. 99.99% of the time no one will notice you, and if they do, you'll probably have a better life than before you came up with the idea anyway.

U.S. Patent Office

[Ping-Wu]

Please visit a previous thread to see what kind of a moron our Patent Office has become:

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/09/04/1825 22 7&tid=154&tid=1

We know that U.S Patent Office is notorious of issuing patents (particularly software patents) that are clearly unpatentable. But very few are aware that U.S. Patent Office is violating our constitutional right by promulgating and enforcing a Microsoft-IE-only policy.

This little-noticed law really makes me mad and feel like crying--why a government agency can be so stupid.

Basically, when you file a patent application, if the Patent Office thinks that your invention is not patentable because it is not novel or nonobvious, it will send you copies of prior art patents so you can rebut their rejection.

Now the Patent Office has changed its policy and will not send you those hard copies. Instead, it requires you to download those prior art reference on-line.

Under ordinary circumstances, this would not pose any problem, except that we are dealing with one of the most stupid government agencies in the history of mankind. The United States Patent Office, without much notice, now requires that, in order to download those references, you must register with the Patent Office, then the Patent Office will install a program ON YOUR MACHINE WHICH MUST BE RUNNING MICROSOFT INTERNET EXPLORER UNDER MICROSOFT WINDOWS to allow you to communicate with the Patent Office before you can download those prior art patents that our government must furnish you as a matter of our constitution right and as part of the filing fees paid to the Patent Office.

Thus, basically it has boiled down to this stupid law: if you want to receive a patent, you are now REQUIRED BY LAW to have a machine with Microsoft Windows running Internet Explorer in your office.

In other words, in order to exercise your constitutional rights, you must have a machine that runs Microsoft Windows and you must set Microsoft Internet Explorer as your default browser.

What kind of stupid government agency is this? I know many banks used to have the same requirement (i.e., using Microsoft IE running in Microsoft Windows), but they have got rid of this stupid policy because they have to compete in order to survive.

The United States Patent and Trademark can implement and insist such a stupid policy because it doesn't have to compete. But what about those 4000+ patent attorneys? How come all of them are so quiet? Are all of them idiots?

Even our HomeLand Security Department has changed its Microsoft-only policy. It appears that our Patent and Trademark Office is the only government agency in the whole world that requires its users to use Microsoft Windows. Unlike Homeland Security Department, the U.S. Patent Office has to account to no one!

Microsoft survives and propers exactly because our government agencies are unafraid to abuse their power and unashamed of being idiots.

and

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=120633&thres ho ld=0&commentsort=0&tid=154&tid=1&mode=thread&pid=1 0160890#10163299

Article I, section 8, of the Constitutuion specifically provides that: "Congress shall have 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 power to determine what can or cannot be patented (e.g., mathematical formulas cannot be patented, but mathematical formulas reduced to software code can, etc.)

Congress also vests in administrative agencies, e.g., the Patent Office, certain rule-making powers. Those rules, once promulgated, are equivalent to "laws", though they are much easier to be challenged in court. In order to exercise those rule-making powers, the agencies must follow certain well-defined procedure (e.g., publishing Official Gazette as Federal Register), AND

Re:U.S. Patent Office

[servoled]

Do you plan to repost this in every story remotely related to patents and web browsers?

If it is so much of a problem for you, why not just use pat2pdf which is a "script [which] fetches the pages of a U.S. patent document from the USPTO patent database and converts them into a single PDF file." which "is reported to run on Linux, FreeBSD, IRIX and Mac OS/X." (according to the homepage).

If you wish you can complain to the USPTO about no having a linux/mozilla version of whatever software it is you are talking about. Chances are they will tell you about the many other ways availible to obtain the patents you are looking for.

However, the idea that the USPTO is somehow denying your constitutional rights by not having a version of that software for linux/mozilla is asinine.

Re:U.S. Patent Office

[Ping-Wu]

Well, somebody doesn't mind their rights being violated. Not me. I am going to cream bloody murder.

Long Live Slashdot!!!

Re:U.S. Patent Office

[servoled]

I really don't see how your rights are being violated here. It's not like using IE is the *only* possible way you have of obtaining patents. Just use one of the other many options availible to get a copy of the patents.

If the USPTO disallowed obtaining the patents by any other method than using IE you might have a case. However, as it stands they are other ways to get the needed patents for you to responded to the action.

Re:U.S. Patent Office

[Ping-Wu]

There is actually another more important message that I am trying to scream about. (Again, love live Slashdot!!!)

If USPTO is stupid enough to think that using Microsoft IE is the only way to establish a secured communication with USPTO's private database, it really sends a certain message that USPTO may not have the right technical competence to judge the patentability of software/internet patents.

While USPTO charges $770 for filing a "regular" patent application, USPTO stands to receive $6,220 as maintenance fees during the life of a patent. Since USPTO is now a fee-supported agency, even an idiot like myself will tend to think that USPTO will be more interested in issuing patents than doing even a pro forma examination.

Maybe USPTO's incompetence is simply a smoke screen to hide their true interest in generating more incomes by issuing more patents.

BTW, for individual inventors, the statutory fees will be halved. Good bargain? Not really. USPTO has more incentives to grant patents to big corporations like Microsoft than individuals, because they pay double the statutory fees. Thus, doubling USPTO's income.

Re:U.S. Patent Office

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, if the American people are stupid and lazy and cowardly enough that they don't make an effort to bring about change in their own government, then you can say that the government expresses the will of the people to the satisfaction of the people.

Most people are perfectly happy with the status quo, and most of the rest are apathetic and do not make a priority of engendering change.

Mostly, they don't vote, they don't run for office themselves, they don't participate in the process of any political party, they don't correspond with their elected representatives (until it's too late, then they maybe send one letter to a congressman on some specific issue), and all this means they don't care.

Re:U.S. Patent Office

[Ping-Wu]

Sure your "constitutional" rights are not violated if you don't mind spending hours, instead of a few minutes if you use IE, to download those patent images.

Also, I don't think you have ever encountered the situation when USPTO cut off your connection because you wanted to download more than a handful of patent images. Are your rights violated here?

USPTO's IE-only policy is only the tip of the iceberg. Beginning August this year, if you want to take advantage of the electronic filing procedure, you have to use another Microsoft product--Microsoft Office, to convert your specification including the claims into an XML file.

Of course, you don't have to file your patent application electronically. But electronic filing grants an inventor certain advantages not available with the conventional paper filing, including publishing your application as amended.

So, what's the big deal about publishing your application as amended (the right you will not have if you don't want to use Microsoft Office)? This has a lot to do with the so-called "pre-grant" damages, which can be awarded based on how your claims are published. If you cannot amend your claims before your application is published, you may lose a lot of your rights as an inventor.

For high-tech inventions which have a short life span, pre-grant damages may be the only compensation you can get.

Are our constitutional rights violated? IMNSHO, not as a clear cut as the IE-only policy.

But, again, the key issue is, whether the USPTO has projected an image that it is competent to judge the patentability of software/internet inventions, and whether "revenue-generating" plays an important role in issuing patents. This is what concerns me the most.

Re:U.S. Patent Office

[servoled]

Sure your "constitutional" rights are not violated if you don't mind spending hours, instead of a few minutes if you use IE, to download those patent images.

No, your constituional rights are not violated in either case because there is no constitutional right to download patents using mozilla on linux. Sorry, but I suggest you reread the constitution.

USPTO's IE-only policy is only the tip of the iceberg. Beginning August this year, if you want to take advantage of the electronic filing procedure, you have to use another Microsoft product--Microsoft Office, to convert your specification including the claims into an XML file. ...
Are our constitutional rights violated? IMNSHO, not as a clear cut as the IE-only policy.

Is the USPTO denying you the right to file in otherways than using Microsoft Office? No.

Can you not mess up filing the claims the first time and get them published the correct way without needing to do any amendments? Can you write your own program to create the correctly formatted XML file? Yes you can.

As long as alternate ways to file applications are availible there is nothing denying you your "constitutional rights".

Re:U.S. Patent Office

[servoled]

While USPTO charges $770 for filing a "regular" patent application, USPTO stands to receive $6,220 as maintenance fees during the life of a patent. Since USPTO is now a fee-supported agency, even an idiot like myself will tend to think that USPTO will be more interested in issuing patents than doing even a pro forma examination.

Maybe USPTO's incompetence is simply a smoke screen to hide their true interest in generating more incomes by issuing more patents.

The problem with this line of reasoning is that the examiners who make the decisions on patentability in the USPTO don't see any difference in their salaries based upon the amount of money that the USPTO brings in each year. It's like the scene from office space:

Peter: It's a problem of motivation, all right? Now, if I work my ass off and Initech ships a few extra units, I don't see another dime. So where's the motivation? And here's another thing, Bob. I have eight different bosses right now!

Bob Slydell: I beg your pardon?

Peter: Eight bosses.

Bob Slydell: Eight?

Peter: Eight, bob. So that means when I make a mistake, I have eight different people coming by to tell me about it. That's my real motivation - is not to be hassled. That and the fear of losing my job, but y'know, Bob, it will only make someone work hard enough not to get fired.

Since the examiners don't have any motivation to bring in more money for the USPTO I don't see how that maintanance fees would factor into their decisions when deciding patentability.

Re:U.S. Patent Office

[Ping-Wu]

Of course the examiners don't have an explicit motivation to bring in more money for the USPTO, but if you are familiar with how USPTO operates, you will know that ALL examiners are under a pressure to approve (i.e., "approve") a certain number of patent application to satisfy their "quoto". A few years ago, it was over 100 allowed applications a year. I am sure this number has increased.

The USPTO bigshots (supervising examiners and various levels of managements) know their "job security" depends on how much money is being brought to USPTO (through mainly issue fees--$1,630 and maintenance fees--$6,220, for a total of $7,850 per patent issued).

I am sure all the USPTO bigshots have such a high integrity, that they will not even hint those poor examiners under their administrative supervision to issue more patents.

Then, again, how can anyone explain about the "quoto"?

Re:U.S. Patent Office

[servoled]

There is no quota (with an "a": QUOTA) for allowed applications. From what I've heard the quotas deal with number of applications processed (either allowance or rejection, doesn't matter which). The quotas were institued as part of the compact prosecution initiative when the USPTO moved from granting patents for a term of 17 years from the issue date under the old system to 20 years from the filing date under the new system. The idea is to allow or reject the applications quickly so if they issue the applicants still have a majority of the patent grant term remaining.

Also the supervisors don't make the determination of patentability, the examiners do.

As I know people who have actually worked for the USPTO I am willing to trust them as a source of information much more than you.

Re:U.S. Patent Office

[Professional Slacker]

Let me get this straight because there are some loopholes it's ok for the government to piss on the constitution, and enforce an illegal monopoly? That's not how it's supposed to work, the government serves the people, not big business. You tell the USPTO you want a Linux/Mozilla way to get patents online the right response is "Right away Mr. Taxpayer sir, would you like us to shine your shoes today too?"

Re:I'll say it again! Statute of Limitation!

[camcorder]

Besides if the level of linux usage reach that amount, there would not need to use samba anymore. Btw, MS will have to get on with linux so that people would buy it. Else they would go with more standardised OS, not monopolised.

Microsoft Windows users should read this.

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a really nice alternative to Microsoft Windows. Nice screenshots too. And, free downloads.

Affect on Open Source

[mckevin]

Could this be MS's way of combating the open source threat to its dominance? What happens if MS decides to enforce one if its patents (using the tab key or generating a music snippet, for example) against Linux? Could MS use their patent portfolio to bring down or hamper the open source movement?

IBM missing their Patent Guru?

[netglen]

I wonder why IBM let their patent guru leave and go to Microsoft? I would have thought that IBM would keep such a kingmaker in patents & royalties under their employment.

Re:IBM missing their Patent Guru?

[vsprintf]

I wonder why IBM let their patent guru leave and go to Microsoft? I would have thought that IBM would keep such a kingmaker in patents & royalties under their employment.

My cynicism makes me believe it had something to do with the patent guru and Microsoft's money.

Holy Reboot, Batman!

[Tablizer]

If they charge royalties everytime one has to press Ctrl-Alt-Delete to reboot because IE hung, humanity is screwed.

Re:I'll say it again! Statute of Limitation!

[MonsoonDawn]

Someone refresh my memory on this one... The existence of the LZW compression patent was common knowledge. Right? Was it a case that the submitter to the GIF standards body patented it without telling anyone? Did the standards body have rules regarding submitting patented technologies?

And I'll say it again

[Anonymous Coward]

how long has Microsoft known about SAMBA, and not done anything about it?

The software that uses the SMB documents to serve files? A while. But what can they do?

Might they not enforce their IP at some point in the future, when Linux is finally becoming accepted on the desktop?

Err, when did SAMBA==Linux? Because if SAMBA is "linux" as you imply, then FreeBSD, Mac OS X, SCO unixware, Solaris are all "linux".

Just because something runs on Linux doesn't make it Linux softare.

Second Patent on Music Sampling

[Bruha]

So now MicroSoft thinks they've reinvented Post Code Modulation, or any number of modulation techniques that have been in use in the RF and telecommunications industry for nearly 30 years.

It's definately prior art if the tech was invented before the company existed.

Re:Second Patent on Music Sampling

[julesh]

I'm not sure what Post Code Modulation is (unless it's the analogue to digital encoding technique known by the initials PCM, in which case it has _nothing_ to do with this patent), but I don't think this patent covers anything that could be reasonably described as a modulation technique.

It seems to me to be a technique for generating an automatic preview of a piece of music by automatically extracting a short phrase of it that is the most "salient", whatever that means.

The patent is invalid, of course, because its method is to divide the track into sections, choose the most "salient" and then cut out a bit that contains that section, but it doesn't tell you _how_ to choose the most salient. Patents must be accompanied with enough information for an expert in the field to reimplement them; I'd say the method of choosing a salient section is the most difficult part of this, and I see no easy way of doing it (although I'll admit to not being an expert in DSP).

Re:Second Patent on Music Sampling

[lskovlund]

Do you perhaps mean Pulse Code Modulation? BTW, this patent doesn't have anything to do with PCM directly. It is about the automatic generation of "teasers" from full-length music material.

A friend of mine wanted to patent breathing

[Stephen Samuel]

He had a wonderful description of it that I'm sure would have passed the patent board. Unfortunately, he wasn't willing to go thru the expense of filing a patent application.

Spend your $100 here and be happy

[dbcad7]

http://www.transgaming.com/dogamesearch.php?order= working&showall=1http://www.transgaming.com/dogame search.php?order=working&showall=1 Yes your game is listed. Yes Linux does games regards dbcad7

I fail to understand the point

[Second_Infinity]

Maybe it's just me, but I fail to understand how patenting the "use of the keyboard to navigate a web page" could beneficial. How could they possibly enforce this? Quite asinine.

