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Microsoft Patents "Fonts With Feelings"
theodp writes "Seems like those old IBM flaming logo commercials (video) should count as prior art, but the USPTO granted Microsoft a patent Tuesday for inventing Fonts With Feelings. Giving font characters sound, motion, and altered appearance, Microsoft asserts, gives a user 'the impression the fonts have personalities,' thereby enhancing the user's understanding and/or fluency of words. From the patent: 'As a few non-limiting examples, the word 'giant' can get very large; the word 'lion' can morph into a line drawing of a lion; the word 'toss' can morph into a hand that animates a ball toss; the word 'bees' could show bees flying around with or without a 'buzz' sound effect'. If you're curious, Microsoft Research offers some explanations and examples of 'fontlings' in action — don't miss 'f' kicks 'a'!"
The world Microsoft can morph into a Monopoly game board.
http://www.wordworld.com/ Then again, the actual claims of the patent may be something entirely different than the summary.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
epic fail
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
There are kids shows already doing this "Word world" among them. Gratz to MS for patenting something that is probably 10 years old and in common usage.
Prior Art. Noone watches seasame street with their kids? They do that stuff all the time.
Bembo's Zoo:
http://www.bemboszoo.com/
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
Because no one can express feelings with words.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
I'm pretty sure Sesame Street's been doing this for quite some years!
sig:- (wit >= sarcasm)
Apparently no one at Microsoft watches Sesame Street.
Ummm ... not quite the intended image I had in my mind when I read this.
'If Christ had tweeted the sermon on the mount, it might have lasted until nightfall.' - John Perry Barlow
What a stupid concept. Just patent my ass already.
I am seeing that you feel sad today ! Would you like me to comfort you by becoming a bit italic ?
.... :)
-> No
You are very stubborn today, that fits just perfectly with a bold face type ! Would you like me to change to bold ?
-> No
Ah, you probably misunderstood me and want to get a clear sans-serif font ! Yes ?
Clippy's offspring ?
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
What do words like "orgy" morph into?
The very first thing I thought of when I read the summary was those annoying cursors, graphical emotes, and the ton of Smiley Central-like websites that did the rounds a few years ago.
If Microsoft having a patent on this idea stops us having to put up with:
lol!! i just got an email with all the letters dancing and singing, and doing a poo on each other!! lol!! i'm going to forward on to everyone i know who won't give a fuck!!1 hahahaha!! lol!!!!
then they can keep it. It'll likely be about as successful and world changing as the Zune was, anyway.
THE HONOUR OF THE KNIGHTS - CC Licensed Sci-Fi Novel
For god's sake nobody type "developers" 3 times!!!
As a few non-limiting examples, the word 'giant' can get very large; the word 'lion' can morph into a line drawing of a lion; the word 'toss' can morph into a hand that animates a ball toss; the word 'bees' could show bees flying around with or without a 'buzz' sound effect
Who’s the fucking genius who thought up those examples? I bet an average four-year-old could have come up with something like that, and if your average four-year-old can think of something it’s way to obvious to be patentable.
It makes me want to go out and find those exact examples to prove how obvious they are (I’m sure they’ve been done a time or two), but I don’t have the time.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Douglas Adams descibed people doing this sort of thing with elevators as I recall. I think it worked out less well than the designers anticipated...
I am Jack's writable stack pointer.
Just think of the new generation of people we'll have to wean off of stupid design decisions.
What doesn't kill you only delays the inevitable
...from TFS it sounds like MS wants to patent the ability to build this functionality into fonts, rather than the animating functionality itself.
Software patents are stupid, but I'm happy to give MS a monopoly on fontlings, if only so that I can spend the next 17 years never being subjected to a fontling. (I hope.)
We've seen this before....
Support my political activism on Patreon.
It sounds like a crap idea, so please - implement this, and I hope you lose a lot of money.
Clippy 2.0.
o hai
Coming soon, to a website near you!
Redmond, Wash: Today MicroSoft announced that it had obtained a patent on the process necessary to obtain a patent, said Steve Ballmer, simultaneously announcing his position as MicroSoft's new Chief Extortionist. "This is a testament to MicroSoft's continuing innovation in the area of innovation," said Ballmer, "and the debt that all corporations owe to MicroSoft for innovating and, er, innovating the patent process."
