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MS Patents IM Feature Used Since At Least 1996
Posted by
timothy
on Wed Oct 08, 2003 10:00 AM
from the uspto's-perverse-incentives dept.
from the uspto's-perverse-incentives dept.
splorp! writes "Once again, a company is patenting a feature that another company implemented years before. C|Net's News.com reports that patent no. 6,631,412 grants Microsoft the rights to 'an instant messaging feature that notifies users when the person they are communicating with is typing a message.' Excuse me? Does anyone remember Powwow (now defunct)? I remember using that one back in '96 and it alerted the other people to whom you were chatting that you were typing. Or, alternately, it allowed you to SEE the other people typing in real time. Yeah, Powwow is gone, now, but that doesn't mean those features never existed."
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Even older prior art (Score:5, Funny)
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The fake Gzip Christ isn't not user number ~0xA6CA7
Re:Even older prior art (Score:3, Interesting)
I remember the "phone" command for VMS. A bunch of people over a network could talk at once. Your could reach out and touch someone with the finger command and dial them up.
History of "talk" (Score:4, Informative)
In short, this goes back to at least 1967. I'm sure there is no way our esteemed patent office could possibly have found prior art back that far, let alone what happened last week. Someone should alert them to the existence of google.
Parent
Re:History of "talk" (Score:3, Informative)
Some people believe that the people checking for prior art is the court system. However, as seen in the Eolas case against Microsoft, Microsoft was NOT allowed to present proof of prior art to the court!
--jeff++
Re:History of "talk" (Score:5, Informative)
The PTO just automatically assumes that anything one person feels worthy of patenting is something that everybody else should have felt it worthy.
That's it. No google, no interviews with field experts, nothing. If a patent's been filed, there's prior art. If not, then it passes the "new" test.
Parent
Re:History of "talk" (Score:5, Informative)
He did nontrivial outside research in the field, much of it directed by the reference materials I included in the patent. At one point he stated that a particular claim was "obvious" after you've read five different sources in different domains which he only knew about because we referenced all five in the application. None of them were patented.
From the Slashdot "IP is bad" standpoint you'd have to give him credit for the effort. He worked very hard to ensure that my patent was in fact non-obvious and not prior art. You really want a patent examiner that hard.
Except I don't. If patents are being given out like candy, why should I have to fight for mine?
Parent
Re:Even older prior art (Score:5, Informative)
RTFP. From this week's "great innovation for customers":
As far as I can see from a quick reading, the idea is not that you see what people are typing, but that you have an indicator which lets you know that they are typing.
Parent
Re:Even older prior art (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Even older prior art (Score:3, Funny)
Oh! You mean like:
W..a..k..e..,....u..p....N..e..o.
T..h..e....M..a..t..r..i..x....h..a..s....y..o.
K..n..o..c..k..,....k..n..o..c..k..,....N..e..o
Re:Even older prior art (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyways, to get around THIS patent, any IM application can device a single button which stays green when it receives the characters from a users input and turns red when a CR or LF character is recieved. Sure each character is still sent over the network but if it's buffered on every users machine, it can just be moved to the TALK window when the termination character is sent and thereby eliminating the whole message being sent out again when the sender has finished with the message.
This uses existing techniques and provides the notification mechanisms without seeing the senders thoughts as they are generated.
The OSS community needs a forum for debunking these patent applications. One where the USPTO trusts it for prior art inspections. Otherwise, Microsoft will litigate the OSS community into stagnation by killing OSS projects and improvements in the courts with bogus patents such as this one.
LoB
Parent
Re:Even older prior art (Score:4, Funny)
Now that's a good idea. Have you thought of patenting it? ;-)
Parent
Re:Even older prior art (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm sure there's plenty of prior art (including your link and the link in the article), I just don't think talk is a good example, given that it is specifically cited in the patent as not being what they claim their doobrie to be.
Re:Even older prior art (Score:3, Funny)
That is no way of referring to RMS
Re:Even older prior art (Score:3)
In college a few of us used to keep ytalk open in a window. If any of us had a question, we typed up the question and then hit ctrl-g to alert everybody there was a question.
Yeah.. my "packet" to let the other peson know that I was done typing was hitting the ctrl-g key.
It seems obvious to me.
Even OLDER older prior art (Score:3, Informative)
ICQ (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:ICQ (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Also.. (Score:3, Redundant)
ICQ has done that for a while too
Are you sure? (Score:3, Interesting)
Btw, would you need to sue MS in order to get this patent overturned, or could you do something like sue the patent office?
Re:Are you sure? (Score:3, Informative)
The pow-wow website is still up and dated 1997 so you can still download it and check the features.
Prior Art may be the key (Score:5, Interesting)
a person is not entitled to a patent if the invention was "known or used by others in this country, or was patented or described in a printed publication in this or a foreign country" before the date of invention by the applicant for the patent
But later there is a brief comment:
Naturally, if an inventor abandons the invention, he or she cannot obtain a patent.
And finally in support of M$'s patent, and likely the way they got it:
In a fast-changing world, finding a single piece of prior art which discloses the same invention as that claimed in a patent is not the most likely scenario. What is far more likely to occur is that the prior art will be something similar but not identical to the patented invention. The patent statutes also provide for this situation--in a negative manner. Specifically, section 103 of the code provides that a patent may not be obtained "though the invention is not identically disclosed or described [in the prior art] if the differences between the subject matter sought to be patented and the prior art are such that the subject matter as a whole would have been obvious at the time the invention was made to a person having ordinary skill in the art." The test which is posed by this section is whether a worker of ordinary skill, knowing the prior art, would have found the patented invention obvious.
