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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."
I know this is /., but RTFP.
.sig files.
The patent's actually not about treating email addresses as objects.
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.
And whatever else they added to the patent.
It's NOT about patenting
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?
Actually, the USPTO is supposed to apply a standard that demands that a patent be for something that is not obvious to someone appropriately trained and familiar with the technology.
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. All of those concepts are obvious and have prior art associated with them. I think the patent examiner should have insisted on some example applications that were not rehashes of technology that is decades old, since that might make clear what is actually being patented and thus narrow the scope enough that the patent would be enforcable and reasonable.
-All that is gold does not glitter - Tolkien
www.ra
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!
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.
Doesn't sound terribly innovative to me but can we at least be sure to criticize the right thing?
OK... so... if I can ignore the copyrights of the MPAA/RIAA/EULA and use their material as I see fit, then by the same token, I should be able to ignore the GPL and use the code any way I see fit, including using it in a piece of commercial code without making my code GPL as well.
Because the MPAA/RIAA/EULA defines in which ways that you are allowed to copy copyrighted material is not logic to claim that they "remove rights". Removing rights would most likely be an actionable offense. Suppose they said that you weren't allowed to make a backup copy (fair use), then you could do something about that because they are trying to remove a right that you have. That isn't the case though. They are defining (under terms of their copyright rights) what you can and cannot do with their 'stuff'. If any of this violated consumer rights or the like, it would quickly be brought up.
Compared to the GPL, it doesn't "give" you anything. They are defining (under terms of their copyright rights) what you can and cannot do with their 'stuff'.
Copyright holders have kind of a dial to dial in how much of their rights as copyright holders that they can claim. MPAA/RIAA dials their in tight (they want to reserve all their rights that they can under the copyright laws). GPL dials theirs more lose and give up some of their rights that they are otherwise entitled to. They don't "give" YOU anything. They simply forgo some of the rights that they have which ALLOW you to do certain other things with their stuff.
Also, the FSF have not been found guilty of price fixing and collusion for the same end. RIAA have.
This is neither here nor there. Claiming (or not claiming) rights as a copyright holder is independent of then going off and doing activities like you mention. You are ALLOWED to retain your copyrights (or not, as you choose) regardless of whether or not you then go off and price fix or whatever.
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."