MicroSoft then announced a patent license application process, wherein all new patent license applicants will need to apply to MicroSoft and pay a licensing fee before applying to the USPTO. Rumours on the street also indicated that MicroSoft was preparing its legal division to send Cease and Desist notices to anyone filing patent application who had not applied for and received a license to apply for a patent from MicroSoft, and a concurrent series of suits claiming that patents granted to applicants who had not received licenses from MicroSoft were the property of MicroSoft.
"Innovatively protecting our innovation and all our innovative property rights is the core of innovation," said Ballsymer.
I'm actually OK with granting MS this patent, because this is a terrible idea. These "animated fonts" are going to be worse than Comic Sans. Most people have difficulty reading text moving in any way besides scrolling, and even that can cause problems.
If MS gets essentially a monopoly on this, then once they realize how retarded it is, nobody will be using them.
So does this mean that whenever I read a Microsoft press release I cannot chant "bullshit, bullshit, bullshit" any more since they have patented sounds associated with fonts.
Now if we can only get them to use their very own patented font for anything they write like this turkey of an idea.
Gobble Gobble Microsoft
Tisha Hayes
It's a shame, really. MS spends a lot of money on R&D, but they seem to get so few groundbreaking shipping products from it.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
You need total concentration
Type it again. This time with Feeling!
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
Summary reminds me of the 'breathing', stubbled MTV logo that was kinda creepy back in the day. Or heck, almost any MTV logo adaptation from that particular time period.
WordWorld is not prior art. There is a difference between showing words composed of letterforms that have characteristics associated with the word, and creating words with a computer system that allows for manipulation of typography on the basis of the words. Yes, the patent system is broken. Yes, the concept of fonts with feelings is absurd. But believe it or not, any time you see something that looks remotely related to a patent you dislike doesn't mean you can scream "prior art!" and make it mean anything.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
This is another attempt by Microsoft (and soon to be followed by Apple) to control your fonts. And we all know that only a free and open font base, that can be used and scaled and anti-aliased by anyone, will give us the font freedom we desire. I don't want to have to jailbreak my fonts and run the risk of a font being bricked because I had to hack the font to be able to use it in the document I want. And how do I know what fonts will be allowed into Apple's walled garden. Will I have to develop fonts using the Apple SDK or can I use third party font compilers?
At least we know that I can put any font I want on Android and then use those fonts to multi task and SSH into a mainframe sitting next to me.
This is, again, stupid.
These tricks, are just artistic tricks. Are we patenting rimes? sarcasm? pfff... idiotic.
Good thing Europe don't accept software patents. I hope you USA guys grown a pair, and remove these laws from your country.
-Woof woof woof!
http://www.theonion.com/articles/email-from-aunt-accidentally-opened,2391/
Just another tool in the annoyance arsenal. If Splice was about software it'd probably be about a product like this.
.
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
What's really cool is that he developed a 68040 ISA board (read: apple mac quadra/centris) that would go into a windows 95 machine and boot some OS nobody's ever heard of. Wonder how close he was to running OS 7.5(ish) or even NeXT.
The funny thing is, I had a powermac around that time that had a pci card in it with a pentium-100 on it that would run win'95.
Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins, for they are subtle, and quick to anger.
Alright Comic Sans, do you see this knife?
well.. maybe a word's meaning is always subject to the ways we see them used, but this makes words a lot more flexible in meaning..
it also gives marketers a very sweet way to impress their bosses (and the audience) with this fonts..
intellectual discussions about the true content of the fonts will start all around the globe. Poets will commit mass suicide.
No, really. is this a good or a bad thing?
I do not want this... I can use ... Ariel.
I think using Ariel is a bit coarse and probably illegal, you do realize that she is underage in most modern municipalities, right?
Only I can judge you.
What about Video Toaster in the Amiga era? Weren't there animated font plugins available?
Perhaps examples from the IBM commercials or kid shows (like Sesame Street) aren't prior art, due to the animations being created for single use use in their finished videos.
What's that file format for? Does anyone know?....Anyone?
The inspiration for this patent were Steve's very own "Toxic Pit Stains" (TM). He wanted to see them in action in a document, web site, etc. outside of the YouTube an other videos where he proudly displays them.
For some reason, this makes me think of the kawaii movement that happened in Japan. School girls started adding drawings to their letters, making them very cute and difficult to read. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kawaii
This maybe copyright,but its nothing more then an comic animation that has been done by Sesame Street for years. Someone at the patent office needs to be fired on this one.