However, Micorosoft > SCO as of now. At least Microsoft will have a definitive patent to complain about down the road.
Way to go! Setting the stage for lawsuits way ahead of time!

[sarcasm]
Maybe they will patent the act of actually reading websites in the future. I guess it'll be a pay-by-page system, to help increase the billions in revenue. Or maybe they'll try to patent bits and bytes, for a full sweep of the industry.
[/sarcasm]

Re:I fail to understand the point

[js3]

it prevents some idiot like EOLAS from coming along and sueing them for 1 billion dollars because they used a patent filed by the idiot

In other news....

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft has patented the use of "1" and "0"...

But that is not enough

[Baki]

It would be better than todays situation, but still it would be possible to hook the world to some format, and then leveraging your monopoly position by changing the format a bit and patent it just shortly before.

I think especially the in samba case: MSFT patents some new features in the next version of the SMB protocol.

Microsoft patents service packs

[Gary Destruction]

Now that would create some problems. Actually, I'm suprised they haven't tried to do it.

Re:I'll say it again! Statute of Limitation!

[magefile]

It's called the doctrine of laches. Basically, if you wait too long and you can't give a damn good explanation, it's assumed that you waited merely to increase your profit, and you're thrown out of court.

The problem is that no one can afford legal counsel to wait out the endless delays and postponements big companies will use, so they're forced into settling.

Public Review

[crucini]

We need to a have a period of public review before patents are issued.

Guess what? We do. All applications are published 18 months after filing, unless the inventor filed a Nonpublication Request, which he usually won't. Software patents take years from application to issue, so reading the application 18 months into the process gives you time to notify the examiner of prior art if you want.

Since the advent of the PAIR program, applications are made public sooner.

Check out Microsoft's latest applications.

Ignorant patent critics

[0x0d0a]

Once again, patent critics fail to know what they're talking about. The blogger got lucky -- he is probably right on the first patent being BS, though I'm a lot less sure about the second.

When you are determining whether a patent is sane, the abstract content *does not matter*. That's just a tool to help you find a patent you're looking for. Same goes for the title. If you are saying "this patent has prior art", you should never, never, ever even *mention* the contents of the title or the abstract. They don't have legal force.

The thing to look at are the *claims*. The patent covers anything that uses one ore more of the listed claims (these are numbered). Each claim has to be invalidated on its own, so you can invalidate a bunch of claims and not invalidate the whole patent. If there are multiple sections to a claim (these are lettered), then *all* of the sections must apply to a device,system, or whatever before it is infringing.

So if you want to say "this patent has a claim that's bullshit", you need to cite an *entire claim*, including all the subsections of that claim, and show how those subsections already applied to an existing system *before* the claimed date of invention (there's another point; the date the patent is *issued* doesn't mean much). Furthermore, unless every claim is invalid, the patent still has strength on the valid claims.

I don't like Microsoft. I really don't like software patents. But claiming that Microsoft is coming up with bullshit patents based on totally ridiculous grounds doesn't do anyone any good -- it just spreads misinformation among the group of people that could be criticizing Microsoft for one of many legitimate reasons.

Re:Ignorant patent critics

[Anonymous Coward]

I love it, someone goes against the Slashdot grain and explains the situation more fully. And he's modded "funny". How dare question Slashdot mainstream thought...

You have no "constitutional right" to avoid MSIE

[0x0d0a]

The people complaining about the USPTO only supporting MSIE -- that may suck. However, it's not illegal. You may have to buy all kinds of products to deal with them -- when you wanted to use any HTTPS connections for a long time, RSA security was getting patent licensing fees, for instance. If you don't like it, you can complain and see if you can get them to change it. But don't start ranting about "constitutional rights", because you don't have a constitutional right to use Mozilla on Linux.

Also keep in mind that the US gov writes a not insignificant amount of Open Source content -- the timezone/offset database, for example, is funded by and maintained by the US gov, and it sits in glibc. The best security framework out there for Linux, SELinux, was developed by the NSA.

Lynx doesn't get prior art, unfortunately

[PourYourselfSomeTea]

Lynx was written in 1998, and this patent was filed in 1997. Is there a pre-1997 predecessor to lynx I don't know about?

I take it back, yes it does

[PourYourselfSomeTea]

Written in 1996, with mailing list archines that far back. Surely someone has the code from back then and can point out the tabs...

Is there a limit?

[Gary Destruction]

Is there a limit to what they can patent? I mean, what's stopping Microsoft from patenting everything from wallpaper, cursors and icons to file managers, shortcuts and folder views? If there's no limit, then patents could make it impossible to make an alternative to Windows.

Re:You have no "constitutional right" to avoid MSI

[Ping-Wu]

Hi Moron-

There is no constitutional right to using a web browser of your choosing. But getting a patent is.

If, however, in order to get a patent you must use MSIE, then I believe my constitutional right is violated.

Got it???

This patent applies to Image Maps

[negative0]

If you look at claim 22 it sounds like they are talking about hypertext in general, but claim 23 narrows that scope to image maps.

Anyone remember who came out with image maps first? It's possible that Microsoft did.

Anyway, everyone is jumping up and down about this tab thing, when the patent is actually for highliting parts of an image map with circles, rectangles, or polygons as the user tabs through a list of hyperlinks.

Re:This patent applies to Image Maps

[neurocutie]

Anyone remember who came out with image maps first? It's possible that Microsoft did.

No, no, image maps were part of the web long before MS even knew what the Internet was. Netscape 1.1 and the browsers even earlier could handle image maps.

Re:This patent applies to Image Maps

[negative0]

No, no, image maps were part of the web long before MS even knew what the Internet was. Netscape 1.1 and the browsers even earlier could handle image maps

I'm sure you aren't being serious, but for the record neither of those statements is true.

Obviously Microsoft knew about the internet before there were browsers, so their knowledge predates image maps. And Netscape 1.1 didnt support client side image maps, which is what this patent thing is about.

I found an interesting site that lists the tags and history of adoption:

map adoption history

I think the most interesting thing is the following bit of information: "The MAP element was first introduced in the Client Side Image Map proposal (an HTML Working Draft from Spry.)". Perhaps the working draft or Spry has prior art they can demonstrate.

Re:This patent applies to Image Maps

[Reziac]

I just checked with Mosaic 0.9 (dated 10-10-1994), and it at least SEES imagemaps, even tho it's not entirely sure what to do with the link.

Reminds me of an old story...

[dpilot]

about a Chinese emperor. He wanted to be known as a great patron of the arts and sciences. So he ordered all books and paintings burned. Then he got the artists and scientists to together to rewrite the books and repaint the paintings. That way all of this innovation would date from his reign.

Re:Reminds me of an old story...

[Anonymous Coward]

That emperor was the first Qin (pronounced "Chin") emperor, from where we get the name "Chin-a".

The movie "Hero" (in cinemas now) is about this guy.

He was a bastard.

If you want to see how cleverly propaganda can be dressed up as art, you might even want to go see it. Zhang Yimou is this century's Leni Reifenstal (sp?).

Re:You have no "constitutional right" to avoid MSI

[0x0d0a]

There is no constitutional right to using a web browser of your choosing. But getting a patent is.

No, you do *not* have a "consitutional right" to get a patent. Congress has the consitutional right to grant monopolies to people to promote advances in the arts and sciences, and that's as far as they have to go. If they want to make only white, left-handed, college-educated people who can pay a $1M filing fee and drive a Beamer whose birthname begins with "Q" be able to apply for a patent, that's perfectly constitutional. If they want to say "you need to own MSIE to apply for a patent", then they are still in full consitutional compliance.

