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Microsoft Patents "Pg Up" and "Pg Dn"
An anonymous reader notes that Microsoft has been granted a patent on "Page Up" and "Page Down" keystrokes. The article links an image of an IBM PC keyboard from 1981 with such keys in evidence. "The software giant applied for the patent in 2005, and was granted it on August 19, 2008. US patent number 7,415,666 describes 'a method and system in a document viewer for scrolling a substantially exact increment in a document, such as one page, regardless of whether the zoom is such that some, all or one page is currently being viewed.'... The company received its 5,000th patent from the US Patent and Trademark Office in March 2006, and is currently approaching the 10,000 mark."
That's ok; I don't RTFA anyway.
sounds more like they patented scrolling up/down the same amount regardless of any zoom factor.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Microsoft patents the process of securing a patent.
... is the three fingers salute. A "standard mechanism allowing end users to terminate faulty operating system processes without having the possibility to save their current work".
Ok it's an easy one.
lucm, indeed.
Although the point here is not how ludicrous the patent is. Small companies simply can't afford the legal fees necessary to show this on court. Every single software patent out there, no matter how silly, is effectively enforced to everyone who doesn't have the resources to show up in court. The system is broken. I hope someone "up there" notices before it's too late
Make It Secret Protect your privacy
I wonder what those keys will be named on non-MS keyboards from now on!
Microsoft announces today the patenting of P-En-IS
Gates: "P-En-IS is one of our most stable products yet! in fact at most it'll need a soft reboot now and then"
Ballmer: "Thats right, Buffer overflows are a FEATURE on this one!"
I have said keyboard. How much do I owe M$?
Modding me -1 troll doesn't make me wrong.
I can't say I remember hearing of Microsoft sue a bunch of companies over a broad patent like this before, so I guess it's better that they have it than some stupid IP holidng patent troll company.
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I think the response my father gave when I read the summary to him nicely sums up what we're all thinking: "Are you fucking kidding me?"
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
They have no guilt, no shame and no conscience. If corporations were people, there's a good chance they'd be just a little bit embarrassed in filing for a patent as obvious and pre-existing as this.
Instead of a corporation being required by law to be beholden to the shareholders interests, let's have that law changed to make corporations beholden to the interests of the people in their community.
The tree years waiting was the time needed to save
approved on an access form on widows Me
Overuse of the Pumping Lemma causes blindness
Can't be tied to a particular machine, it don't result in the physical transformation of an article, so this should apply, and the patent could be invalidated.
I've copyrighted "Pg Up," "Pg Dn," and every variation thereof. So, Microsoft can program a couple of keys to perform a Page Up and a Page Down, but they can't call the keys that do it "Pg Up" and "Pg Dn" without paying me a royalty.
They'll have to use something else, maybe Ctrl-Q E and Ctrl-Q X.
Bwahahahaha!
Don't believe me? Why do you suppose the key that copies the screen says "Prnt Scr" instead of "Copy Scr?" Because I hold the rights to the "Copy Scr" legend!
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
They still use patent threats and indemnification as a way to scare companies off Linux distributions.
The Raven
Simply make Pg Up and Pg Dn scroll an "inexact" amount of lines, ie, every 4 billion presses make it scroll 1 extra line in a random direction.
The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.
Jeez... why did it take them so long? I've been waiting for 25 years for this! This is a killer feature!
Oh, wait.
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
Anyone remember PF7 and PF8?
If I rotate a book 90 degrees either direction, and turn the pages, I am pretty much doing the same thing.
It is a very specific amount of movement (one page), regardless of how far I have the book from my face (zoom), and I can go either direction, up, or down.
So, they basically got a patent for doing what people have been doing with books for most of recorded history.
They obviously disallow common sense when it comes to patent applications. I guess someone patented it already.
I think they'd be better off patenting the space bar, since its bigger and probably more profitable! =) Plus, if you use a fixed width font, the space bar moves exactly the same amount as each letter! woo hoo!
I am using linux and still works. Are they going to sue me like the media giants?
So, does this apply to what happens when you view a PDF in Adobe Acrobat ?
How long has that been around ?
