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Microsoft Applies For Page-Turn Animation Patent
eldavojohn writes "Ever seeking to out innovate their competition, Microsoft has applied for a patent on animating page flips in devices like the Nook or Kindle. The application summary reads, 'One or more pages are displayed on a touch display. A page-turning gesture directed to a displayed page is recognized. Responsive to such recognition, a virtual page turn is displayed on the touch display. The virtual page turn actively follows the page-turning gesture. The virtual page turn curls a lifted portion of the page to progressively reveal a back side of the page while progressively revealing a front side of a subsequent page. A lifted portion of the page is given an increased transparency that allows the back side of the page to be viewed through the front side of the page. A page-flipping gesture quickly flips two or more pages.' Maybe you've seen this before?"
Doesn't matter if it's been seen before, if you have a boatload of cash you need a boatload of defensive patents to keep the parasites who don't produce a thing off your back. Maybe companies like MS, that actually make stuff (whether you think their stuff is good or bad) and contribute, should just be auto-granted immunity from all that bullshit. As it is right now they have to think of and officially enumerate everything they don't want some worthless sleazeball non-company looking for a quick buck coming after them for.
patents being wrong. im watching and wondering, when will everyone without exception (profiteers aside) will realize that concept of 'patents' cannot work.
Read radical news here
Um. It's iBooks on the iPad. Has pretty much exactly that feature. Word for word.
It's good to see Microsoft unseating Apple as the evil empire by deliberately forcing them into prior art litigation. Ugh.
If you put it on a device that doesn't use a touch screen, but a mouse instead, you've (theoretically) circumvented the patent.
As a side effect, you've also explored a new avenue of input devices that you wouldn't have before.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
... in the original Myst.
Didn't the "Notepad" "Desk Accessory" in the Original (old-school) MacOS do page-turn animation?
All the physical books on my bookshelf. Making a computer mimic the real world is 100% obvious.
I'm guessing that most of the intelligent, technically knowledgeable people have left Microsoft. So now non-technical employees are pretending to run a technological company. It's worth it to them to put a lot of effort into pretending that they are doing a good job, because they would not be paid as much somewhere else.
One indication that the smart people have left is when a company brings out a new version of software, and the big change is in the menus. Menu changes are something people who don't care about technology can do.
There have been a lot of technological embarrassments at Microsoft in recent years. An obvious patent is just one of them.
(The Microsoft Vista operating system was, it is said, not a failure, but an intentional method of getting people to pay for two operating systems, by deliberately releasing an unfinished one.)
I've seen that on a tactile touch display that even varies in thickness as a number of pages are turned and it is powered by the kinetic energy of the gesture.
Its called a god damn book.
This was requested back during the Courier development years, and filed in January of 2009. So no, there was no prior application or device on the market that did this. And it damn sure isn't a copy of the iPad. This headline is sensationalism at it's best.
They didn't patent the implementation (which is unpatentable, even if it's a lot of work), they patented the look and feel. And the look and feel of this feature has been around for many years, implemented by other people who had to work a lot harder on ancient 3D hardware to make this look good.
This patent is theft and fraud, pure and simple.
What I don't understand is why you keep bending over to get royally ass-raped by the big corporations all the time?!
Companies like Microsoft hogging the patent means there's little chance the someone will slip up and fail to renew or take people to court over "small" offenses. A small company would hardly have the resources to find AND sue me for having a 10-year-old transition animation on a personal webpage, for instance.
It bothers me that smaller companies almost never pull this kind of anti-prior-art stunts, dealing a blow to the bigger, noisier fish who would be suing us in their sleep for stuff like the above. Maybe it's the difference in headcount-to-lawyer# ratios.
Please explain to me how implementing that is obvious.
Implementing what? The page turn animation that's been around for years?
Or the "WITH TOUCH!!!!!" part of the patent, which is the default for any touchscreen that works as a mouse, where your finger clicks and drags the page just like a mouse would have.
If I run a 10 year old program that used the mouse to drag the page on my computer and plug in the 10 year old serial-port-mouse touchscreen monitor overlay, do I infringe the patent right away, or only when I drag my finger on the screen to turn a page?
Of course, Microsoft's version is pretty specific on the application side (I'd have to find a buggy app that shows the next page through the current one as soon as I start turning it) but frankly, any patent claiming to have invented the default mode of operation of hardware a decade old should be invalid.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Your post just shows why you don't roll with the big boys, you're thinking too small! Instead patent cock stroking, then you get half the population PLUS the straight girls and hookers! Cha Ching baby, yeah!
