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USPTO Issues Email Address Patent to Microsoft
theodp writes "On Tuesday, Microsoft was granted U.S. patent no. 6,895,426 for treating electronic mail addresses as objects, which Microsoft notes allows email addresses to be easily added to a contact list, copied to the computer's clipboard, or double-clicked to open the related contact information for that email address sender. After the reaction to news of his first patent, betcha inventor Dan Crevier isn't too eager to let folks know about this one."
Since we're on the subject, I thought this would be a good time to let all of you know that I have just patented the
^_^
Seriously, though, I think the exchange on Dan Crevier's blog regarding his last patent is pretty telling...he gets a barrage of posts criticizing him for stifling innovation, and instead of addressing them, he closes the thread. Yes, yes, I'm well aware it's his blog, and if he doesn't want to play, he' s well within his rights to close the thread...just like that kid who would always take his ball and go home when the game didn't go his way...remember that kid?
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
Hit them in the pocketbook. It's the only sort of censure a government office understands.
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm
More more patents for microsoft makes me want to get apple more and more
What has the USPTO come to? What's next, signing away computers in a patent??
This is complete and utter nonsense. E-Mail has been around longer than Microsoft (at least in DoD).
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
I can't figure out what is worse - the idiots at the US Patent Office who allow this, or the M$ A**HOLES who actively pursue this sort of drivel.
About that patent reform... Isn't it about time? The lamebrains behind awarding patents must really not understand these things. I remember when a person had to spend weeks or months proving that they should get a patent and that it's valid. Now i think they employ a bunch of 6th graders to stand around and stamp reams of applications with "Awarded" or something...
People have a lot of theories for why bad patents are granted. In reality, it's a bunch of different problems combined. I've dealt with a few trademarks and I've been involved in some patent review talks. Here's my IANAL take on some of what's involved:
There's a company out there called M-CAM that does IP valuation - in other words they can tell you if what you have is a bogus patent worth nothing that shouldn't have been granted, or if you've got something that is fundamentally innovative. I saw a presentation a while back from the guy who runs the company, and they really get it. (The presentation started off by likening bogus patents to counterfeit money, particularly since companies use these patents to inflate perceptions of their valuation when sold)
-- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
Patents be for non obvious inventions ?
It seems that the only non obvious portion is the write up.
It has been shockingly revealed that the United States Patent Office has granted patent "31337d00d" to Apple. This patent guarantees Apple the rights to the idea of "A system of processes by which intellectual property may be applied for, accepted or rejected, in the form of patents". The only response from their press office is that they plan on suing the US Patent Office for its infringement, and backpay for the last century for lost revenue.
Ok, in light of this patent let me be the first to patent women as objects. ..
I kid. I kid.
... we can now sue microsoft for all that lost productivity. Somehow they must be responsible if they own the patent which made me sift through herbal viagra for 40 minutes each day
Well, this means that Apple have to scrap their excellent AdressBook - Mail integreation, among other things.
So actually, you don't want Apple, because Apple have to remove functionality from their software.
isn't this the point behind object oriented programming? Everything can be treated as an object, and arbitrary functions can be performed on them or with them?
--Treating women as objects since 1984
can have a patent! one free with every box of patent-o's brand (tm) (not to be confused with (c) or (r) or a pantent) breakfast cereal!
1000 different patents each with unique super-powers, descriptions and battle-histories!
collect them all!
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
Ok, fine. I hereby declare that I have patented everything that has not been patented yet.
I just gotta get my staff to write legalistic-sounding descriptions for everything (as if I had personally invented them), and get them over to the USPTO.
In the meantime, all of you please send me your mailing addresses so I can forward the royalty bills (I patented those, too).
The problem with socialism is that they always run out of other people's money. - Margaret Thatcher
struct emailAddress
{
string name;
string location;
emailAddress()
{
name = defaultname;
location = default@example.com;
}
}
IANAL, but from what I recall the doctrine of sovereign immunity basically says that people can't sue the government unless the government gives them permission to sue them.
More interestingly, the government is generally not responsible for the acts or omissions of its employees even if they acted negligently or in bad faith.
Good luck with that.
I'm a big tall mofo.
M$ do not patent WHEEL, lawyer will sue you.
0 7/02/australia.wheel/ 8 165.stm
http://edition.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/asiapcf/auspac/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/141
After scanning the claims in the patent, I think this pretty much shows the USPTO has no technical capacity to judge software patents. While I would think of patenting broad categories inventions and even software if it were truly a unique invention, this is just beyond the pale. This is not unique, people have been doing it for years, etc. etc. How did these people get their jobs?
Leave the gun, take the cannoli -- Clemenza, The Godfather
I am just so sick of Microsoft's pantenting everything. Next thing, my email is property of microsoft. Using Outlook is now going to be the only way to send email. Is this there way of staying strong over Apple or even the Linux threat. Perhaps.
There's obviously a goldmine waiting for whoever can first patent people as objects, telephone numbers as objects, sandwich types as objects...
Lemme try to fire up my creative juices...
class Person {
std::string name;
}
Whoopee! Patent office here I come!!!!!
That said, I'm going to have the last word, because I can!
Hello everybody, I'm an asshole!
Every object has attributes and methods-- . That's the whole point of OO-based MVC programming. This sounds like the realm of presentation (which IMO shouldn't really be patentable). Is it me, or should the USPO hire at least one computer scientist/historian to look these things over?
Don't put the word "patents" in there as it would attract attention.
Use:
"A system of processes by which intellectual property may be applied for, accepted or rejected, and protected."
I'm filing for a patent on the keyboard, everytime you type a letter, send me a nickel. Thank you.
:)
I cant believe that they are issuing patents on objects... absolutely insane.
I am going to patent the zip codes' string representation - so big brother corporations can't send even a legal notice coz the notice contains the zip code which would be a patent violation...wow!
This is computer-generated and does not require a signature.
I already patented that technique. (And this one).
i think i speak for everyone reading this when i say, IDIOTS! (insert Napoleon Dynamite vocal inflection)
"Patents are a good defensive strategy for any company"
That's BS. Let's assume that a company admits the patent system is screwed, so it obtains patents for defense. That makes no sense unless it is also working to change the current patent system so defensive patents are NOT necessary.
Obviously because Microsoft is not working to fix the current system, it is using these patents for offensive means, not defensive means.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
A Microsoft Evil-O-Meter.
It could be color coded in a way that'd make Tom Ridge proud, or just a progress bar. And it could be blended neatly into Slashdot's formating.