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
Primary Examiner: Campbell; Joshua D
Sorry for the pun, but in fact it is. Patently. Ridiculous.
WHEN is the PTO going to straighten itself out?
i just have patented 'excrementation' myself, on my way here from the loo.
Read radical news here
It salutes the patent trolls.
Hehe lawyers create great software don't they???
Exemplifies quite well how desperate MS or rather Ballmer is...
Let's see when he came in their stock was around $112.00 in January 2000, today $27.29.... Great job Steve.
Perhaps for your next hat trick you could go run Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, they can only go up... LOL you loser!!!
Hope is the currency of fools
...published, with source code, certainly by 1984 and maybe several years earlier.
The t utility did not use PgUp/PgDn keys, had some others since it was for most any crt terminal, but it had and used the concept and was certainly published and possible to date publication. There are funny rules about publication, but this is a well documented bit of code, for almost any machine that could compile C code, given away freely.
"Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man: and his number is Six hundred threescore and six."
Software patents are rapidly becoming irrelevant anyway, due to the sheer number of them. I suspect most patents are files just to ensure access to the solution rather than protection of it.
After all, ideas are cheap but turning it into a profitable business is the hard part.
This must be the patent that Microsoft claims that GNU/Linux infringes upon!
The other ones include the power button and the space key.
Which others ones did I miss?
Isn't a page down just an ASCII Char(12) anyway?
Please stop using our alphabet! We just received a patent on the use of letters to form words and you are violating our patent.
Yes, the idea is to establish a classical Trade Guild, in the European sense: Only those groups who have been granted the right to practice some art/craft are permitted, those practicing said art/craft are ready, willing and able to limit the number of practitioners, and those practicing without Guild permission are subjected to occasionally very harsh treatment.
In the current situation, it's the corporations large enough to maintain patent portfolios that they use to prevent competition from small providers (your point is correct and well taken), and to prevent their own financial ruination by the other large companies.
It is very rare for a large organization to come up with genuinely new ideas, approaches or paradigm-breaking inventions. It is very common for large companies to want to control how their industries work, though.
So these patent portfolios are a way to impose either direct elimination of the threat (in some cases), or a substantial tax on real entrepreneurs (in other cases).
My favorite recent example of a patent serving as mechanism for unpredictable taxation is the Research In Motion patent fight.
I read The Mystery of Capital by Hernando DeSoto, in which he explains among other things, how western societies do much better than others in establishing predictable, fungible, legal Property Rights. His examples tend to real estate, but I believe that the proliferation of silly patents exemplifies a failure to allow ordinary people to count on the value of their work.
When "everybody does it", then the likelihood of selective prosecution becomes a real possibility: If you are a big company, you can negotiate a deal where your "violations" can be balanced against their "violations". If you are too small, then the selective prosecution becomes either a big tax or an actual business-terminating event.
Hey, you're using my patented Intellectual Property Recursive Protection system!
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
Oh. Wait. This is Slashdot.
(The patent is still crap, but it is not an attempt to patent PageUp and PageDown keys.)
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
I would really like to be rid of that key for once and for all.
Come on slashdotters: Between us we should be able to list a few hundred thousand examples of prior art, give or take an order of magnitude... I'll start: ... um well.. 90% non-Microsoft text editors since the 70s....
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
...until someone patents the default scroll for a mouse wheel?
This is like someone patenting a steering wheel.
...someone already patented the steering wheel, didn't they? |=
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
Okay this is fucking bullshit.
Where's my sock? There it is...
A patent on Pg Up and Pg Down. What will they think of next? Oh yeah, a patent on rebooting? I mean, after all, only with Windows can one truly experience the excruciating joys of rebooting during critical work tasks and/or intense game play.
I would expect Microsoft to also patent the words "Critical errors" and "Windows must reboot in order to continue" :)
Maybe Microsoft should also patent this "Vista sucks" or "NTFS has crashed, again...". I mean son-of-a-beehive, isn't it always your favorite files that get corrupted once you think your system is in perfect working order? Maybe Microsoft should patent their "Psychic Error Inducing Software" DLL, which I'm sure is part of every OS since Windows 95, but which they never advertise!
