Why Bill Gates Wants 3,000 New Patents

theodp writes "The NY Times looks at Microsoft's newly acquired passion for patents and wonders: What would Thomas Jefferson think if he were around to visit Microsoft's campus, seeing software patents stacked like pyramids of cannonballs? Jefferson might also be shocked by Microsoft's summer crop of patent apps, which includes Creating a note related to a phone call, Adding and removing white space from a document and Identifying when baseball is exciting. Gotta meet that quota of 60 fresh, nonobvious patentable ideas a week!"

Comments

First posting.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd patent first posting, but it's been patented. that's why I waited before posting this so it wouldn't be an infringing first post. Thank you.

Jefferson would be more shocked

[Anonymous Coward]

That he could see patents physically stacked into pyramid form.

Oh, and he'd be upset that he's in another place named Washington while there's no state name Jefferson.

Redmond Monopole

[Doc Ruby]

Patents are government-certified monopolies. Of course Gates, commander of the greates monopoly empire ever, wants a fleet of targeted monopolies. The PTO Monopoly Department is Gates' bitch, working overtime on the public dime to keep Gates the only guy who gets to do those businesses. The rest of us have to figure out for ourselves how to earn the money for the licenses to use our own computers, listen to our own CDs, watch our own DVDs, play our own games, pay our own taxes...

patent violation

[k4_pacific]

They got a patent on this?

BOOL IsBaseballExciting()
{
return FALSE;
}

Wow. Just wow.

Re:Prior Art

[stoborrobots]

Well, you could do it...

Yeah, but could you do it with two weeks, and a $100 budget?

New patent idea

[fimion]

I think I will patent Bill Gates' hair style....

Re:Baseball?

[Everleet]

Identifying when baseball is exciting is not a trivial task

return false;

Original and non-obvious indeed

[Mawbid]

From the one on whitespace:

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the size of the page is reduced such that the size of the page is at least as large as the original size of the page

Identifying when baseball is exciting

[ChairmanMeow]

It's pretty trivial to identify when baseball is exciting:

bool is_baseball_exciting ()
{
      return false;
}

What would Jefferson say?

[PsiPsiStar]

"I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just."

"Every citizen should be a soldier. This was the case with the Greeks and Romans, and must be that of every free state. "

"The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it always to be kept alive. "

"An honest man can feel no pleasure in the exercise of power over his fellow citizens."

"I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it. "

"Any cute black slaves around? My wife is out of town."

Re:There's a name, people!

[ArcSecond]

That funky monkey...

Next patent

[springbox]

I wonder if Microsoft will try to patent a method for stating the obvious?

Re:Prior Art

[stoborrobots]

If you insist. Here goes:

stoborrobots:/home/stoborrobots$ su -
Password:
root:/root# apt-get update
Hit http//mirror.au.realworld.org unstable/main Packages
Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
root:/root# apt-get install life
Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
The following NEW packages will be installed:
life
life is already the newest version (24.6.realworld.8-1)
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
root:/root# exit
stoborrobots:/home/stoborrobots$ stfu already
bash: stfu: command not found
stoborrobots:/home/stoborrobots$

Nope, sorry, I can't seem to do that; do you have a link to the sources so I can compile them for myself? If not, you could try to
# apt-get install humour

Sooner or later...

[payndz]

My prediction for the not-too-distant future...

Non-Western SoftCo: We wrote some cool new software.
US 'IP-directed' SoftCo: Ha! We have software patents that cover your program! Hand over all your money now!
Non-Western SoftCo: Do we look American? Fuck you, and fuck the horse your lawyers rode in on.
US 'IP-directed' SoftCo: B-but... you can't talk to us that way! We'll use our bribed, uh, 'lobbied' politicians to stop you entering our market!
Joe Public: [Downloads software from non-US site]
US 'IP-directed' SoftCo: Shit! Our revenue stream! If only we actually made something! Aiiieeee!

ThiS, of COurse, may have happened already...

How many...

[AnalystX]

Q: How many IT workers does it take to screw in a light bulb?

A: One, at Microsoft. Everyone else has to license the process from them or wear night vision gear (Microsoft is working on the candle patent).

I can see it now...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Method for convincing people you have a hamster on your head"

Re:Baseball?

[TheDauthi]

Nope.

if(is_over || is_boobs_showing || is_giant_robot_attacking)
    return true;
return false;

Re:Are you working for MS?

[Vo0k]

> You got a nice buffer overflow going on there. That strzTemp should be 4 tchars wide to fit in the string terminator.

Thank you for reporting this. This issue exists in our database with ticket Q3579550. It's meant to be that way. Some applications depend on this behaviour.

Sincerely
Microsoft debug dept.