If, however, in order to get a patent you must use MSIE, then I believe my constitutional right is violated.

Okay. In this case, however, your belief is not correct.

You can argue that it is undesireable, and you can write your representatives to ask them to push for change, but you have no basis for claiming that it is unconsitutional.

What do American CEOs care?

[dpilot]

According to today's dead-tree Burlington Free Press, the country's most successful CEOs are the ones who outsourced the most jobs.

That's SUCCESS! That's AMERICAN SUCCESS!

Re:You have no "constitutional right" to avoid MSI

[0x0d0a]

And just to clarify the above, even the establishment of such a system is a right, not a responsibility. Congress could just say "Nah, I don't think we need to use that right of ours", and throw out tha patent and trademark systems, if such a vote was made. They'd still be perfectly well within the bounds of the Constitution.

And by extension...

[Anonymous Coward]

And by extension, Mozilla is safe, because their selection indicator is rectangular? Heaven save us from such logic!

Supposedly under patent one is not permitted to change a part for an equivalent part and reclaim patent. The classic example is "substituting brass screws for steel screws" in a mechanical apparatus. Would substituting non-rectangles for rectangles make uniqueness?

really?

[Anonymous Coward]

you think congress could constitutionally restrict patents to white people? where did you go to law school?

Re:really?

[0x0d0a]

Feel free to point out the section of the Constitution that prohibits this.

MS is your friend!

[Anonymous Coward]

Come on now, you know that we love you guys. We are just making sure that tose evil commies don't control everything.

Cause if they get thier way you will be OWNED!

I got this off a site ...

"...But,seriously,my brother is retired Air Force and he REALLY gets wound up about Dems,and particularly about Kerry. Bubba's very pro-America,pro-military and pro-Bush, and very much a traditionalist.He tends to piss off his co-workers (he works in DC and is surrounded by lefties) and stays in a constant state of near-agitation.He calls me for relief,just to sound off. I keep telling him everything's gonna be ok,and that we just all ned to get out & vote and support our candidate in every way we can.
Believe me, it will get better after Bush gets reelected.
Meanwhile, go have a few drinks with some friends and just RELAX."

How are the people like the guy above gonna take it when they realise that they are OWNED!

Kerry will win the election because too many people are scared of Bush.

Raising fees for patents is a BAD idea

[solprovider]

to fund this, I recommend that patent application fees be raised by some nominal amount.

I agree with your ideas, but the implementation would not work:
1. Moving patent complaints to "settlement sessions" would not remove the need for lawyers. Big companies would send their lawyers, and normal people would have little hope without their own lawyers. Patent applications are so complex that applying for one without an IP lawyer is a waste of money; defending a patent without a lawyer would be worse.

2. Raising the fees would exclude even more "normal people" from applying for patents. They already cost too much: the basic filing fee is $770, and most patents require additional fees. My IP lawyer requires $8000 before starting the process (and you do not want to file without a lawyer.) This means that the McD's worker who invents a better basket for frying fries has no hope of affording a patent.

Better would be to lower the fees, but add penalties based on your income. One percent of your yearly income (average the last 3 years) should work. If the minumum-wage worker files for $100, and could be penalized another $100, he may go for it. If MSFT files for $100, but could be penalized $74,000 (generously using the net income after taxes and all other deductions), they might stop filing these obviously bad patents.

Extra incentive: give a portion (10%?) of the penalty to whoever provides evidence that a patent is bad:
- MSFT proves Joe WageWorker's patent is bad: Joe is penalized $100; MSFT is given $10.
- Joe proves MSFT's patent is bad: MSFT is penalized $74,000; Joe gets $7,400, preferably tax-free for doing the government's work for it.

This could result in patents being filed by the lowest paid person involved in the process (like the janitor.) Any ideas about avoiding that problem?

Re:Raising fees for patents is a BAD idea

[berzerke]

...This could result in patents being filed by the lowest paid person involved in the process (like the janitor.) Any ideas about avoiding that problem?

Assuming the plan *COULD* work (it would never be imposed), simply add a rule that if the patent is filed in the janitor's name, then the janitor owns it, not the company. If the company lays claim to the patent (via a w"e own everything you do" employment contract), then the company owns the patent not the janitor even though he filed it.

The problem isn't so much the penalties, it's that patent applications don't seem to be denied even when they obviously should be. The USPTO needs to start denying applications.

Re:Raising fees for patents is a BAD idea

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm happy to file without a laywer. They're not required to successfully complete the process.

Maybe we should thank MS...

[neurocutie]

With MS successfully patenting the obvious and the ridiculous, it just might be the beginnings of real patent law reform and/or the stature of software patents, since it should be clear to the common person that the current situation is silly, stifling and not in the interest of the common good.

Microsoft's patent blitzkrieg is actually diluting the value of the US patent system. So go ahead, by filing thousands of silly patents, it should contribute to the downfall of the US patent (or at least software patent) system itself.

Microsoft's own prior art...

[rkww]

How soon must a company apply for a Patent after having described the essential technique in writing?

I have beside me an original printed copy of "The Windows Interface: An Application Design Guide", Copyright Microsoft Corp, 1987, 1992 (from the Windows 3.1 SDK,document number PC28921-0692), wherein we learn that

(Section 3.3.2) "Keyboard navigation to controls relies primarily on mnemonic access characters and on the TAB, ENTER, and ESC keys."

Table 3.4 lists recommended keyboard navigation techniques: "TAB: moves focus to next control. The order of movement is generally from left to right and from top to bottom.* [* Unless there is a more logical order defined within the context of the operation.]"

There's a disclaimer too: "Microsoft ... shall not be liable for any use of [the information contained in this document] by the recipient."

There's also a handy bibliography which may help to determine where these ideas came from in the first place.

It makes sense...

[kdougherty]

Microsoft isn't doing this to collect on it... it's obvious that for 1, they don't need the money, for 2, who would go to court with Microsoft for double-clicking or using the tab button? Microsoft is a monopoly that the Government cannot break. Someone working for Microsoft has this stroke of genius to patent these features so that someone or some company couldn't do so first. If another company/person were to beat Microsoft to the patent then Microsoft's software would be under someone elses patent. Microsoft just doesn't want anyone else to have leverage on them. It actually makes sense when you think about it....

It Ends When IP Laws Are Abandoned

[Master of Transhuman]

And that will only happen when monkey-ass humans stop voting corporate-owned-and-operated politicians into coercive state offices.

Which is not going to happen until monkey-brained humans get replaced by something better.

You thought I was going to say something else?

Is that why you read this post?

Is this item we're discussing really NEWS?

I expect Microsoft to patent the "stored program" concept next week. Is anyone going to be surprised?

Bill Gates' father is a LAWYER!

Get a clue!

The reason for the silly patents...

[Anonymous Coward]

...is that every group at MSFT has a patent quota - they need to file and be granted a certain number every year/quarter/whatever. So, in a blind rush to keep their jobs, people in each division file patents for all sorts of ridiculous things.

Anyway, all this scare mongering is ridiculous - if you look at the actual claim language, most of these patents have language that is too specific to hold up on court and would be invalidated fairly easily by a competant attorney.

Patent immunity 4 u if < 5% mkt or 1$M gross

[Anonymous Coward]

This simple rule would let small businesses
innovate freely, test their ideas in the market,
and probably do all right just being bought out
and going on to something new, if they didn't want
to play lawyer games to grow further.

