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:Prior art at Google Groups....

[oohshiny]

They're patenting something that involves the association of emoticons with iconic images, also involving mechanisms like X-Face. It's still not new, it's still not their idea, it still shouldn't get granted, but if you're going to cite prior art, cite the right one.

emotiflags

[DavidD_CA]

Say what you will, but:

1) "Emotiflags" is a brand new term. A search on Google only showed 5 hits, all of which were emoticon flags (as in country flags), not emotional flags like :) and :(

2) One of the biggest problems people have with email is that it doesn't convey emotion. If the use of this concept becomes commonplace, it could mean good things for email. Being able to look at the emotion prior to opening the message will mean a lot less miscommunication.

3) While message forums have been doing this for ages, this is the first time I've seen it applied to email as some kind of header deta along with the to, from, subject, importance, etc.

And for what it's worth, the patent was filed almost a year and a half ago.