Slashdot Mirror
US PTO Gives Microsoft Credit For Lotus's Homework
theodp writes "On Tuesday, the USPTO granted Microsoft a patent for 'Email Emotiflags' despite ample evidence of a circa-1996 Lotus Notes precedent called Mood Stamps — sender-chosen emoticons that appear next to inbox messages. Among those seemingly aware of the existence of Mood Stamps is Microsoft Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie, who appears to have fielded questions about the feature while at Lotus. While simply Googling for 'Email Emotiflags' would have turned up evidence of this prior art (including a Slashdot discussion), the USPTO came up empty after instead going with the more-upscale Google Scholar and patent databases for its search effort. Think we can count on Ozzie to do the right thing and give the USPTO a heads-up?"
Legally speaking, there is a duty to disclose any known prior art when filing a patent. In theory, we shouldn't have to depend on him doing the right thing, merely the legal one(typically a lower standard).
"It is a system where I can invent something, only to be told that I have to pay someone else if I want to use my own invention, because someone else thought of something just like it too. If being the first to develop something doesn't give you the edge in the market, then no patent will change that"
..
Filling in a bunch of forms isn't exactly inventing anything. That's not why it's broken. The reason the US patent system is broken is it allows anyone to patent nonsense such as the above, then wait until someone develops something tangible and then sue their asses off in court. It's known as the submarine patent
The duty to disclose prior art extends to everyone substantively involved in the prosecution of the patent, including those associated with the inventor or assignee. Seems to me that unless Ozzie was actively involved with the patent prosecution, he doesn't fall into this category. You're right that somebody who was should have known, though.
Bobb9000 - raised by the wolves,
Oxford education as phrased by the wolves.
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This is amazing, because in 1991/1992, I had the opportunity to move over to the Lotus Notes team in Cambridge, Mass. Of course Ozzie knows about this since he created Notes. Argh.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
Essentially the same feature was built into the mail client of the MagicCap operating system, if I'm understanding what's being claimed.
I have a Sony PIC-1000, a Sony PIC-2000A, and a General Magic DataRover 840, and they all have this feature. Basically, when you're composing email (or in fact any other message -- email is not all that's supported), you can open a "stamp drawer" and drop "stamps" on the message to indicate any number of things. This could be done for purely cosmetic reasons, but it was also how you added metadata to the message. Particular stamps had code attached to them and could actually do things. And I think this goes all the way back to 1994.