First we had OOP with its "is-a" and "has-a".
Now, Microsoft(R) Innovation(TM) presents: POOP, featuring "patent-as-a" and "use-as-a".
Think Different: POOP - The Resource Locator Is An Object!
Belief is the currency of delusion.
Once again, Groklaw comes to the rescue. Check out the sixth article down.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
Wish me luck:
A process by which imaginary problems are solved by painfully obvious methods which have previously been utilized to solve the same imaginary problem for decades.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Wow, that may be the craziest post of the hour for slashdot! Congrats! http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&ie=UTF-8& q=sue+court+federal+government&btnG=Search+News
"Access Denied" indeed. :-)
Hasn't Lotus Notes had e-mail auto-complete capability for a long, long time? Like Notes 4.5, ~1995?
Quoting Dan Crevier:
* We did innovate in this space in MacOE.
Well, not quite. A number of e-mail clients on the Mac treated e-mail addresses as 'objects' well before Mac OE. It was the natural evolution of Apple's push from Drag-and-Drop functionality across the OS from MacOS 7 onwards (which was on-going from 1990-97 and beyond). Off the top of my head an example would be MailDrop from Baylor Univ. doing this well before OE was even released.
People innovate in all sorts of ways every day. For example, I had to come up with an innovative way to let Cold Fusion applications find collections of non-application related files that would be consistent across several development and testing environments. However, using a shared drive mapped to a particular drive letter is an obvious solution. In a perfect world I would no more get a patent for this than detecting e-mails in an e-mail message. Apple had a toolkit called Apple Data Detectors that scanned text and found things like e-mail addresses. I've used other mail tools that take the e-mail address and match it against an address book and even offer to add the contact to the address book. Apple Mail already does this and has been doing it for years. Where's the innovation? What's the non-obvious part?
Leave the gun, take the cannoli -- Clemenza, The Godfather
* Patents are written in legalese, not in english. Unless you are a patent lawyer, I don't think you can really judge them
Its more than that. There are parts of Patent law that state that the only people that can decide about patents are registered patent lawyers.
When the law says lawyers must make technical decisions, something is very broken.
Profit!
Re: software patents, there's a whole lot going wrong. More to the point, just about everyone knows it's wrong -- except for IP lawyers, for whom this is all a tremendous boon, and who will fight tooth-and-nail to keep the system that way. It's just a matter of:
1. Understanding why it's wrong;
2. Formulating a clear position;
3. Taking that position to your congressman;
4. Over and over and over.
Did you know that the USPTO has a public advisory board? Did you know that it's populated almost entirely by IP attorneys?
http://www.redhat.com/magazine/007may05/features/
i'm pretty sure EMACS and the Big Brother DataBase constitute prior art.
http://bbdb.sourceforge.net/
http://www.jwz.org/bbdb/
Interesting question: What would constitute due diligence in searching prior art? Answer carefully; go overboard, and you'll cripple the USPTO and their ability to grant legitimate patents. Answer too loosely, and you'll end up with people patenting ridiculous things.
This is a very real and practical issue that the USPTO is facing. I'm not sure that there is a good answer.
One of the problems IMHO is that the review and litigation process is too slow, too expensive, and too difficult. People can threaten suit and get others to back down even if the person being attacked knows they have a winning case. (A "winning case" though sometimes takes 3 years and $1 million, which may not be reimbursed, even if you could front the money to do it)
One potential solution would be to streamline the courts - make it quicker and simpler to bring a patent issue to court. It would disincentivize people from bringing false patent claims against other people (since they could lose in short order if they didn't have a case) and things could get properly reviewed. I don't pretend to know how this actually would be done. It's easy to suggest, but practically speaking it would be really, really hard. (Streamlining the courts)
-- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
I get at least 400 hits a month by somebody at the uspto. (biodiversity.georgetown.edu ptohidec.uspto.gov - - [21/Apr/2005:08:38:43 -0400] "GET /tree/order/Homoptera HTTP/1.1" 404 339
ptohidec.uspto.gov - - [21/Apr/2005:08:38:44 -0400] "GET /tree/order/Homoptera HTTP/1.1" 404 339
ptohidec.uspto.gov - - [21/Apr/2005:08:38:46 -0400] "GET /tree/family/Cicadellidae HTTP/1.1" 404 343
ptohidec.uspto.gov - - [21/Apr/2005:08:38:46 -0400] "GET /tree/family/Cicadellidae HTTP/1.1" 404 343
ptohidec.uspto.gov - - [21/Apr/2005:08:38:47 -0400] "GET /tree/family/Cicadellidae HTTP/1.1" 404 343
ptohidec.uspto.gov - - [21/Apr/2005:08:38:52 -0400] "GET /images/counter/infosearch/leafhopper%20bug.jpg HTTP/1.1" 404 363
ptohidec.uspto.gov - - [21/Apr/2005:08:38:52 -0400] "GET /images/counter/infosearch/leafhopper%20bug.jpg HTTP/1.1" 404 363
ptohidec.uspto.gov - - [21/Apr/2005:08:38:55 -0400] "GET /images/counter/picture/leafhopper%20bug.jpg HTTP/1.1" 404 360
ptohidec.uspto.gov - - [21/Apr/2005:08:38:55 -0400] "GET /images/counter/picture/leafhopper%20bug.jpg HTTP/1.1" 404 360
ptohidec.uspto.gov - - [21/Apr/2005:08:38:59 -0400] "GET /images/counter/infosearch/leafhopper%20bug.jpg HTTP/1.1" 404 363
ptohidec.uspto.gov - - [21/Apr/2005:08:39:02 -0400] "GET /tree/family/Cicadellidae HTTP/1.1" 404 343
ptohidec.uspto.gov - - [21/Apr/2005:08:39:04 -0400] "GET /images/counter/infosearch/leafhopper%20bug.jpg HTTP/1.1" 404 363
ptohidec.uspto.gov - - [21/Apr/2005:08:39:06 -0400] "GET /images/counter/picture/leafhopper%20bug.jpg HTTP/1.1" 404 360
ptohidec.uspto.gov - - [21/Apr/2005:08:39:09 -0400] "GET /images/counter/infosearch/leafhopper%20bug.jpg HTTP/1.1" 404 363
ptohidec.uspto.gov - - [21/Apr/2005:08:39:11 -0400] "GET /tree/family/Cicadellidae HTTP/1.1" 404 343
ptohidec.uspto.gov - - [21/Apr/2005:08:39:13 -0400] "GET /images/counter/infosearch/planthopper%201.jpg HTTP/1.1" 404 362
ptohidec.uspto.gov - - [21/Apr/2005:08:39:13 -0400] "GET /images/counter/infosearch/planthopper%201.jpg HTTP/1.1" 404 362
ptohidec.uspto.gov - - [21/Apr/2005:08:39:14 -0400] "GET /images/counter/picture/planthopper%201.jpg HTTP/1.1" 404 359
ptohidec.uspto.gov - - [21/Apr/2005:08:39:14 -0400] "GET /images/counter/picture/planthopper%201.jpg HTTP/1.1" 404 359
Here's the link to picture showing Einstein at that time:p g
http://www.aip.org/history/einstein/images/ae14.j
Oh, and I think today his job application would be rejected because he lack necessary skills...
Er... Apple's Mail has been using "names as objects" since early Panther developer releases something like, nearly two years ago.. ?
I seem to recall Netscape doing something similar to their mail system.
I know for a fact that Oberon-F (the OS w/ the Oberon language) has had object-like self-contained thingies that could be used to send emails to.
What the heck is a vCard if not a contact object?
Any more examples?
A: Ha, my flubbomon uses +5 water power on you!
B: No way, my lawyermon has 10 patents on water.
A: Oh f**k...
B: Lawyermon uses +10 patent lawsuits on your flubbomon!
A: Flubbomon rolls a 7 for "prior art defense" and takes.
B: D****d! I've now got only 3 patents left on water.
A: That's +5 water attack minus 3 patents... 2 damage for your lawyermon!
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Curious that the language of a particular algorithm, or OO concept in this case, isn't a factor in software patents. I wouldn't have so much of a problem if this were, say, IP property only if implemented in a language that is owned by Microsoft, VB, C#, etc.
Anyone have any pro/cons to this perspective?
-Matt
Mail.app in OS X has been doing this for some time now... kinda cool one can drag and drop e-mail addresses. (and do many other things with them...)
What they describe is not treating an email address as an object, but creating an object with an email address as a property that gets displayed (like the code example somewhere above). Email addresses are not objects, they're just simple strings with a specified format telling a network where to direct the mail. Now, if all mail servers could receive an object with all this other crap attached and then decide what to do with it, you could consider the 'address' as an 'object', but it would be inefficient to pass real addresses and whatever other information the 'object' holds.
Or are they just the only company who gets said patents mentioned on Slashdot?
Do companies like IBM file these kinds of patents too (if not, why not or conversly why does MS do it?)
Patents are written in legalese, not in english. Unless you are a patent lawyer, I don't think you can really judge them.
Patents are supposed to be written by practitioners for practitioners. If only lawyers can understand what a patent means, then the patent is a bad patent no matter what it covers (and it may also be invalid).
This is not a patent for autocomplete. It is much more specific.
Yes, it is more specific: it is autocompletion for Email addresses, which is a straightforward extension of autocompletion for everything else.
We did innovate in this space in MacOE.
No, they did not. The fact that they thought they innovated is just a testament to their ignorance.
This just goes to show that the times when patent officers were Einsteins are long gone.
Dan's closure of the response to his first patent (ie -
-Patents are a good defensive strategy for any company.
-We get sued all the time. Witness the current Eolas lawsuit.
-I think there are a lot of things that are lame about the patent system.)
sounds like he is mouthing the opinions of some 'mentor' he has at microsoft
It sounds similar to 'reasoning' kevin smith says he was given during Mallrats (please listen to the Mallrats commentary) by some studio exec. While he thought her advice sounded good during production, in retrospect things didn't work out exactly the way she said
-wouldn't it be better if we changed this aspect of the movie to make it appeal to more people
-more people people means more money for everyone while the audience all enjoys a great movie
The Future Is Longhorn!
Hello000. Filed in 2000? Let's see, I think Lotus Notes did something similar. So did Groupwise. Eudora, Pine.
Come on.
The more often USTPO does things like this, the less US patents will be respected around the rest of the world. Meaning, if someone in another country infringes on a legitimate patent held in the US, the less likely the US patent holders have recourse in that other country. Currently, the infringed upon victim might convince the US government to prevent the foreign parties infringing on the patent from selling/doing buisness in the US, but that's not likely. After all, if for example, the party infringing on a US patent is in China, for example, it is not likely the the US will want to get into a trade conflict with a country that holds nearly 50% of our government's foreign debt instruments.
So, the current direction the USTPO is taking us with nonsense like this is to make it easier for people in other countries to simply copy our intellectual property.
the big thing in panther was email (and url's) as objects where you can drag and drop, or pull-down menu them...
Might we ask what's on that webserver, and what's so significant about it to the USPTO?
"It is a good divine that follows his own instructions" - Portia, The Merchant of Venice
Computer keyboards of various styles have received patents for the unique features they embody. Fortunately, the manufacturers pay a one-time-per-keyboard or one-time-period fee and we don't have to pay-per-use.
BUT some items, particularly 5-figure-and-up medical instruments, do incur a per-patient or per-use royalty. Certain eye-refractive-correction-surgery devices come to mind.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Does Microsoft really want to spend it's resources on this type of thing?
This sound to me like the behavior of a company that has run out of ideas.
"When the law says lawyers must make technical decisions, something is very broken."
So stop electing lawyers to write the laws. Duh! Talk about putting the fox in charge of the henhouse...
It's ironic, how Microsoft is trying to break a similar patent in Austrailia...
KDE/KDEPIM/Konqueror is already treating emailaddresses as objects in the sense I get from reading the actual patent (abstract and claims).
Everything is so beautifully integrated in the recent KDE release so it would seem that this patent could have an impact on this integration.
I guess that's what Microsoft wants to achieve: kill every other Office/Outlook competing product by patenting all the neat features.
RFC821, the specification for SMTP, refers to "path" as an object.
A "path" is either a forward-path or reverse-path in this document. Elsewhere in the document these paths are described as being what we now know as "e-mail addresses".
So from the very start of e-mail, even before it was called e-mail, e-mail addresses have been described as "objects".
Is this prior art?
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Absolutely.
Lotus CC:Mail in the late 90's did this, as did all of the early mail apps which had to contend with Internet vs. FIDOnet vs. etc... networks.
-David Barak
Need Geek Rock? Try The Franchise!
If it's implementation, not a basic idea, then it would have to be a copyright, not a patent.
If patents like these are this easy to get, MS really has no choice but to get them. If they don't, there will be 8 million Eolases suing them over BS. It's all well and good to say the system should be different, there should be no software patents, etc., but in the meantime it's either take out frivolous patents or get sued by someone else.