Re:I'll say it again! Statute of Limitation!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd even go so far as to suggest that a similar statute of limitation be applied to copyright violation suits. If a copyright holder IS AWARE of an IP violation, then they must file suit within a specified amount of time (2 years?), or lose the right to do so, in that instance.

I'm not sure if copyright works like that but trademarks certainly do. Of course, there's a key difference between patents/copyrights and trademarks: patents and copyrights are time-limited (though this seems to be increasingly theoretical in the case of copyright), while trademarks remain active as long as the owner enforces them (under common trademark law anyway, registered ones are different). As you longer as you continue to enforce a trademark, it remains yours. The fact that you lose it if you don't take action against infringers is fundamental to the whole concept.

I've always thought trademarks are fundamentally different to patents and copyrights anyway. Patents and copyrights protect something of value and it would be to deteriment of human society if they were not eventually placed in the public domain. The only thing trademarks really protect are brand reputation and nobody really has the right to take that from you. Hence, you can have a trademark for as long as you assert your right to it.

good ole fashion bribery

[zogger]

--yours is the best idea yet. I was going to post it (something very similar) until I read your reply. There should be something like a three strikes and you are out. Try to patent three bogus patents, or get three over turned, you are barred from ever trying again.

The other is obvious, just BAN IP patents. Eliminate thew whole shooting match, and invalidate all past IP patents. Patents should be reserved for TANGIBLES. Copyright-OK, patent, nyetski! We had intangibles before, when the patent office was setup and people starting patenting, but it was for STUFF, tangibles. We had intangibles, we had written intangibles, we had music, art, literature, etc, but it wasn't patentable because people realised that was loony tunes. They were never granted a patent as far as I know. (If anyone knows of an old exception, I can be corrected). It's only relatively recently in US historical terms that intangible IP has been treated like a tangible. And what's worse, they can get a patent,get treated as a tangible in pursuit of profits, BUT, never be forced to offer the tiniest warranty for these dubious "patented products" that all tangible products must have. What a sweet scam!

I'm cynical as heck about it, I think there's been billions in bribes paid off to legislators and bureaucrats to get IP to be "patentable" and that it's ongoing inside the patent office. No proof, other than these ridiculous tons of prior art "patents" being issued. It's criminal behavior, so look who has the means and opportunity, and who can profit from the scam of patenting obvious stuff.

Old saying, walks like a duck, acts like a duck, quacks like a duck, it's most likely a duck.

Re:good ole fashion bribery

[sumdumass]

your actually right on in the patten vs. copyright issue.

IP pattens if aplied to music would in a matter of a few years make almost all music owned by someone else. imagine if you could patten cords or notes in a certain order to create signiture pieces of music. Of course you thought of doing it in that way so it is you ip right? Now how many times could this be done before the riffs would be completly gone from general music creation. Some may think well music notes have been around for years but i say so has programing languages and the concept of placing the language/note in certain order to achive a certain result.

Copy right is were the so called IP belongs. I don't see how technoligy can progress if it is done under pattening. Maybe i am using the wrong analogy. We need to work on relating the argument in a way that normal people can understand while still presenting it in a light that lets them see how it can damage everything. We also need to do this without exagerating the effect were a normal person could just blow us off as extreamist.

I wonder if M$ has patented...

[rubberbando]

crashing a computer....

If someone else beats them to this, they could be in big trouble. :-P

this might fix it

[Anonymous Coward]

What if there was a limit to how many patents an individual/company could hold? If MS (and daughter companies) were only allowed 100 patents maximum, and if they wanted to file a new patent they had to release one of the old ones, would that fix this problem?

M$ on fire!

[kennycoder]

Lets patent all alphabet letters for partitions...

Wow.

[Anonymous Coward]

I submitted this article two days ago, as "Microsoft patents Lynx" but apparently it wasn't interesting enough back then.

Patent bounty

[penguinoid]

I think it would be cool if there were a bounty set by the USPTO for false patent attempts. That would certainly have many people searching for invalid patents.

Also, it would be likelier that $LARGE_COMPANY would be donating to $COMPETITOR if they tried to pass bogus patents because $COMPETITOR would now have two reasons to fight their patents.

Another Approach . . .

[Dausha]

What the USPTO needs is a mechanism wherein average Americans can file a "not so fast" to submitted patents.

Once the patent has made it through the clever hands of the USPTO, it enters into a 90 or 180 day probationary period. During this time, the patent information is available to the public, and the public can provide input as to whether or not prior art exists. If, after that period, nobody files a valid counter to the patent, it takes effect.

We already have watchdogs who catch this stuff once it becomes public. So, this would open a window before the patent is official. Competitor companies would also keep an eye on their opponents.

The downside? If I patent the Great American Widget, a major corp could try to throw paper at the USPTO to confuse them.

FYI: List of all pending Microsoft patents...

[Max Threshold]

You can search granted and pending patent applications on the USPTO site. There are currently 1086 with the assignee name Microsoft.

Some of these are pretty amazing... amazingly trivial, amazingly obvious, amazingly already-invented. I was browsing through them just the other day. I swear to God they are trying to patent BitTorrent, but I can't find that one right now.

perhaps you were looking for this:

[Atrax]

Archived from The Onion

Have a public review period

[blitz487]

What would put a brake on some of this nonsense is to have, as part of the patent review process, a period of one year of public comment on each. The public would then have the opportunity to comment on whether or not the patent was "novel" or "obvious", and can bring up prior art. The patent examiners would be required to take the public comments into account when they rule.

Re:Have a public review period

[Reziac]

That would be especially good if the various tech review publications (in all sorts of fields, not just computer-related) pick up on it and make it a regular feature, which asks for public input -- not as an exclusive place to do so, but rather as one that is handy and obvious:

That would give people interested in a given field a known and reliable place to comment, would make it relatively easy to collect comments for forwarding to the USPTO, and keep the noise level down (imagine asking slashdot for input -- egads!!)

Easy to Fix all this..

[IBitOBear]

I would pass a law that say, essentially, than ANY implementation of ANY patented technology can not be held as "infringing" that patnent if it is executed entirely on or using "commodity computer hardware" that is not itself the subject of that patent.

With this in place, general software is effectively unpatentable, but the software components of specialty hardware (e.g. CPU microcode) is.

This creates a basic economic pressure. If you invent a brand-new form of (say) networking, then as long as you are manufacturing the network cards that your cusomers *must* use, then you are good to go. If, however, you "really want to cash in" the act of licensing your network cards for general manufacture, or manufacture your cards for general use, then your patent automagically goes away when a commodity threshold is passed.

Another side effect is that "eumlators" are automagically legal. This means that your real devices must "outperform" the general emulation to be worth it. So a good "encyrption chip" for instance would be patentable, but the OOS/competetive implementation (which would presumably be slower unless your product sucks) would be legal and automatically non-infringing.

That also means that the agregious abuse of the patent system could go on for a while but the "regular computers" out there would be exempt from the battle. If MS made a "special" keyboard for traversing links, the commodity keyboard I am using + Lynx would not be infringing under any intrepretation.

Problem solved.

Re:Easy to Fix all this..

[Reziac]

While that sounds like a good concept on the surface (and I think the concept deserves further exploration), it could have the side effect of splintering innovation into deliberately incompatible (unless you license it under their patent, of course) subsets of proprietary hardware and its matching software. Commodity hardware and software might be strong enough to withstand this effect, but what about business middleware, networking products, and the like?

Re:Easy to Fix all this..

[IBitOBear]

The all important "synergy" will fix most of that. First off, there is no "business middleware" under the veil of patent, unless you imagine custom-made machines to run each package.