I would be all for that. Should we propose it to them?
They've also patented the color blue.
for stealing the Commodore key and calling it the "Windows" key on the Microsoft keyboards that came decades later than the old 1980 Commodore VIC-20 keyboards that already had a patent for a special logo style key for software shortcuts. outdates the Microsoft keyboard by decades and had programmable function keys that worked as page down and page up before the 1981 IBM PC keyboard. I recall in 1980 some word processing and spreadsheet programs for the VIC-20 displayed the programmable function keys as pg dn and pg up on the VIC-20 information screen for the help for those programs. While the programmable function keys are not labeled as page up and page down on their key tops, they were used for such in business software for the VIC-20 one year before IBM and Microsoft used them for such. Also the VIC-20 is just basically based on the old CBM PET series from 1977 that was based on the KIM-1 which even outdates the Apple 1 and TRS-80 series computers by a few months. Some of the homebrew keyboards made for the Kim-1 had pg up and pg down keys, programmable function keys, etc long before many of the others had them.
So basically a lot of this stuff had existed before 1981 when IBM made the IBM PC keyboard. But IBM could claim that pg up and pg down keys existed on their Mainframe dumb terminals before 1977 dating back to the 1950's and trump everyone else in patents. :) // did not have Apple logo keys until Steve Jobs stole them from the Commodore VIC-20 to make their Apple //e computer later turning the Commodore key into open Apple and closed Apple keys that do the same thing as the Commodore key.
Even Apple has prior art to that on the old Apple Logo keys but the original Apple
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
A tab... to go down a page....
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
This is interesting indeed. I am one of the dinosaurs who had the misfortune of having to use a typewriter for school papers, and guess what? It had a page up/down lever.
Then the 'word processor', which was nothing more than an electronic typewriter, had page up/down buttons.
This was all before Microsoft existed.
I am open source, and Linux baby!
See you in court.
I'm so tired of this joke, in fact, that I've obtained a patent on "not shutting the hell up." I demand that you cease infringement.
They filed for a patent in 2005 for essentially a method that applications were using in 2004 and earlier.
Take Mozilla Suite and Mozilla Firefox, for instance. You push the 'page down' key... text zoom factor doesn't matter, you're going to scroll a fixed amount of document space.
Acrobat Reader does something similar also.
There is and was nothing novel about scrolling a fixed-size page increment regardless of zoom factor.
It was so trivial and widely done, that it is unlikely anyone bothered to publish anything about it.
If taking common practices and algorithms, writing them down, and using a fancy formula to express them permits patenting of the general method, then we live in a world where everything's going to be patented, and it's going to be impossible to create anything or express any idea.
Because to create something, the expression of a novel idea, you always need some simple (self-evidence) ideas involved.
Microsoft is trying to lay claim to the simple self-evident ideas that noone should be allowed to claim.
Even though those ideas may have not been formally expressed before, thus there may be no officially recognizable "prior art".
Not recognizable, because it exists in physical form and not written form suitable for analysis by the patent office, courts, etc.
( Other proprietary developers of proprietary SW that existed before are unlikely to disclose enough information about their pagination algorithm to show their prior-published app is a piece of prior art.)
And no reputable-enough publisher or publication is likely to ever document the behavior of something so absurdly simple as say Acrobat's "page down" action in enough detail to invalidate M$ patent; it would rightly be considered a waste of paper.
I oughta patent the "Prt Scr" keystroke.
Stupid tards at the patent office.
What I find this so ironic the folks at the patent office didn't occur to them they're using the SAME keyboard for 20+ years and it's right in FRONT of them?!?!?!
The word processing portion of the old "Appleworks" program that ran on Apple 2C and 2E computers allowed you to advance through the document in precise increments of one tenth.
Sounds a lot the same to me. The tenth changes as you add to the document, but so does Page Down, if you add anywhere but the end.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
and stop there. let them come to ME with their little delete in hand if^H^Hwhen they need a reboot.
bwahahaha!
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
My Apple keyboard says "page up". Does that mean they're in the clear?