Next thing you know they'll be patenting the damn computer. "A mechanical device that uses a mathematical process to emulate the process of creating answers to questions..." Charles Babbage is already screaming in his fucking grave.
How much does it cost to apply for a patent? Or to get them to even read the application? Maybe small companies could launch a DDOS attack on USPTO by applying for vast amounts of 'patent X as an object' patents?
How much does it cost to get a patent? Applying is only about £200 in the UK if you don't use a patent lawyer, thousands if you do.
I mean, If I'm likely to be sued by some company with a patent portfolio I want something I can use to sue back.
Deleted
IANAL. The following does not constitute legal advice (if it did, you'd have to pay for it
The patent does not claim "treating an e-mail address as an object" except in the most incidental sense.
There are various parts to a patent: Abstract, References, Claims and Description. The Abstract gives a broad and often-misleading overview of the patent. The References give the references, and the Description gives a human-readable description of the invention. None of these have any legal force or meaning, except possibly as guidance with regard to how the claims might be interpreted.
The only part of a patent that has real legal teeth is the Claims. Unlike the Description, Claims are not human-readable.
Each claim is a single sentence, which is often broken into separate sub-clauses to give it a quasi-sentence structure. However, all the sub-clauses in a claim stand and fall together. That is, a claim to a process [X, Y and Z] does not cover a process only involving X and Y.
Claims may have conditional clauses, but they still stand and fall together. That is, a claim to a process [X, (one of P or Q) and Z] does not cover a process [X, Y and Z], because neither P nor Q is used.
Claims come in two forms: independent and dependent. The typical structure of the claims is:
1) A claim to everything.
2) A method/process/machine as described in claim 1 but specialized in some way.
3) Further dependent claims...
4) A method/process/machine as describe in claim 2 but further specialized in some way.
5) A claim to everything else.
6) A method/process/machine as describe in claim 5 but specialized in some way
7) etc...
That is, patents are typically written in claim groups, with each independent claim having a number of dependent claims following it. Dependent claims may be dependent on either an independent claim or another dependent claim, as shown above.
Independent claims are typcially made a broad as possible.
To read a patent you should first read the abstract, to get a vague sense of what the thing is about. Then skim the description and figures, but don't get too caught up in them because a lot of the stuff they describe will not be covered by the claims. The description usually deals with "the prefered embodiment", which is the best concrete example of the patented systems the author can come up with.
Reading the claims is the important thing. First, look for each set of claims. That is, find the independent claims and their dependents. Count the independent claims. This is a measure of how long you'll be at it. The thing that really matters to understanding the patent is the independent claims: the dependent claims are just specializations.
I prefer to read each independent claim out loud, very slowly. If one is particularly complex, I try re-writing it in human-readable form. After a few minutes of this it is usually possible to figure out what the general intent of an independent claim is. I then try to think of examples of systems that would and would not be covered by the claim, because the claim describes a boundary between covered and uncovered things.
Patents can be daunting to the uninitiated, but anyone who can navigate the complexities of C++ or Perl should be able to make a reasonable patent yield up its meaning without too much difficulty.
To return to the patent in question here, it has a single independent claim. It consists of 11 unconditional sub-clauses and 1 series of conditional sub-clauses with 6 options. So to violate this patent a system would have to perform all of the actions in those 11 sub-clauses and at least one of the actions in the conditional sub-clause. This includes actions like the following:
"upon establishing correspondence with said one or more servers, determining if the address corresponds to an address in a contact list of at least one server;"
Rea
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
The patent's about tagging the origin of an email address and altering the display of that email address based on the origin of the email address - if the email address came from the address book it looks one way if it comes from the internet it looks differently.
Trivial. Seriously.
"Check the address against all entries in the address book. If it's there, underline it. If it's not, italicize it."
I'm not aware of prior art in this one - do you know of an email client that visually differentiated between internet based email addresses and ones from the address book?
Remember, kids: just because you do something first, doesn't mean that it deserves a patent.
Soviet Russian Bill Gates... treats objects... like email... man...
those 404s are from a server that monitors a website on biodiversity (pictures and information http/biodiversity.georgetown.edu). I send a request to a fake page on my own server whenever somebody hits my production website. The U does not monitor hits on the 'big' server for web developers.
all prior art. that way the USPTO does not just give patents for crap like this.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Since Java, C#, Ruby, Smalltalk, and other languages have strings as objects in the language itself, doesn't representing an email address as a string infringe on the patent?
"myEmail@doofer.com"
There, this email address is an object already!
1) Patents are written in legalese, not in english. Unless you are a patent lawyer, I don't think you can really judge them. That's why you see stories like Microsoft patenting the double-click or Apple patenting alpha compositing.
The patent system definitely shouldn't be that way, and I have trouble believing it is intended to be that way. If this were the case then it would be impossible for any small inventor to check that they weren't infringing a given patent without hiring an expensive lawyer.
2) This is not a patent for autocomplete. It is much more specific.
From what I can tell through a 5-minute read of the patent document, it's a patent for a combination of "hunt for email addresses everywhere we can think of" and "autocomplete". Basically it covers a broadening of existing techniques, with a couple of fairly nice ideas for GUIs (which aren't patentable, of course). This isn't that much more innovative. I could have misread it, but if there's any truly innovative stuff in their it's quite well hidden.
3) We did innovate in this space in MacOE.
That may be the case. However, the patent in question probably doesn't count as innovation.
4) Patents are a good defensive strategy for any company. We get sued all the time. Witness the current Eolas lawsuit.
(Surely the best way to deal with that situation would be to lobby for patent reform rather than encouraging software patents in Europe?) As a rule I'll accept this as a reason for patenting dodgy stuff if and only if the filer gives written assurance that they will never use their patents against anyone who isn't suing them.
5) I think there are a lot of things that are lame about the patent system.
No kidding and I'm sorry that slashdot ruined your good mood at getting your first patent - first anything is always fun.
For the love of God, please learn to spell "ridiculous"!!!
We need a bat-signal for the Public Patent Foundation and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Looks like I know where this year's charitable donations are going.
Doesn't sound terribly innovative to me but can we at least be sure to criticize the right thing?
from his blog
"Patents are a good defensive strategy for any company. We get sued all the time. Witness the current Eolas lawsuit."
This is a split decision. Let us examine. "Patents are a good defensive strategy for any company." No patents are supposed to temporarily protect your monetary investment in *INNOVATION*. The only reason its used as a defense strategy is because the system is broken and none of the big boys want to step up and demand it be fixed.
