IBM Patents Checking a Box

theodp writes "What do you call it when you drag a pointer over a checkbox to select or deselect it depending on its original state? Answer: US Patent 7,278,116. On Tuesday, the USPTO awarded IBM a patent for Mode Switching for Ad Hoc Checkbox Selection, aka Making an 'X'. Isn't this essentially the same concept as the older Lotus Notes selection model that IBM was recently asked to reintroduce?"

Comments

Re:If someone patents something stupid, do we care

[MrTester]

And while we are ripping on Lotus Notes...

Why in the name of God would they take the F5 key (the key every other application known to man uses to refresh) and assign to to "Logout"?!?!??!!?

WTF?

Ive been using Lotus (against my will) for 3 years now, and still a few times a month I hit F5 because I just KNOW that I should have that email response by now.

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD MAN!!!!!
No, I dont normally invoke the name of God 2 times in an email (Well, I guess thats 3 now). Its just a sign of the wrath Lotus brings out in me.

Re:If someone patents something stupid, do we care

[dgatwood]

I have actual prior art on this. This is a common UI design in the audio world. If you click on a mute button and drag across multiple tracks, it mutes all of them just like it would if you drug your finger across the mute buttons on a console. Most DAW software I've used does this---BIAS Deck, MOTU Digital Performer, Apple Logic.... the list is almost endless.

This is another example of a really obvious patent that adds NOTHING to advance the state of the art. The very fact that this patent was awarded is further evidence that every cool new idea that could possibly be patented in software has already been done at least once, and probably more than once, and hence, software patents to not do anything to improve the state of the art and only serve to harm innovation and stifle competition in the marketplace.