More text than code (Score:5, Funny)
One must be very creative to describe such a simple feature in so many pages of text!
It's the application date that matters (Score:5, Insightful)
The question shouldn't be, "How can they do this if had it in '96?" It should be, "When did Microsoft apply for this patent?"
Re:It's the application date that matters (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:It's the application date that matters (Score:5, Interesting)
Mabye the USPTO needs to start getting emails, from us, pointing out the prior art.....
LoB
Parent
incorrect it is July 21,1999 (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
No doubt the MS press release will say..... (Score:4, Insightful)
Errrr, couldn't agree more personally.
Link to patent (Score:5, Informative)
It should be noted that UNIX talk is specifically talked about in the patent and the advantages of this system over it are mentioned. This does not get around the apparant prior art of POWWOW. Remember that it is the claims of a patent that are important, not the abstract. It appears from quickly looking at the claims, that the broadest requirements are for client A to send a message to client B that client A is typing. Then client B must indicate that client A is typing. Finally, that message is turned off when client A sends another message that it is done typing. The initial typing message must be based upon typing within a predefined period of time.
Any prior art asserted against this patent would need to have been in use on or before July 21, 1998.
Available since at least 1986... (Score:3, Informative)
The DOS-based Lambda software was replaced years ago with the Unix-based Mu clone, but it's still got the idle indicator in the 'F'ull who listing.
Patent dates back to at least 1999... (Score:3, Insightful)
On a personal note, there is CLEARLY prior art --as others have said talk/ytalk had this. Heck, a direct modem connection with a friend and seeing each other type exhibits this behavior even though that's hard to lump under the context of "An IM session".
This really feels like a defensive patent, not something they could turn around and sue AOL or Yahoo (or even Trillian or Jabber) over.
Xentax
Ah-HAH (Score:5, Informative)
So the claimed innovation here is simplifying real-time, continuous updates by just sending activity updates. Hmm. I'm not sure that really passes the tests for either "obvious" or actually "innovative", but at least they address talk.
Xentax
Parent
Thousands of Minitel services did it (Score:4, Informative)
Including real-time chat that let you see every key stroke of other users.
Criminal at this point (Score:4, Interesting)
Another obvious patent (Score:5, Insightful)
Unlike many on slashdot, I actually believe there are some scenarios where software/algorithm patents are applicable. However, the standard questions still need to be asked: does this do something useful, and is the implementation non-obvious? Why (aside from purely financial reasons) are patents like this being granted?
RTFP (Score:5, Informative)
While I think that it is absurd that this was granted, it is not any of the things being thrown around on
Excuse me (Score:3, Funny)
Quake 3 is prior art... (Score:5, Informative)
A request for reexamination (Score:3, Informative)
A request for reexamination is commenced by filing a reexamination request along with a modest filing fee. In the request, the requestor cites the patents and other printed publications which purport to establish that the patented inven- tion is not new or unobvious as of the date of its invention. The Patent Office will then decide if the requestor has made out a prima facie case of invalidity. If so, the patent will be subjected to reexamination. Reexamination is between the patentee and the Patent Office. The requestor has no involvement after filing the request for reexamination.
if you have any interest at all on the workings of the us patent system, go here [uspto.gov], read up.
The fee for "requesting an reexamination was 2520.00 in 1999.
Perhaps we should start a fund to have this patent reexamined?
It's the weight game. (Score:3, Funny)
It's smart business, however if we depended on "smart business" we'd probable be still living in caves after someone patented "shelters."
This exact feature was in wide use at MIT in '89 (Score:4, Informative)
What is "prior art"? (Score:3, Insightful)
But then again, I may be pulling this out of my ass.
-bm
One Way to Have a Positive Attitude About This (Score:5, Interesting)
The public is historically slow to act, and is never good at acting on obscure issues, as is the IP world for the most part. Some good things the file-sharing debacle has done are to educate a lot of ordinary people about intellectual property, to demonstrate their willingness to ignore IP laws they don't agree with, and to give people some actual experience breaking those laws and getting away with it. This is surprising and encouraging behavior for an American public that has successfully been dumbed down and convenience-addicted to the point of virtual sheephood.
But it's going to take a lot more pain to get people's butts off their comfy couches in the IP arena, to the point where politicians find their constituents threatening enough to start representing them again. That point is years away, and I want to live through it and into the next Golden Age. So for me, anything that pushes this process along is a good thing, in its own way.
Re:Don't forget (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Don't forget (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Don't forget (Score:5, Funny)
but they were typing a responce...
Parent
Re:Don't forget (actually) (Score:5, Funny)
I remember it distinctly because my girlfriend's Yahoo wasn't working
Don't worry, it happens to everyone.
Parent
Re:Don't forget (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Microsoft screwed itself (reference to US code) (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Unix talk (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Unix talk (Score:3, Insightful)
Patents cover implementations. The only thing microsoft has a right to here is the implementation described in the patent. The patent specifically describes a signal or packet being sent telling the remote host that a user has stopped typing. Unix talk didn't do that. In fact I don't know that anybody has ever done that because it's a dumb idea. This patent is irrelevant, and a waste of Microsoft's money.