Since customers won't stand for having to buy new hardware for each application, once a piece of hardware becomes multi-functional it starts the long descent into "commodity".

Remember that "this software requires that dongle" isnt' enough. The dongle isn't the computer.

The actual model you should look at is "Pro-Tools" (formatting?) where the software and attached hardware thingy create a digital audio mixing appliance. Such a thing would be patentable. But if someone came along and wrote "Pro-Tools for the Sound Blaster" then *that* would automatically be outside the realm of patent protection. Meanwhile if a competeter made their "Go-Tools audio mixing station" that infringed the patent with hardware and software that was covered, then *that* would remain actionable.

The thing about proprietary networking is that it fails to scale. If "microsofts's internet" were different from "apples internet" the both woudl lose a lot of money.

So we have made "pure software" unpatentable, because if it is "pure" then there is no non-commodity hardware platform that the software could run on.

Consider separetely the DVD. It is patented, lets say, and as long as Phillips want's to solely manufacture, or at least aggressively license (e.g. limitedly license), the players then the patents hold. But as soon as they license it to everybody and their sibling (as it is today) they make a nut of cash and the hardware becomes commodity, and the patents become PD.

See, now by definition, the patents protect the little business, but those businesses naturally "leave the hothouse" when they go large.

So non-computer hardware is protected the same as it is today.

And specialty )or niche) hardware is protected the same as it is today.

But things like the RAMBUS patent memory thing automatically disapears when the patent goes into the hardware standard (you don't get more commodity than "the standard" 8-).

And software is only "protectable" when it is part of a larger solution.

The pure-software naturally foalls back itnot he domain of Copyright.

Re:Easy to Fix all this..

[Reziac]

It would certainly be interesting to watch such a "no non-proprietatry patents" scheme at work in the competetitive market. (Could it be more broadly applied to the rest of the patented world??)

But I still think we'd see a rash of specialty appliances (such as "if you want to run Our Big Database, you have to buy Our Big Iron too") and market splintering as a first effect, and a long-term effect of breaking such markets back down into subsets that can't gracefully interact, much as in the era when non-IBM-PC hardware was more common in the workstation, and all the heavy lifting was done by mainframes. Business might whine but business will still buy what it needs to function, and pass the costs on to consumers as they always do. Users would be stuck with it until someone wrote a commodity solution. More'n likely *that* would start as one or two commercial apps, followed by a straggle of opensource apps. As you say, the proprietary solution would then have to be the best quality product to survive in the marketplace.

IOW, I think the net effect would be to rewind the IT market back to 1980. Even so, it would be better (for everyone but patent lawyers) than the current patent minefield, where you can't breathe without infringing on someone's patent for "a mechanism for transporting O2".

As another side effect, I think it would kill unnaturally restrictive EULAs (patents' natural cousins) on commodity anything, such as that one where if you bought Specialty Jigs Brand A, only one person was allowed to use them -- any jig that fit a standard saw would be immediately exempt from patent, thus from silly EULAs.

Re:Easy to Fix all this..

[IBitOBear]

Eh... not really... See, it would be hard for a manufacturer to calim that you needed to buy his big iron to run his ap. Among other things that ap and that big iron would have to exist as a complete patentable thing. Since you already cannot patent the bulk of the computer, you wouldn't then be able to patent a particualr construction of a computer for a particular purpose.

You are mistaking the concept of "hardware" in this usage. While a Dell(tm) is a brand, it isn't particularly unique, nor are most systems.

See, if IBM were to put out a piece of "big iron" for DB2-prime they wouldn't be able to use the same piece of patenable iron as the unique hardware piece of CICS-doulbe-prime as well. As soon as they themselves wanted their patentable ap to actually do things, they would be getting into multi-functioning and that would tend to cause the hardware to aproach the commodity threshold anyway.

It would have to be written carefully, but not that carefully.

For instance, what would be the "necessary" part of the overal system that would make it bind to the uber-database? It surely wouldn't be the memory wholly unlike everybody else's memory. Nor the "special general purpose processor" etc.

So you get to patent things like "specialty storage drives for the purpose of ..." and as long as that was all that they would do, you'd be fine. Ibid ofr encryption chips and cpu microcode.

But the core general-purpose computer would never lose its "general purposeness", for reasons of pure geography. A business that needed to do 10,000 things literally couldn't accomodate the 10,000 separate computers your caveat envisions.

So you would be left with the general purpose computer(s) we all know and love. All of the pure-software stuff woudl be covered by copyright but not trademark, and then the few device-spesific things (Video adapter? sound mixing appliance? super-special microwave link?) would be patentable in conjunction with thier software, and then the regular hardware patents would keep on rolling on.

There would be no fracturing at all.

As for your last, the jig is itself a peice of specialty hardware, so the fact that it fit a standard saw isn't germane. (I think you are generalizing my idea from "hardware" to "system" which would be too vague to work.)

The Jig EULA's are already without standing and are creeping in from the sides. Technically the regular EULAs on store-bought software are without standing too. The only ruling I know of on EULAs that has upheld them were "click-though" agreements offered before purchase/acqusition of sfotware online.

"Regular" EULAs are post-sale conditions and I cannot think of any having passed muster in court, of course IANAL. I don't know the complete legal history of these things, but the fact that MS tries to encumber me, after I bough something from Best Buy (a clear third party) who bought it from some distributor is probably unsupportable. I know it has been rendered vague in court already, but since MS wouldn't be a party to the transaction I made, and since there is no "I disagree, so I will use the product as purchased" button option, the EULA "i agree" thing is the "install me" button and the patern of pixels on it is immaterial. But that's just me.

Of course, since it is me, then clearly no meeting of the minds had happened between me and any software vendor, so no contract in my case at least... 8-)

Re:Easy to Fix all this..

[Reziac]

Actually, I was thinking not of general-purpose computers of any sort, but black-box specialty appliances (which would each do a single job in the realm of storage, networking, firewall, database, whatever). Instead of one machine that does Jobs n thru n+x and a random assortment of odd jobs too, we'd see n+x machines that each do one job only. I don't think it would do any harm to the general-purpose end-user or workstation market as such, since that is never expected to do only a single job. But general purpose servers could wind up fractured, that's the end of things I was looking at, where there's already some tendency to specialize. It would be an opportunity to get a lock on various niche applications for one end of the market, and an annoyance and expense to the other end.

Anyway, I don't think your concept is a bad thing, but I do think it would have some unintended consequences. Which might in themselves be good or bad depending on how things fell out in the long run.

So, who do we have to bribe to get your idea a test run in the real world? Maybe you should patent it as a business model. ;)

Re:Easy to Fix all this..

[IBitOBear]

There are too many jobs, routers and most of the specialty apliances are alread in existence anyway. Besides what would be the UNIQUELY PATENTABLE THING about each of these specalty boxes? It's not enough (in my plan) to add "really big single purpose computer" to the claims to make a valid patent. That computer would have to do something that every other computer couldn't do already.

The point of mine that you are missing is that computer hardware isn't all that magical. It would be easy to have specalty adapters for particularly innovative (read not common computing) tasks, but nobody would want, say, a point of sale system that required bying 30+ kinds of specalty boxes anyway. It literally wouldn't fit anybody's business plan.

See, it wouldn't be enough to say "and that is the box that you need to buy" because, if there wren't anything particularly magical about the particular box (like a super-special processing array that did fuzzy inference on a database), someone would take the same software that was "patented on the specalty box" and implement it in the general purpose PC on they already have, and volia, "no patent infringement possible."