Jack of all trades,master of none
Seeing if anybody had parodied this, I came across something from a few months ago that's related (NSFW!): Fonts got feelings too.
Christ, this is stupid, even by Microsoft standards.
"Be nice, veer left, and never stop thinking" Iain Banks - Walking On Glass
That's where their "researchers" got the idea in the first place.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Any parents out there whose kids watch the TV show WordWorld? This "word lion looks like a lion" sounds exactly like the premise of the show. The basic idea is that the world has all of these letters and when they are combined they form the object that they spell. So the Dog character is made up of the letters d, o and g. The Pig character is made up of p, i and g. And so on. Towards the end of every episode, they decide to resolve the main problem of the episode by building a word. So if they need a cake, they'll take the letters c, a, k and e and push them together. The letters then morph into a cake for the characters to eat.
Is Microsoft going to patent clues given by a blue puppy next? Or maybe the act of exploring with a backpack, map and boot-wearing monkey?
I will support them fully, however, if they decide to patent a big, purple dinosaur who sings about how much he loves everyone so long as that patent is only used to squash any competitors as messily as possible.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Was anyone else concerned when they first read that "toss" was going to be animated?
Does the USPTO know the difference between a font and a word? Evidently not. We have a problem with technical expertise at the USPTO. They have frequently misunderstood technology and allowed all manner of patents on obvious, trivial, and over-broad ideas. Reform needed here.
Best regards.
I am opposed to software patents, but this is a great idea -- by patenting it, (hopefully) nobody else who may have a temporary lapse of judgement will actually do this... and since I don't currently use any MS products, hopefully I will avoid having to see it myself! :-)
I think many of the books I read my 4 year old, and many that were read to me 2 decades are more had BIG words for BIG things and small words for small things. Dr. Seuss?
Software patents are already ruining everything, and then its just like the USPTO throws these sorts of things out as a big 'fuck you' to everyone who cares about this issue.
This shit seriously makes my head hurt. Fuck patents, and fuck Microsoft for even applying for such a shitty redundant patent. I hate everybody.
Long live the BSD license
As a former graffiti writer, I was making fonts morph back in the days of DOS.
Also, "Between the Lions" on PBS.
Chairs with feelings?
Maybe they will be called "Angry Flying Balmers"!
Or is there prior art?
No brain, no pain.
...Microsoft decides to patent "Everything."
Arch Crippledick, Microsoft's VP for Patent Lunacy, stated "patenting Everything is a bold move designed to harness Microsoft's rich creativity and demonstrate our committment to monetise every, er, thing."
> From the patent: 'As a few non-limiting examples, the word 'giant' can get very large; the word 'lion' can morph into a line drawing of a lion; the word 'toss' can morph into a hand that animates a ball toss; the word 'bees' could show bees flying around with or without a 'buzz' sound effect'.
Yeah, like that isn't going to be frakking annoying.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
What light through yonder window breaks?
What light through yonder window breaks?
What light through yonder window breaks?
What light through yonder window breaks?
Jes.
... and then they built the supercollider.
Erm... yeah, good luck trying to enforce that patent, Mickeysoft ... I think Sesame Street accurately proves prior art lol
I hated it when I first knew that whenever I wrote good ol' ":-)" on my IM program, some clients displayed a yellow, stupid happy face.
I was a bit relieved (although I still don't like it) when I first saw what my contacts now see when I write to them at Gmail's Jabber - A nice :-) that stays as it was written for some seconds and then rotates to become a clearly recognizable happy face.
Anyway, this is not just an anecdote. Google's smiley reinterpretation feels very much like prior art.
Microsoft gets a kudos for having the balls to submit the patent.
USPTO gets an Epic Fail for approving it.
And Penny-Arcade can cry at the down fall of Mr Period and his friends.
This patent is nonsense because children's books have been doing things like this forever. Animation is an obvious extension which has no-doubt been done in many, many children's multimedia products. Patents should be for completely non-obvious things and mechanisms, that would be very unlikely to be rediscovered by someone else. You shouldn't be allowed to patent a discovery. Something like fonts that change colour / size / are animated / morph has been done already, it is fairly obvious, and it's not patent worthy.
In an effort to explain open source software, I sometimes used the analogy of "what if the alphabet had been patented, and over the centuries anyone reading or writing had to pay a royalty to the patent holders? We'd still be living in the Dark Ages." Seems like Microsoft heard and thought it'd be a good idea.
I dunno about the patent, but it brought these in to my mind, which are kind of neat.