Slashdot Mirror
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
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 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.
As our way of thanking you for your positive contributions to Slashdot, you are eligible to disable Slashdot 2.0.
If I were you, I wouldn't touch those keys again unless your lawyer says it's OK.
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.
At least read the summary next time. If you had you'd have noticed it's quite clearly not a patent for the keys themselves, but the practice of scrolling a specific amount regardless of the current view settings (eg. zoom). As such your keyboard is irrelevant, a peice of software that implements those keys in the standard way however is absolutely relevant.
To quote the patent text itself (emphasis added):
Briefly, the present invention provides a method and system for scrolling a substantially exact increment in a document, such as a row height corresponding to a row of one or more pages of a page set, so as to display a next page set from the precise vertical location into the page that the previous page set started, regardless of the current zoom percentage. For example, if the middle of a page set is at the top of the viewing area, after scrolling, the middle of the next page set is at the top of the viewing area. This operation occurs on receiving specific user input, e.g., a Page Up or Page Down key command.
Notice that the use of the Page Down/Up keys is an example of input that would be used in concert with the patent, so it's crystal clear that they're not trying to patent the keys themselves.
Not that what they're patenting is any less ridiculous, but let's at least get straight what ridiculous thing we're talking about.
Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and stupid comments are intentional.
They still use patent threats and indemnification as a way to scare companies off Linux distributions.
The Raven
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.
...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.
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.
Keep in mind that the scope of what's patented is contained entirely within the claims of the patent, not in the rest of the specification. (Although, anything in the specification, once published, can be considered "prior art" over future applications.)
In this case, the independent claims get extremely specific, including an indication of the particular formula being used to calculate the amount to scroll. Compare this to the claims as originally filed.*
(* If that link expires, the application publication number is 20060200764, and you can enter that here.)
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.
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.
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