Microsoft Seeks Latitude/Longitude Patent

theodp writes "Q. What does Microsoft feel is unpatentable? A. Apparently nothing! On Thursday, the USPTO published Microsoft's patent application for the Compact text encoding of latitude/longitude coordinates, in which the software giant explains how a floating-point number can also be represented as a less-precise integer that's displayed in base-30 notation!" If ever I have seen a silly patent, this is it.

Comments

Re:Give me a break.

[smcdow]

For a "bunch of morons" they seem to have made a pretty big warchest of cash.

Whatever; now it's time for you give me a break.

Clueless morons make sleds of money all the time. That's what business is all about: enabling hopeless idiots to become rich.

Case in point: Microsoft.

Of course you could try to argue that making money in business demonstrates smartness. But that would just make you an anti-elitist moron.

Re:Don't be a fool

[ninewands]

Oh ... you mean the patented encryption technique that RSA stole from the US Government and then monopolized for 17 years? I hardly consider that a boon to the software industry. I consider it a classic case of theft from the taxpayers of the US that they (RSA) did the research with gov't funding then patented the results so that nobody but them could use it. I notice that US gov't research contracts are MUCH more carefully worded regarding assignment of patents nowadays ...