Microsoft Frowned at for Smiley Patent

theodp writes "ZDNet UK reports on criticism of Microsoft's attempt to patent the creation of custom emoticons. 'I would have expected to see something like this suggested by one of our more immature community members as a joke on Slashdot,' quipped Mark Taylor of the Open Source Consortium. 'We now appear to be living in a world where even the most laughable paranoid fantasies about commercially controlling simple social concepts are being outdone in the real world by well-funded armies of lawyers on behalf of some of the most powerful companies on the planet.'"

Comments

Re:Uhoh

[Anonymous Coward]

The patent in question isn't quite as general as you may believe. It is quite clearly a patent on the exact method MSN Messenger uses to display custom graphical emoticons - amongst other things the patent specifies a 19x19 pixel grid (claim 2), a PNG file (claim 7) and the web browser cache (claim 18).

So don't worry, you can all chill out and go back to watching downloading Star Trek on your Linux box or whatever you do between Slashdot stories.

Re:They want for us to hate them, it must be

[imsoclever]

Out of all the possible analogies you could have used, I'm pretty sure this was the worst one. Brace yourself.

"AMErica DESERVED IT BEACUSE WE Drive SUVS"

"I THInk WE SHOULd BOMB ALL THE BROWN PEOPLE"