Microsoft Deems Emotiflags Patent-Worthy

theodp writes "Microsoft said you could count on them to improve patent quality. For an example of how they're raising the bar on innovation, check out this just-published patent application for Emotiflags, which Microsoft explains solves the problem of indicating an emotion associated with an email message. At the risk of infringing on the patent, this one Makes Me Mad!"

Comments

Re:Grounds for patent?

[Crouching Turbo]

This is just an application, it's not a patent yet.

recently???

[sholden]

[0002] Emoticons are graphical icons such as "", or textual representations of graphical icons such as ":-)". Emoticons have become very popular through instant messaging applications, and their use has recently expanded to inclusion in email messages. For example, a user may add a smiley face emoticon after a funny sentence in an email message. Emoticons are typically designed to represent an emotion or feeling.

"recently", "expanded". I don't think so.

Nobody should be able to....

[Joce640k]

Nobody should be able to add a modified header of an existing flag to an SMTP envelope and patent it.

It's not a case of "should", we all know the patent office thinks any patent with the word "computer" in it is novel and deserves the filing fee.

eg. A quality Microsoft patent Another quality Microsoft patent