We get sued all the time. Witness the current Eolas lawsuit. Ok Dan lets apply your logic to this, why isnt the Eolas patent an example of a defensive patent? Assuming it was, as we can see your 'defensive' patent advocacy all falls down when a greedy law firm gets involved. Unless MS wants to put money in a trust guaranteeing that it be used to defend people from patent lawsuit brought by MS these words are just more empty BS.
I don't want anyone to think this is a personal attack on Dan, i don't know him at all. However I think hes a tad too 'hopeful' that power doesn't get abused by the hand that feeds him.
Congratulations!
You have just hit the nail on the head with your observations that this is a defensive patent. It would appear that this strikes at the heart of the Firefox/Opera threat to IE dominance. I know that this patent was files 4 years ago, but with this in hand, M$ can successfully claim "prior art" on browsers with cookies, even though those cookies are not graphical.
Those clever patent attorneys! How can M$ and the un-soft-ware industry ever do without them?
This latest salvo on the OS Wars battlefront is just one more strategy to bring computing to it's knees and worship at the feet of those who have the most money, the most patents and the most gall to destroy competition by whatever means neccessary!
Sounds like Plan 'A', (build a useful product), has been allowed to fail. I remember a time when the master's of redmond plans were not cursed in everyday conversation. I find myself unable to discuss redmond actions at the dinner table.
... except that in Australia, a lawyer did just this to highlight the stupidity of the patent system.
8 165.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/141
Of course, the patent office claim that it'd be an invalid patent, but the point is they wouldn't know about the invalidity until a third party actually made a case in court.
How many dollars would be wasted in legal fees before sanity prevailed? Who knows?
So we have IT giants patenting stuff that's obvious or stuff that has existed in other products for several years before the patent was filed. Maybe some of these are invalid patents as well (and yes, I know that the Australian patent laws are different to the US ones, but the point remains).
So... I'm off to the patent office here in Australia to patent a system of storing a microscopic circuit's state using a simple but elegant set of logic gates that allow two states to be stored one at a time (but not both together).
And then I'll take every RAM manufacturer on Earth to court.
If I worked at the patent office, I would reject everything that came across my desk. I wonder if I would get in trouble? Maybe we should all get jobs there??
Removal of trace fecal matter from the rectum by use of a matrix of cotton, fiberous matter and recycled paper placed into sheets. This invention allows the user to remove trace fecal matter from their own posterior, or the posterior of another without soiling their hands. After going to the toilette, many users are burdened by the clumps of fecal matter which my not fall into the toilette. This invention allows users to safely, and in a sanitary manner, remove the excess fecal material from their posterior. To dispose of the fiber sheets, the user simply flushes the soiled sheets in a standard toilette.
The point of this exercise was to show we can take sufficiently well crafted language and make wiping one's ass with toilette paper seem non-obvioius.
Leave the gun, take the cannoli -- Clemenza, The Godfather
People on slashdot get so upset when people are granted useless patents. They think that having a patent automatically means you can get royalties.
Fact is that the vast majority of patents never make a dime. Just because you have a patent doesn't mean that you are entitled to lots of cash. And it is actually relatively easy for anyone to get a patent on just about anything. The hard part is getting a usefull patent that will stand up in court -- that is why you need a patent lawyer to write the patent for you so that the courts will decided that you are entitled to cash!
The patent office really just keeps a record of what people think that they invented. A lot of people on this group think that the patent office should be more selective about what the grant patents on. I think that this would be a VERY BAD IDEA!!!
Without patents every invention becomes an industry secret. If you can't protect your ideas with a patent you tend not to share them with anyone. On the other hand if you patent something you publish it for all of the world to see. If the patent office suddenly decides to be strict on what they can patent then a lot of people may no longer publish their ideas because there is no protection for them. Why even try for a patent if there is a good chance that you won't have it granted and your now published idea becomes public domain. I think everyone one agrees that it is good for ideas to be published so that others can work off of your idea.
Some on slashdot think that it is obvious which ideas are useless and which are truly new idea. I don't think so! When something is state of the art then there is a good chance that many -- even many very educated people -- won't get it. To them something that is revolutionary may not seem that patentable and that idea that looks revolutionary might be obvious to those who do get it.
It is best that they just patent and then publish everything. That way people feel protected and will freely publish their ideas. It will then be up to the courts to figure out what ideas are revolutionary and are therefore worth $$$!
So what if MS or someone else gets a useless patent. All they really did was take a patent number and kill a few trees. It will never stand up in court so they will never get any money! And those that file patents that at first seem useless but really turn out to be million dollar ideas will get their money. And industry secrets will be kept to a minimum as people are free to publish their ideas without worring about not getting credit.
So everyone take a deep breath and CHILL OUT!!!
since this is just a combination of already established comptuer science methodolgies (object serialization, etc.) I propose the following:
- user goes to mexican restaurant
- user eats spicy burrito
- user consumes spciy sauce
- user drinks strong coffee afterwards
- user takes huge shit
clearly the user serialized his data (i.e. the burrito), put it into a container (his stomach), then treated his data as an object by running it through drinking application (coffee) then running through another application (colon) and receiving final confirmation. toilet bowl full of shit.so, who's with me?
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
That's BS. Let's assume that a company admits the patent system is screwed, so it obtains patents for defense. That makes no sense unless it is also working to change the current patent system so defensive patents are NOT necessary.
Well, if you're a business manager, you learn to work within the system. You don't necessarily spend your firms money to try to change it, especially when your chances are slim to none. I can guarantee you that your shareholders would hang you out to dry if you spent their profits on it.
Yes, the system is broken, but don't expect the business community to put forth an effort to fix it...just ain't gonna happen unless there's some incentive for them to do so.
Just another day in Paradise
Well, I endorse the sentiment, but your view of business is not how business views itself.
First approximation:
Businesses aren't there to fix society's problems. They are there to make a buck for the stockholder.
Second approximation:
OK, that's not completely true: we as a society grant them incorporation and all its benefits because as a side effect they do solve a lot of society's problems. Hunger is not wiped out in the US, but all the hunger than can be wiped out by the profit motive is, which it turns out is a lot more than a 100% government driven system has ever been able to accomplish.
SO:
Corporations, from their own internal viewpoint, are machines that exist to generate profit. They do this in a framework of laws and regulations and norms that we as a society fix with an aim to maximizing the public good of their work.
