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Microsoft Patents a Slider, Earning EFF's "Stupid Patent of the Month" Award (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader writes with news that the EFF has given Microsoft a dubious award this month for their slider patent. According to Ars: "The Electronic Frontier Foundation's 'Stupid Patent of the Month' for December isn't owned by a sketchy shell company, but rather the Microsoft Corporation. The selection, published yesterday, is the first time the EFF has picked a design patent as the SPOTM. The blog post seeks to highlight some of the problems with those lesser-known cousins to standard 'utility' patents, especially the damages that can result. The chosen patent (PDF), numbered D554,140, would seem to be one of those things that's so simple it raises some basic philosophical questions about the patent system. That's because it's just a slider, in the bottom-right corner of a window, with a plus sign at one end and a minus sign at the other. That's it.
Suppose Ford patented the steering wheel?
Then he would have had to deal with prior art claims. The steering wheel was pioneered by Panhard et Levassor.
There should not be any patentable user interface designs. Suppose Ford patented the steering wheel? Then everyone other than Ford who makes cars would be trying to reinvent the control scheme, and then the drivers would be stumped when they sit in that car.
Design patents don't work that way. You might want to go read up on them.
The OP apparently does not understand the difference between a design patent and a utility patent. He/She should learn this before calling this design patent stupid or whatever other inappropriate language was used. Utility patents describe a function; design patents describe only the appearance.
Well, Microsoft *is* the company that invented the slider.
No. Xerox got there before Microsoft. Note the sliders in the sample Xerox Star display.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
The patent dates from 2007. X-windows was around from 1984 and had sliders. How else could they scroll along windows. The Athena widget set was around at this time:
http://www.efalk.org/Widgets/#...
Technically it was the same "scrollbar" that was used to scroll windows as was used to implement a color palette index editor.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads