Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
But the frowny is already a trademark!
:)
(p.s. that is one awesome website. the posters are bloody hilarious
That patent is actually very specific. It covers exactly the way MSN Messenger (both the protocol and the client) work, and nothing more. It doesn't try to patent the concept, but a specific implementation of it. For example, if you use a 20x20 pixel image instead of 19x19 pixels, or transmit the image as something other than a PNG, or store them somewhere other than a web browser's disk cache, it doesn't apply.
It's still quite dangerous though. I don't think that any other IM client that implements MSN's custom emoticons would infringe it, because none of them use a web browser cache to store images. Every other claim is pretty much required to interoperate with Microsoft's client. So if you implemented a full MSN client as an extension to Firefox, for example, it almost certainly would infringe on this patent. Or if your operating system had some unified cache for storing any downloaded content that is used by both the web browser and IM client.
I certainly wouldn't consider it patentable. It's hardly complex, innovative, or non-obvious.
A good indicator is that the patent application probably took them far longer to write than it took to design and implement the thing in software.
Have you people read the actual patent description? It doesn't talk about patenting smileys, but only the method of creating custom smileys and addigning bitmaps to them. Basically, they are trying to patent a universal bitmap smiley distribution protocol.
All the other posters in the thread seem not to have read the application :
:-) or pwn3df46607
"Methods and devices for creating and transferring custom emoticons allow a user to adopt an arbitrary image as an emoticon, which can then be represented by a character sequence in real-time communication. In one implementation, custom emoticons can be included in a message and transmitted to a receiver in the message. In another implementation, character sequences representing the custom emoticons can be transmitted in the message instead of the custom emoticons in order to preserve performance of text messaging. At the receiving end, the character sequences are replaced by their corresponding custom emoticons, which can be retrieved locally if they have been previously received, or can be retrieved from the sender in a separate communication from the text message if they have not been previously received."
The patent is not for smilies.
It is for having both ends having pre-set images displayed for certain character sequences in text mesages, be they
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Typesetting already has well established prior art of having a special optimized representation for a sequence of characters.
It's called a ligature. "To" is an example of a sequence that is frequently optimized with an alternate image (that moves the 'o' closer to the 'T').
No, there are boobs.. (.)(.) for knee knockers
then you have (*)(*) for pert, firm pointers
or you have (o)(o) and if you like them bigger, (O)(O)
and of course there's (0)(0) or if you frequent tiddy bars these might look familiar ($)($)
( O )( O ) and if you like them extra large..
Learn to read, people!
:) into a picture"
"OMG M$ have patented teh smilies!!!!1" - wrong
The patent APPLICATION is for encoding and transfer of CUSTOM smilies. ie an arbiary image or animation on one computer being transferred to another one automatically in a seamless manner via encoing, transmisson, reconstruction.
Not to say that this application is good - it's not. Just that 99% of people here have it so wrong that it's laughable.
From TFA:
""Thursday, covers selecting pixels to create an emoticon image, assigning a character sequence to these pixels and reconstructing the emoticon after transmission.""
*Note the key words such as CREATE and RECONSTRUCTING.
*Note the lack of the words "changing
- An app displays the emoticon on the source CRT.
- The app copies the emoticon to the output buffer, which is "assigning a character sequence to the pixels".
- The app/OS sends the emoticon to the destination machine.
"The app" in this case can be any email client, a browser with a text box, etc.This requires the source app/OS to "select pixels" from a font in order to display the emoticon.
(It happens that this is the same sequence that the user originally entered, but the patent does not disclaim this).
Another example is an email client that sends a picture of an emoticon using uuencode or base64.
I think that this patent covers more than I think that you think that it does.
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
MS, on the other hand, has not (to my knowledge) used a single patent offensively.
Here you go: Microsoft patents ASF media file format, stops reverse engineering.
Microsoft is also demanding that people buy licenses to use their FAT file system: Wikipedia article