If that framework incents them to damage the public good, then righteous indignation only takes us so far. Energy is better directed at reforming the framework. Unfortunately, this means politics, but there you have it.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Using patents like this is like the principle of MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction). Both sides had nukes, neither can use them for fear that the enemy would also, leaving both a smoking ruin.
So here you have two countries with potential world-destroying force aimed at each other... each depending on the other side being too afraid to use their weaponry for fear of retaliation. Sound like a good way to do things? I thought not.
I think the patent system is broken as well, but I can almost agree with MS's defensive patents. I've never heard of them suing anyone over say, the doubleclick. However, with the system as bad as it is, it would be easy for a small company to patent something that an MS product already does, and sue Microsoft for millions. Since Microsoft has the resources, it's just easier for them to patent this crap.
Don't get me wrong, I think it would be better if they used their money to fix the patent system, but I've yet to see them use their patent hoard against anyone. Besides, if MS tried to sue, it doesn't seem like it would be too hard to win this one on prior art.
Did somebody at USPTO really read this, or have they begun to simply rubber-stamp "granted" on all applications?
One of the more interesting bits of patent law (and one that I found out much to my own chagrin) is that if Microsoft themselves presented this idea to the public, it is still considered to be prior art. I think the USPTO gives a grace period of about a year between one's own presentation and the filing of a patent, though. I'm also not sure if use in software would qualify as "presentation".
Mod this down. Summary:
... patents exist, and their is NO pending battle to change that anytime soon. Working within the system does not preclude trying to change the system.
1. Quote someone else
2. Oversimplifying rhetoric
3. Flamebait
Like it or not, patents ARE a good defensive strategy. Let's ASSUME company CEOs even dislike patents, and ASSUME they care to fight them in some way. (Very broad assumptions, both!) They still have to be practical
feh.
actually in order to be promoted to GS-13 at the PTO you need to either pass the patent bar or pass the internal version of the exam
examiners usually start at grades gs5-9 (though you can start as an 11 with the proper background) pay is usually 50-65k to start, with a law degree you would likely start as a gs-7/9 (these grades require advanced degrees or 1-2 years of work experience to be appointed to). Promotion is rapid, you can go from gs-7 to GS-13 in 3.5 years and have about a 30k pay increase
there is no civil service exam requirement for the PTO.
the exam is no longer waived for examiners who had less than 4 years of service as of last summer, instead you need to recieve a certificate of legal competency (which requires passing the bar or passing the internal legal certification exam which is 50 questions from the bar exam) and certificate of bargaining authority
examiners do search online in computer based arts, i know, I am one. likewise an examiner can use an affidavit to estabish knowledge of a particular process they have personally used or seen and apply it as prior art. Only problem is it may not hold up if the applicant appeals it.
the japanese and european systems also dont work on a first to invent basis like the us, go check out some PCT searches some time and you will see what i mean, art indicated allowable in an international search will be rejected in the US simply because certain references can not be provided.
A law degree is not really necesscary as examiners dont argue case law very often.
Is anyone on this site over 16 and do you have a brain? Patents are bad, selling software is bad....when does it stop? When were all broke? I agree some patents are going too far and the patent office should review the way they issue them. What I can't agree with is the way people here vilify anyone for registering a patent.
If I don't want to make money supporting software, I want to make money writing software, and if my software is good and does something that no one else has figured out, then I want to patent that software. It's a little idea called CAPATILISM! You guys need to go start a hippy-hacker commune that is as socialistic as you guys would like it to be and leave those of us alone that want a career and not a hobby....Just because they thought of it, and you didn't doesn't mean they should have to give it away.
Luckily for me there are many others out there who would like to make money also, so you socialists can keep complaining all you want, since the capatilists have the money and hence the power.
I'm sorry... but I think IBM had that over a DECADE ago with their object oriented "Workplace Shell" in OS/2 2.1 and up! I can certainly remember doing a "Drag and drop" of E-Mail addresses to contact lists, E-Mail composition windows, etc. How do they get away with this nonsense??
Buzzing the information Superhighway at Warp speed
Your logic is wrong. Whether or not it makes sense to obtain defensive patents is completely independent of whether or not it makes sense to work against the system. Neither is a prerequisite for the other.
Also a fallacy. It is completely possible for a company to not work against the system and also not use patents offensively.
Perhaps they are indeed intending to be evil, but you have given no evidence.
Part of the reason why I switched to Libertarian is that republicans (and the democrats, but not as bad) allows the gov. to stomp all our rights and not have any responsibilities for them. If you sue, they will simply pass a law that says that you can not do it. Good Example of this.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Riker and Picard together (horrified): Lawyers !!
Geordi: It can't be. All the Lawyers were rounded up and sent hurtling into the sun in 2017 during the Great Awakening.
Disclaimer: I work for IBM. However, any opinions I give are my own.
IBM is the single largest holder of software patents in the world. The difference, in my mind, between the patents like this one and the ones IBM holds is that IBMs are mostly algorythmic in nature. That is, they'll deal with how data is processed inside a program as opposed to being something an end user directly interacts with like an e-mail address. Thus, while there may be patents that are obvious, since you don't get to interact with them directly on a day-to-day basis, they don't get mentioned.
There are probably exceptions to this, as this is just based on the patents I've personally seen from IBM.
So... that's another use what the Whitened Fluff Pulp (US Patent # 6,893,473 as was mentioned in the First Post) is good for.
I don't know how you solve this problem more generically with the steady growth of doctrinare propertarianism in politics throughout the world, especially since property, to many, appears as "common sense", without the more sophisticated, economist's understanding of what property is, and means.
The battle to promote educated opinion is a difficult one indeed, requiring a honing of arguing skills so that the informed opinion can be presented as common sense over the prejudiced one.
I think, personally, that the root of the problem is deeper than patents.
Wikileaks, no DNS
Maybe since we are stuck with these infernal things we should try to get them ammended to make them a little more palatable.
Maybe we can create a tiered patent structure with software patents being lower down on the list giving them a 3 or 5 year lifespan.
I know this is not the ideal solution since it would be better if they didn't exist at all but maybe this could be a compromise that fixes some of the headaches.
A teenager could make a simple class out of an e-mail address! Where has the brain of the patent office ppl gone?
If you read the patent, it could be interpreted as something innovative, until you start looking at the examples of how it's meant to be used.
Correct. Now, I'd imagine that the innovation tagged by use of the phrase "...on the internet" will be replaced by "...as an object". What absurdity. What companies have started doing is disecting broad areas of knowledge/application, and staking claim to individual pieces. In this case, "...as an object" is exceedingly trivial to anyone even mildly familiar with object-oriented programming...ANYTHING can be an object. And to think that having an icon to denote some kind of state, or classification is something new or innovative....