Why is it that every patent story on slashdot always obfuscates the fact that patents cover methods of implementation, and not all encompassing ideas? Is it naive to think that this isn't a purposeful ommission?
Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by stupidity. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor
Why is it that people keep naively quoting Hanlon's Razor as if it *isn't* just a codification of the kind of foolish trust that is eminently vulnerable to Hanlon's Bane? "Never *admit* to malice which can be explained as stupidity.' This being the main reason malice 'data points' are harder to come by.
That's funny. The PgDn and PgUp keys where on the original DEC VT100 text terminal keyboard introduced in 1978. Believe the keyboard is older than that, which makes it older than Microsoft itself. Funny.
The difference is enough that the problem here isn't MS, it's the patent system.
The problem MS. Most people learn in kindergarten that just because you can get away with doing something wrong doesn't mean you should.
There is no justification for Microsoft to file these ridiculous patents, and they should be vilified for it.
Not only is the fact that they are applying for these patents evil, it is just as evil that they are clogging up the patent system and patent examiners with this bullshit.
I'm just reading Michael Shermer's book The Mind Of The Market in which he points out that the Dutch system was patentless from 1869 to 1912 and the Swiss system was patentless from 1850 to 1907. Apparently not only were they not hurt by this lack of control, but they also in fact "prospered more than ever before."
It's an interesting fact, but it does beg the question of why they went to patents if in fact it was successful. I supposed lobbying by potential patent owners could be the answer, but it's interesting that for 43 and 57 years respectively these two countries had no patents whatsoever.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
Turtle Wax has been granted a patent for "Wax on, Wax off". A federal judge has ruled that "The Karate Kid" cannot be used as prior art in a US court and Ralph Macchio's character was under a "foreign influence" at the time.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Patenting Control-Alt-Delete to reboot your computer.
I've just applied for patents for currency keys as a means of representing currencies. So please don't use the $, euro, yen, etc. keys before contacting me about licensing fees ...
(Since the pound is dropping so much these days, I decided to leave it to the Brits)
After all the PC keyboard and hardware are IBMs design. How can Microsoft possibly thus patent that?
Mike
Linux fan and Win32 developer
Well, I was speaking more generally, in terms of the application publication being used as prior art against someone else's application. But yes, you're right, you get one year before your own patent application can be counted against you. Of course, if the original application is still pending, you could file a new application as a continuation or a divisional of the old one, and then you'd get the benefit of the earlier filing date.
Personnally, I thought they would have gone for ctrl, alt and del....seems more relevant somehow!
Anyone any idea when they invented the concept of a system blue screening? They must have patented that because no other OS crashes quite at such a frequency and with such a profound impact on productivity.. :-)
Insert
There is this, also emoticons (sic?), what else?
"Pg Dn... It's not a particularly silly keystroke, now is it?"
Gently reply
That website sucks. The entire bottom half of the website is missing on my screen
Karma: Bad. (As in Good?)
and their inverse motion commands since 1976.
As the island of our knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.
Each time I hear stories like this, it makes me think it's time for a patent moratorium in this country. Look at the the number of patents awarded each year in the U.S. From 1962-77, there were about 1 million patents granted; from 1977-92 there were just over 1 million. Since then, patents have grown seemingly exponentially; it took only 8 years (1992-2000) to get to 6 million and less than 7 to get to 7 million. Extrapolating for the number given for Jan. 1, 2008, the next million will be granted by the end of 2011. Something tells me the number of reviewers at the patent office isn't growing nearly as fast as the number of applications.
I don't think we've gotten that more inventive in the past decade. We're now seeing applications to patent business models, genes, and devices that seem to have ample prior art to deny a patent. I think we're seeing lawyers with too much time on their hands trying to patent anything under the sun. Patents have their purpose in inspiring innovation, but when they are abused as arms in an IP race they become counterproductive. Up-and-coming businesses shouldn't need to worry about hiring a world-class legal team before ramping up their engineering and sales forces just to make sure some minor detail of their generally revolutionary new widget doesn't fall into the purview of XYZ Corp's giant IP repertoire.