Youl literally COULDN'T HAVE the n+x machines in the market BECAUSE they would annoy the customers and *STILL* not be enique enough to make the patent valid.

It isn't enough to say "this patent can only be used on my brand-name box #43." You would have to have "this patent requires the magic chip X that makes the calculation in claim 4 possible." and so forth.

It's not like alieware can build a PC and say "that is the patented hardware" and even if they could, by definition, people who went to the store and bought a PC and did the exact same thing on that PC as was patented would not be infringing.

So there COULDN'T POSSIBLY be any business case that leads to the "fractured server".

The unintended consequences you envision relate to your misunderstanding my idea. It, by definition, wouldn't be enough even require a custom built FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Aray) because that FPGA would be .... commodity.

So if SUN goes out and builds a VLSI implementation of something Really Great(TM) they can patent that and the software that goes with it. But anybody who does the same thing in "pure software" and on "commodity hardware" would be in safe territory. So the only motivation for the hardware would be if the hardware were *BETTER* than the eumlation.

These are ALREADY EXISTING market pressures with known economies of scale.

Repeat after me: "your chip, your patent; common chips, your patent doesn't apply."

So as long as nobody "completely destroys the commodity market" (which just wouldn't happen because you sell enough, it becomes a commodity 8-) the software patents don't apply to software in that market. But the specalty devices (like video cards and add-ons) are separate products so they get patent coverage until they become an actual "standard" at which point the patent goes PD and the cloners get to come in wiht compatability ware. And if, in the graphic card example, the same patented rendering pipeline or whatever was so hot, then the emulators would kick in anyway just not with the full hardware advantage.

Finally, the market wouldn't ever allow the creation of X+N specalty devices, because nobody could ever afford [ Resources = (X+N)*power*space*overhead*training ] so real live business pressure would be a "pay or play" on the people who wanted their patented devices sold.

So in summary:

Things like your video card and its magical drivers is patentable, so competetors cannot steal your video card hardware/software hybred solution, but only if your video chip were patentable anyway).

Intel's microcode for their Setium CPU would be patentable because it is part of the CPU chip.

The computer that Setium was in, if the Setium were sold on common market, would be a commodity box even though the parts were patented.

Yawn..

[nwbvt]

Wake me up when a judge validates one of these patents. Until then, these are just for show.

Re:Yawn..

[Anonymous Coward]

I see you have yet to mend your habit of applying gratuitous karma bonuses. Please remedy.
--
Sick of pompous windbags? Change "Karma Bonus" modifier (Preferences, Comment Options) to -1 penalty.

Re:Yawn..

[nwbvt]

I see you have yet to mend your habit of having nothing close to a life. Please remedy.
--
Sick of trolling cowards? Change "Anonymous Coward" modifier (Preferences, Comment Options) to -1 penalty.

Re:Yawn..

[Anonymous Coward]

You're welcome to imagine I only stoop to reply to you because I have no life. Such a fantasy does nothing, however, to change the fact that you habitually apply your karma bonus to completely inane posts. This practice of yours is as obnoxious as it is pathetic. Again, I ask you to use your judgment when you post.
--
Sick of pompous windbags? Change "Karma Bonus" modifier (Preferences, Comment Options) to -1 penalty.

Re:Yawn..

[nwbvt]

Due to the fact that you are the only person I have ever seen complain to anyone about karma bonuses, I have no problem ignoring some anonymous coward with no life whatsoever. In fact, I'll post with karma bonuses on "completely inane posts" even more often just to spite you.

Re:Yawn..

[Anonymous Coward]

With that kind of attitude, I bet you're a real hit with the ladies, aren't you?
--
Sick of pompous windbags? Change "Karma Bonus" modifier (Preferences, Comment Options) to -1 penalty.

Re:Yawn..

[nwbvt]

Hell ya, they love it when I make fun of guys like you. You are the type who, in a desperate attempt to part with your virginity, complains to them "if you are not going to put out on the first date, you really shouldn't wear an outfit that shows that much skin". They hate you as much as everyone on slashdot does.

Re:Yawn..

[Anonymous Coward]

That might be hurtful if it were true, but I assure you it is neither, as my tiger-eyed girlfriend of over six months can testify. Coming from you, Nick "Chronic Masturbator nwbrown@gmail.com" Brown, that comment is merely amusing. When was the last time you got laid? And if you answer with any date since the mid-1980s, I will call thorough bullshit.
--
Sick of pompous windbags? Change "Karma Bonus" modifier (Preferences, Comment Options) to -1 penalty.

Re:Yawn..

[nwbvt]

Ha. Methinks thou dost protest too much.

Re:Yawn..

[Anonymous Coward]

Like I said, you're free to believe whatever you like if it makes you feel better. My only wish is that you'd quit posting every single comment at +2.
--
Sick of pompous windbags? Change "Karma Bonus" modifier (Preferences, Comment Options) to -1 penalty.

Re:I'll say it again! Statute of Limitation!

[Tough Love]

One of the major problem with patents (in my mind) is the fact that patent holders are permitted to sit on their patents and do nothing, even when they are aware of infringing acts. Then, 10 years down the road, they spring out of nowhere with the infringement suit. This is what Unisys did with GIFs [burnallgifs.org]. Unisys allowed the web to become addicted to GIFs, without filing any suits. No, no... they bided their time! Wait until everyone is dependent on GIFs, THEN spring the trap; that's the key! I find this behavior to be underhanded and repugnant. UNISYS HAD TO KNOW! As if they were not aware that GIF was the image format of choice on the web. It's impossible.

It's interesting how Unisys showed up in Microsoft's camp about the same time, with their joint "we have the way out" campaign, plus the "Windows mainframe" attempt. Both of which fizzled :-) Anyway, why does everything evil in the high tech world seem to somehow link back to Microsoft?

But Unisys now seems to realize that Microsoft is no way out, far from it. They appear to be quietly stepping back from the dud Windows concept and re-rolling their mainframe offerings around a Linux base.

The problem is the lawyers, not the USPTO.

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is with the patent practioners (the lawyers), not the USPTO. They are not adequately identifying appropriate prior art for the examiner to consider.

A simple solution is to place a higher burden on the lawyers submitting the patent. Example: during the 1st month that a patent issues (and only that 1st month), allow the public to submit prior art that was not referenced or relied upon. If the prior art is reasonable, then automatically send the patent back for re-examination. If a single patent practioner has more than 20% of their patents submitted for re-examination, then that practioner should be placed on administrative leave for the next year. If the patent was filed on behalf of a corporation, then the corporation should pay an appropriate fine.

The USPTO should also allow for any third party that is authenticated (ie. properly identified) to submit published prior art on any issued patent, and that submission should be tracked and publically available so that a person (corporation) can consider that information in the event that a patent holder is attempting to license or enforce their patent portfolio.

This should be acceptable to everybody except the lawyers.

Exactly when was that?

[Reziac]

On my system I have NetTamer (a browser for DOS), which has both textmode and a sort of graphical mode, and allows keyboard navigation (including, IIRC, use of the TAB key to move between links). I don't recall when the program was first developed, but it runs gracefully on an XT, so that should tell you something about its age!! (1993ish origins, I think)

Re:Exactly when was that?

[TheNetAvenger]

!! (1993ish origins, I think)

Cool, so it possibly even pre dates the development of HTTP and the web itself. (Satire)

Do a version history on NetTamer, your timeframe is WAY off.

Re:Exactly when was that?