If a patent is approved that is shown to have had publically visible prior art, then the Patent Examiner who approved the grant of the patent goes to jail for malpractice.
The purpose of these frivolous MS patents is so that one CANNOT work of these ideas. ie. Kill Open Source.
Lay enough traps and one will eventually hit.
What we're left with is "allowing the user to manipulate the email address as an object".
Then what did they just get a patent on?
I wonder if I should submit a patent application for treating "air" as an object allowing it to be manipulated via but not restricted to processes of inhallation and expiration. Perhaps extending the application to include parsing "air" into distinct elements, i.e. oxigen, as a pre-process function for enhanced system distribution... If they can patent email addresses as an object, my idea just might pass muster.
In Soviet Russia, object patents you!
unable to resolve function slashdot.sig(), aborting...
This is where getting your ideas committed to paper is worthwhile. I hope internet timestamps are acceptable to help show prior art, so here it goes:
r y names
I present to you a list of items to be treated as objects in a similar fashion to the aforementioned MicroSoft patent:
Webpages
webpage addresses (URLs)
code
code functions
IP addresses
MAC addresses
files
filenames
directories
directo
peer-to-peer connections
peer-to-parent connections
I've submitted my patent application for storing addresses in a varchar(255). I suggest if anybody's storing a certain type of data in a certain data structure they act quickly.
Ok. You can be in charge of funding this orginization that keeps track of every single thing that anyone's ever done. Let us know when you get the first trillion dollars so we can begin.
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
If you enter an email address in a message pane, often a computer program will run it through LDAP. This process, IMHO, meets the elements of claim 1 (the only independent claim). You have:
1) email address in a header
2) it gets parsed
3) it is checked against a database
4) the comma after the address, the bracketed name, or the icon on the left serves as the adjacent indicator.
5) You can then delete, copy, or other actions on the email address (manipulating as an object).
This is where coders who patent frivoulous inventions end up: alone on the patent playground.
Why is it that I know people who have applied for patents for original ideas and have been rejected, but these non-inovations from MS seem to easily get patented? Is it just a matter of throwing money and lawyers at the USPO?
Or maybe just the idea of storing metadata about an email address with that email address. I'm fairly certain we can find prior art for this one.
Wake up - the future is arriving faster than you think.
Someone should patent the process of getting a patent. That person would be very rich.
An email address is, well an email address.
It's a bit of data.
Displaying it, parsing it, sorting it, messing around with pointers to it, keying it to a pointer to other information that's related to it, hashing it, putting it in a fancy database, assigning it to a variable, calling it monkey brain soup, I just don't get the patent.
Perhaps because I do not understand what an 'object' is or what makes it so special. I always thought an object was just a variable that one decided would hold a certain sort of data, or pointer to a certain sort of data.
I'm serious here, I've just never been able to get my brain lump wrapped around the concept of an 'object' in programming.
If one of you guys who is adept at concise lucid explanations of programming stuff would help me out here...
I guess we should be going for a law degree instead of a CS to be qualified programmers, then.
When I worked for Symbolics, makers of the Lisp Machine, their window system had a hybrid command line/ GUI called the "presentation manager".
Each object (yes, object) in the system had a 'presentation' method, so it could present itself in the GUI. The window system could this present any type of object, and allow object or application-specific operation by the user clicking the mouse OR by entering them in the command line. Thus, clicking over, say, an email address object, would allow you to do operations on it.
If Microsoft can patent this, I ought to be able to patent pressing "enter" to end a line in an email message.
This software patent stuff is just so psychotic.
Apple's been keeping e-mail addresses in objects, and letting you drag and drop them, etc, since the Address book application in 10.2. Other software developers were doing the same back in the NeXT days (Simson Garfinckel's SBook app springs to mind.)
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
SBook.app by Simson L. Garfinkel 1993 used sed/awk to capture email addresses provided by a "Rolodex" style GUI window. SBook supported tokens which enabled email addresses to be treated as an object that could be searched or actions performed provided buttons/switches/etc... in the GUI.
Sbook is available in the MacOS X downloads section for an example of this app which performs database functions through the use of flat-filed data.
Fsck that kid!
I disagree. Look at the Thunderbird email client (which is based on the Mozilla email client, which existed before this patent). One can do nearly all the above things in the emai preview pane, or in the header of the message display itself -- right click to add to a contact list, bring in from a contact list, etc. To do these things, the program already has to be doing lots of the above claims internally -- even if there is no graphical feedback.
My interpretation of the claims is that the patent is fairly narrow. It's broadest claim outlines a process consisting of many steps, all of which must be performed in order for the patent to be infringed.
You have to read the clauses of the claim as logical AND statements.
Mike Borella http://www.borella.net/mike
Microsoft owes me $25 for each violation, or a total of $500,000,000.
Tag lost or not installed.
So, now we know that doing something stupid suddenly becomes smart if you're ragging on some else for doing the stupid thing.
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
Microsoft is going overboard! Ugh, when will it end!
Wouldn't the Whitespace programming language be prior art? ;)
---John Holmes...
Why is his prior art such a piece of crap? Having written patents before, it is beholden on the author to do a reasonable search for prior art.
Clearly, Dan is either incompetent at locating e-mail packages that do precisely what his patent claims, or he is willfully omitting them in the interest of scoring a quick patent.
Somebody ought to create a legal fund designed at shooting this crap down. Honestly.
Well, on the good side, at least my patents don't suck as badly now, comparatively.
the proper way to piss when standing up to avoid unncessary spillage on floor, yourself, or toilet seat. I want 20 cents every time you guys take a whiz, damn't, better yet, I think I'm just going to lobby congress for a tax on pissing, because, I know all of you must do it, but will probably try and lie about how much you do it.
Mods: I've already noted this is off topic. Modding it down would be silly. That being said, I thought that the Google text ads were supposed to be relevant. I've been seeing the same ads popping up a lot.. not just on slashdot.
Image here
More & more "Christian" services popping up. WTF?
Do we, then? I haven't made any laws recently, have you? No?
Do you know anyone who has? Do you know why?
e.g. I know one guy: Orrin Hatch (first example off the top of my head). He wrote up a law called the INDUCE Act. Why? To maximize the public good of corporations' work? Maybe. Maybe not.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
If you were going to try to sue the PTO, you would likely proceed under the Federal Tort Claims Act, 28 U.S.C. 2674 - "The United States shall be liable, respecting the provisions of this title relating to tort claims, in the same manner and to the same extent as a private individual under like circumstances, but shall not be liable for interest prior to judgment or for punitive damages."