I say it's high time to suspend the issue of new patents for a couple of years to let everything that's in the pipeline now get a decent review. And after that make the application more transparent to allow those who see prior art relative to an application to make their beliefs known to the patent office. The way we're going, it won't be long before we see patents awarded for "brand new" materials like oxygen, carbon, and iron.
If the amount of BS in the patent system continues to grow, eventually patents will become useless in terms of truly fostering innovation. Already, some people don't see any moral objection to infringing copyright since they feel the copyright holders aren't living up to their side of the bargain by allowing their IP to become public domain. People will start infringing patents on moral grounds if they're viewed as simply an artificial barrier to entry in a market rather than a means to allow limited-term profit from a truly groundbreaking invention.
Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by stupidity. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor
Why is it that people keep naively quoting Hanlon's Razor as if it *isn't* just a codification of the kind of foolish trust that is eminently vulnerable to Hanlon's Bane?
"Never *admit* to malice which can be explained as stupidity.'
This being the main reason malice 'data points' are harder to come by.
You make an excellent point. One must also remember that malice and stupidity are not mutually exclusive. See, e.g., Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh. But I think that here on Slashdot, we have an established record of simple ignorance.
your gravity fails and negativity don't pull you through
Next thing you know they recieve a patent for turning on your computer and we're fscked...
Here be signatures
Is this patent the reason why the PgUp/PgDn in KPDF works with so substantially inexact increment? ;)
As you don't have to go through all that many pages with PgUp/PgDn in KPDF to start noticing that it isn't longer aligned with the page tops and bottoms.
while true; do eject; eject -t; done
Microsoft is in the idea business and uses patents to extend its financial viability.
If they are in the idea business why won't they have any real idea then? For example, I just applied for a patent for "System and method for a Desktop Cube". Patent provides a system and method for a desktop cube which can hold different user spaces with different windows. The 3d cube can be rotated, and windows may be moved from one facet to another, smoothly rotating the cube blah blah etc etc.
Microsoft in the idea business? Please ....
Finally, Microsoft customarily patents obvious or pre-existing technologies: a recent case includes the United States Patent 7,415,666 granted on August 19, 2008, which concerns the ability to progress in page-up or page-down increments with a single keystroke{{cite news |url=http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1%3Cbr%20%3E%3C/a%3E%20&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=7,415,666.PN.&OS=PN/7,415%3Cbr%20/%3E%20,666&RS=PN/7,415,666|title=United States Patent concerning "page-up/page-down technology" |publisher=United States Patent Office |date=[[2008-08-19]] |accessdate=2008-09-01}}--a method that has been pervasive for decades, hence the criticism{{cite news |url=http://news.zdnet.com/2424-9595_22-218626.html|title=Microsoft has been granted a patent on 'Page Up' and 'Page Down' keystrokes. |publisher=ZDNet.co.uk |date=[[2008-08-29]] |accessdate=2008-09-01}}.
I'm gonna patent being an abrasive post-hippie modern day neanderthal. Should be enough to send Ballmer up shits creek. Or at least threaten him with it.
I thought that inventions could not be patented after they came into general use. If so, it won't survive the first challenge. I see also the point that the keyboard wasn't theirs. When the words "getting things done can be registered as a trademark, perhaps I should study a second language. I don't want to be sued for opening my mouth. Everything in the US seems to have a price tag.
I'll just design a new keyboard that has [Fu] and [Fd] buttons on it. Wait. I can do that with white out and a sharpie.
So much for microsoft and innovation.
Viewport up/down ... problem solved, and patent it so MS cant use it too :)
The US, based on our Patent Office alone, deserves the world's scorn for classifying such trivia as "novel and non-obvious." It's like a 3-year-old on a playground, using the word "mine" to describe every toy, with no understanding of what the word means. I am ashamed to be an American!
"I can't imagine how things could get any worse!" (some guy) "That could just be failure of imaginatioÂn on your p
I just don't get how they can patent something I used in 1980 on my old Apple II+ ...
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I'm sure someone here was thinking this:
Ensign Chekov quit the star trek mission and got a new job as a patent attorney for microsoft
I was surprised to hear that this was covered on the BBC program Click today.
"Three eyes are better than one" -- Lieutenant Columbo