[Reziac]

[laughing] Like I said, I don't know, really, other than it's relatively ancient as browsers go. Some of the files are dated way back when, but I don't know for sure what they all do. The guy is very conservative with version numbers... it's now up to something like 1.2 (or was it 1.12?) ... what I have, I installed in 1997 and it was v1.08, I think.

But on that note -- I know it was patterned after lynx; when was lynx created??

New Patent!

[Anonymous Coward]

We claim:

1. In conjunction with an operating system configured to run "programs" our software will automatically submit a patent to the USPTO every 5 minutes using a claim assembled from a "database" of random words.

2. As the USPT accepts out patents, we will generate revenue based on IP infringement claims.

Re:I'll say it again! Statute of Limitation!

[thogard]

I'll say it again...

Microsoft is going to kill Samba and they are going to kill it hard and I expect the Samba team members may end up losing their houses to cover the damages.

The bigest problem is the Samba team is also sitting on some potential patents they could use to hit Microsoft with a 100 billion dollar clue stick if for no other reason than to keep them in line.

loser magnets

[epine]

It appears that MS has also patented loser magnets: patents so bad that no one notices the patents in their portfolio filled with live ammunition pointed right at their head.

Is this really confusing?

[Pids]

I really dont see the confusion with these type of patents, since the USPTO moved to a totally fee based agency (Since 1991--under the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (OBRA) of 1990) they will of course take any and all applications. The more applications they process they more funding they have. They are no longer resposible to the people of the US they are responsible to the people and companies that pay them fees. They take as many applications as they can and let the courts actually do thier job of sorting out if they are even valid.

WOO HOO! Finally!

[evilviper]

Finally a story where I can complain about my #1 Pet Peave and not be entirely off-topic.

The thing that bugs me the most about web browsers, is that Links has GREAT, WONDERFUL, PRACTICALLY PERFECT keyboard navigation... Yet, no graphical browser has even remotely non-horrible keyboard navigation.

I just about wet myself when Links+GUI came out, expecting to finally be able to get my keyboard nav, as well as fonts, colors, and images... Alas, Links+ droped the wonderful keyboard navigation entirely, and isn't a very good GUI web browser in any other way, either.

This is really the single thing preventing any Linux/BSD box from becoming a great PVR... All the tools that do the PVR back-end job really well have a WWW front-end (like webvcr+), but it's very, very difficult to navigate inside a browser like Firefox, when all you have is a non-analog remote control... Clicking on keypad numbers to get the cursor to move a certain number of spaces is a terrible way to do anything.

This particular problem could be 90% solved if there way an LIRC-supported remote that had a built-in trackball, but that wouldn't take care of everything.

I would barely ever reach for the mouse if not for Firefox... I have to click on links, click into textbokes like this one, click submit, etc. If it had Links-like keyboard nav, I wouldn't need a mouse for any of that.

I know people are going to write about find-unrelated-junk-as-you-type, carret-browsing, and the ability to tab through different objects, but if you've tried any of them, you know they are buggy, insanely slow, and just won't work in all webpage objects. They also make ads even more annoying, because they get the inital focus, and you have to go through anywhere from 1 to 1,000 objects to get to the actual webpage content, which only takes a milisecond with Links.

Okay, I'm done ranting now. I'll hear complaints and rebuttals, but what I would REALLY like to hear is if some open source browser project is actually working on adding Links-like keyboard navigation to their GUI web browser...

wiki it

[kwoff]

We need a WikiUSPTO.

Re:I'll say it again! Statute of Limitation!

[non]

this is a great idea, except for one thing. the burden of proof would be on the infringee. and in real life that means that when you were sued over infringement you would counter-sue, and in order to win you would have to prove conclusively and beyond any reasonable shadow of doubt. IANAL but i know how hard it is to satisfy a judges demands in such a situation.

More revamping patents

[solprovider]

Assuming the plan *COULD* work (it would never be imposed)

Agreed. Any plan attempting to move the advantage from big business to the people has to overcome the problem that big business has the money and power. I love capitalism, but it is not perfect.

simply add a rule that if the patent is filed in the janitor's name, then the janitor owns it, not the company. If the company lays claim to the patent, then the company owns the patent not the janitor even though he filed it.

Then we need oversight to make certain the patent owner of record receives appropriate compensation. If the janitor is told that he will be fired if he complains, then he might let the company use it cheap. But the threat of the janitor quitting and asking (suing) for appropriate compansation should reduce that issue.

The problem would be patents that are held by the janitor until they have been available for review for some time (and maybe passed a challenge) before the company demands it be transferred (assigned). A law that made it easy to break contracts that assigned patents under duress could help. There are already laws about contracts negotiated under duress that should apply (such as giving someone your house while they have a gun to your head.)

The problem isn't so much the penalties, it's that patent applications don't seem to be denied even when they obviously should be. The USPTO needs to start denying applications.

The patent office has already proven that it does not have the capabilities to review patents properly. This plan moves the responsibility from the USPTO to the applicants, and provides the public with incentives to review the applications. $100 for a patent still keeps those with nothing to lose from applying, but making bad patents costly to the applicants means the applicants must do their homework.

Some of us were here when lynx was released ...

[Anonymous Coward]

in 1991 or so ... Now in case you don't know what that means, well, you *have* to use the keyboard with lynx ...

Re:Some of us were here when lynx was released ...

[TheNetAvenger]

1991

Really 1991? And what year did HTTP and HTML come to pass, let alone become a standard?

If you are going to make this stuff up, you need to at least look at the dates you are using and try to make them realistic.

Because something like, "My TRS-80 had the use of the TAB key browsing the web back in 1983 would sound just about as nuts."

you got it just fine...

[zogger]

...it's an exact example. Patenting arrangments of code is no different than patenting arrangements of "music code" or "human speech language code", like in any normal novel. It makes as much sense to give a patent for any piece of software code as it would to patent a song or a book, in other words, none.

Anyone, even a politician, should be able to see this. It takes nothing away from the writer/coder/arranger, they all are works of creativity. Copyright=yes, patents=no way.

patents covering right-handed urination techniques

[Anonymous Coward]

CNNN News
Redmond, Va.
Tuesday, Sept 7, 2004

Bill Gates, Chairman of Microsoft Corp has just announced that Microsoft has applied for patents covering right-handed urination techniques. Effective immediately, all persons needing to urinate using their right hand, will be required to purchase a right-handed urination license from Microsoft. Permanent licenses are available as well as blocks of one-time temporary licenses. The temporary licenses will be sold in blocks of 5, 10, 25, 50 and 100 seat licenses. Purchase of these licenses may be effected at the Microsoft web site, however, Mr. Gates has made a point of not specifying the cost of permanent and block licenses. Therefore, Microsoft has released a newsletter stating that until pricing is set, no right-handed urination may take place. Left-handed techniques are still not covered by the new patent but it is expected that as more and more people go to the left-handed mode to avoid paying the license fee, Microsoft has patent attorneys standing by to cover this as well. Mr Gates further noted that Microsoft is also looking at wiping techniques with an eye to expanding their lock on sanitary procedures. It is anticipated that if this happens, it is only a matter of time before scratching and other activities will fall under the long arm of Microsoft.

Re:I'll say it again! Statute of Limitation!

[Professional Slacker]

Patents for what? Isn't the smb protocol a MS creation?

Then reassign them to a neutral body

[msobkow]

If the patents are truly defensive, they could easily be assigned to a neutral industry party whose charter specifically forbids using any of the patents in IP battles. It seems many other vendors have donated patents to the OSI/FSF/GNU or just blatantly posted public permission to use the patent material.

Propaganda, FUD, and talk are cheap -- they need to start doing.