The problem is, there are strict exhaustion requirements, meaning you have to settle your beef with the PTO using whatever procedures the PTO has provided to challenge allegedly illegitimate patents.
The PTO would likely argue that it provides adequate inter-agency procedures that litigants must first exhaust prior to bring suit in federal court. These include the inter partes re-examinations (more like a full trial, introduced just a few years ago, only a few parties have tried them) and ex parte re-exams (no third party involvement after requesting re-exam and submitting new prior art), both which constitute agency (PTO) proceedings that litigants must exhaust first.
If you first exhaust these procedures, and the patent still survives, it is less likely that after all that, even after you get to federal court, the PTO can still be proven negligent in issuing the patent.
I know, I know, I have bad karma, but seriously:
If I have some software that I wrote, and it is possibly in conflict, unbeknownst to me, with an existing software patent, what happens if I throw it in the public domain like sourceforge.
Wouldn't that protect me from lawsuits, and allow me to continue using it to perform my service?
@vSpid Like, Whatever
The question isn't really how innovative is it. The questions are:
1) Were they the first people to patent this?
2) If so, did anyone else actually implement it without patenting it?
3) If not, is it an obvious idea, one that anyone with knowledge in the field could have easily reached?
If not, then it's a legit patent. Our system doesn't require patents to be innovative to any level other than non-obvious.
"ANYTHING can be an object"
...
Except for NULL
Yes I know the answer should be obvious but the legal system is so screwed up now I don't know anymore.
touche : )
The validation steps are obvious and many programs already do them, the database queries and state icons are obvious and many programs already do them.
The patent is only valid as a whole. The fact the other things did bits and pieces of what they're doing do not apply, as they did not perform the whole. Most inventions build on existing concepts and technology and add a new twist to it.
In other words, the mere act of allowing the user dealing with an email address as a UI element wouldn't violate this patent. You'd also have to do all of the other things listed in the claims.
Microsoft did not get a patent on treating an email address like an object.
They got a patent on allowing the user to manipulate an 'object' (not programming object, but UI element) based on the operations taken in the previous steps listed in the patent.
If his patent truly was innovating, he wouldn't be bragging about it on a blog. He would keep it a secret for as long as he could.
The only other time I heard someone brag about their new patent, was the IP attorney who patented "how to swing sideways in the playground"
when your OS in your car results in a Fatal Exception.
.
.
.
Geez this patent insanity is getting silly.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
This .sig is free shareware. Register now for only $49.95 to get its full 10MB version!
There's no such thing as "free shareware". It's either freeware (as in free) or shareware (as in please pass this copy around and pay for your copy to show your support - and perhaps get rid of the nag screens).
Also, shareware is ususlly not crippled in any way, the differnece between the registered and unregistered copies is genrally a couple small features or the lack of a nag screen. But the software is still 100% useable in it's basic functions without registering.
Software that only comes in a limited version and requires payment to recieve the "full 10MB version" is trialware.
I don't know who to stare in disbelief at first. Microsoft for patenting "the kings new clothes", for there is nothing there. Or the USPTO for telling everyone how great the clothes look!
What we need is a sizeable organization to go around getting patents for widely useful ideas with explicit instructions included in the patents stating that they may be freely used by all. Beat the patent hoarders at their own game. Then at least some things would be beyond the giant's grasps.
This is pretty new, I think.
Before Office 2003, e-mail addresses were just text, some where auto-hyperlinked.
In version 2003, E-mail addresses and web links have a "hover" menu for their smart tag, allowing you to look up, add to contacts, send mail or files to, the address in question. It detects the normal text is an e-mail address and turns it into an object with properties and behaviors.
That's pretty interesting, in my opinion, and I like the feature a lot.
Dude -- you need to get your facts straight. Microsoft *is* calling for patent reform as well.s oftpatent_1.html
Check out this infoworld article at http://www.infoworld.com/article/05/03/10/HNmicro
Obviously because Microsoft is not working to fix the current system, it is using these patents for offensive means, not defensive means.
By your own argument, it is likely using them for defensive means for now.
I have some ideas I would like to patent but I am poor. Does anyone have any information on where one could go to "partner" with someone who would put in the investment? What does one with no money do when they have a invention idea? It seems patents are just for the rich to get richer.
FYI I patented the object "object". And since every other object inherits from my patented object everybody (meaning all of you) must make a deposit on my bank account paying for royalties. My team of lawyers would be contacting you soon to give a description on the details. Thank you.
The USPTO is either extremely dense not to realize the obviousness of this patent,
Or
they're being greased my Micro$oft.
"Patents are a good defensive strategy for any company" --- ah, well, there's a bit of a problem there.
Patents can be a defensive weapon when the company suing you is making use of technology that you hold patents on, but there's a whole class of sleazebags that just buy up patents and make their money from licensing and lawsuits. You can't mount a defensive strategy with patents when your opponent isn't actually using any technology.
This "defensive strategy" line is total and utter bullshit, and the naive engineer who falls for it is feeding the profession to unscrupulous lawyers, bit by bit.
Maybe lawsuits will finally kill it out of bloatcode Fadsville. Syanara OO and good riddence! -- Anonymouse-OOP-hater
Is there ay patent for displaying "a small image" with the website name on URL bar?
Is there any patent for displaying a "lock" on user viewable area on my web browser?
Is there any patent on displaying "junk" if the my e-mail client thinks the e-mail is junk?
My termninal shows files and directories in different color. Is that patented..
Any application development can team come with a hundreds of patents. Whom does it help?
Someone should quickly patent the process of patenting software patent and stop others from filing any more gibberish patents..
You are correct. Not only does it sound not terribly original, it sounds like pseudo code. Innovative, maybe, but inventive, no.
-- Free software on every PC on every desk
Which many programs already do, as had already been pointed out.
No, they got a patent on treating email addresses as objects and allowing a user to manipulate and recieve feedback on the state of that object via a GUI. As had already been pointed out many programs already perform the superflurous items added to pad this non-innovation. There is nothing worthy of patent protection here, the filing attorney needs fining for wasting our time.
Sounds suspiciously like Mail.app.
Trust me. This is an inactive account. Regardless of what the
The nature of his, er, patent doesn't exactly argue for his being the world's foremost computer genius.
Tech Public Policy stuff