As for TFA, call me names if you want, but I don't blame MSFT (or Amazon, or IBM, etc) for patenting every stupid idea they can think of. In these days of patent trolls and havens like East Texas frankly any major corp would be stupid NOT to patent everything they can get by the worthless USPTO, because a huge patent warchest can help protect your company against lawsuits. By having large warchests you can end up like with Intel/AMD or ATI/Nvidia, where you cross license with your competitor and don't have to worry so much about a patent coming to bite you in the ass, as well as having ammo to hopefully use if a troll comes a knocking.
So if you want to blame someone, don't blame the companies trying to build large warchests. In this day and age unfortunately they are required. Blame the USPTO and congress for letting patents and copyrights get as distorted as they are. The entire system is broken, but as long as your company has to work in it building warchests will simply be a fact of life.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
A certain Uncle Fester Ballmer is desperately trying to retain his position, hence any patent imaginable will be claimed and a hyper inflated book valued placed against it in, to up the companies book value, in order to try to pump up the share price and thus protect Ballmer's position. The more desperate Ballmer becomes to maintain his position the more clumsy and self destructive will the "Beast of Redmond" become (all really rather lame and pitiful).
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Uh there are so many reasons Vista sucked. I work for a company that's a Microsoft partner and even the "koolaid" drinkers there won't deny that Vista sucked. Windows 7 less so (some things are better, but others aren't really an improvement from Windows 2000).
;) ).
1) It took years for the hardware companies to stop making so many drivers that bluescreen XP or cause other problems (heck some still do), so it's no surprise if Vista gets crappy drivers. If Microsoft or anybody was expecting otherwise, they're stupid.
2) While Windows NT/2K/XP allowed users to not be administrator (and I've set up many machines that way, for myself and others), Windows XP in the installation process tended to make the first user an admin and not make it easy for "newbies" to set up something like the OSX/Ubuntu/Win7 model.
Lastly, there has really been very little UI improvement from the OSS world (wobbly windows don't make you more productive) or Microsoft.
I do like the application grouping thing in Windows 7 (but I'd prefer if you could adjust the task button positions within an app group).
Other than that, Windows 7 sucks. Using the start menu (or the start menu search) is slower than my current XP config at home (classic mode with custom menus so I can use winkey, <number>, <number> to launch my commonly used stuff very quickly).
The search sucks. The network configuration screen is overly complex and cluttered.
FWIW, I'm the sort who likes stuff like Tree Style Tabs for Mozilla, the type of person who has lots of tabs and windows open, and has written a program to allow a user to quickly set up hotkeys to switch amongst tasks/windows. I don't care about those stupid animations. If I want a window, I want it NOW, not after some fancy song and dance.
Don't get me wrong, I can see why others like those animations (they're like fancy cutscenes in games), but the UI designers should also cater for those who want to use their precious UI to actually get work done faster (so that we can waste more time on other stuff e.g Slashdot
I'm guessing that most of the intelligent, technically knowledgeable people have left Microsoft
I wouldn't say "most". There are plenty of smart people there, they just have horribly dysfunctional management.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
On slashdot, we see many of these bogus patent articles as well as several patent troll litigation articles. On everyone we see the same tired arguments, hey, this was done since the 80's or that company implemented it long long before that! Sometimes we even hear, hey this company just bought the unused patent from a dead guy and doesn't even make a product, which invalidates the patent.
Well, non of that crap matters in the US. Seriously, how often do these patent trolls win? Almost always. That patent / legal system is so fucked up that actual law matters very little anymore.
This is one big reason that companies continue to pull out of the US.
Just do a quick Google search for "broken patent system" or "out of control patent system" and you will see this has been going on for years. Hell, back in 2000 folks were sure any time now there would be patent reform, yet the we are no closer to it.
It's time for you to get involved people. It's time to write to your representatives to demand reform. The US patent system is a drain on our economy and seriously hampers proper innovation. Something must be done soon, time is running out for the US. Well..at least IMO.
He said richer, not having a greater spending power... The US govt. debt is currently $13 trillion according to wikipedia [United States public debt]
Neither did Apple. I have old 80s-era games that use the same page-curl and flip animation to tell a story. It's prior art and can not be patented.
This reminds me of the story where some company tried to patent multiple screens/resolutions on a single desktop. A classic Commodore Amiga user drug his old 1985 machine into the courtroom and demonstrated that the idea existed as prior art, and therefore can not be patented.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall