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Microsoft Patents The Task List

Posted by timothy on Tue Jun 08, 2004 06:58 PM
from the insanity-is-actually-rather-pleasant dept.
Patents Microsoft Programming IT Technology
theodp writes "'Better not get too fancy with your grocery list, now that Microsoft has patented a glorified form of the to-do list.' Issued Tuesday, the patent covers the use of a 'task list' generated from 'TODO' comments in source code."
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  • Of course... (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 08 2004, @06:59PM (#9372230)
    I haven't read the patent (it is Slashdot after all), but the Eclipse development environment does this.
  • ...unless you generate it from comments in your source code. ;)

    • Re:I wouldn't worry about your grocery list... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by MoonBuggy (611105) on Tuesday June 08 2004, @07:09PM (#9372356) Homepage
      It's not as broad as it might have been, but arguments about software patents in general put aside for now, the fact that you can patent something that you do (linking a list with source code comments) rather than the way that you do it (using XYZ type of code to create ABC functionality) shows that the patent system is broken.

      Take, for example, the Dyson cleaner - it was a completely new way of making a vaccum cleaner and they patented their way of doing it. Other companies also did cyclone vaccums in their own ways. If Dyson had been able to patent the idea (cyclone based cleaners) rather than their implementation it would've locked out the competition completely. Why can't the patent office see this? It's what they're paid to do, after all.
    • I wouldn't worry about your grocery list unless you generate it from comments in your source code. ;)

      It's so convenient to make notes in source code. Isn't that what our computers are for, to manage our data? Compare this
      need more jolt (emu.cpp line 2)
      pay electric bill (emu.cpp line 11)
      out of potato chips (emu.cpp line 24)
      with the verbose
      // start emulating a track
      // TODO: need more jolt
      assert( rom );

      // clear all memory
      cpu.low_mem.assign( 0 );
      sram.assign( 0 );
      eram.assign( 0 );
      unmapped_page.assign( 0 );

      // TODO: pay electric bill

      // set memory mapping

      // start out unmapped
      int i;
      for ( i = 0; i < page_count; ++i ) {
      cpu.data_reader [i] = read_unmapped;
      cpu.data_writer [i] = write_unmapped;
      cpu.code_map [i] = &unmapped_page [0];
      }

      // ROM
      // TODO: out of potato chips
      for ( i = 8; i < page_count; ++i ) {
      cpu.data_reader [i] = read_rom;
      int rom_bank = initial_banks [i - 8];
      cpu.code_map [i] = &rom [rom_bank * page_size];
      eram [0xFF0 + i] = rom_bank;
      }
      // ...
      Oh man, I need to pay my electric bill...

  • Prior Art: Eclipse Project (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ruckc (111190) * <ruckc.yahoo@com> on Tuesday June 08 2004, @07:00PM (#9372241) Homepage
    This feature has been in Eclipse [eclipse.org] for I can recall 2.5 years (not sure on date). The program automatically notices TODO comments in the code and creates a list for you.

    What the hell is M$ thinking here?

    • Re:Prior Art: Eclipse Project (Score:5, Informative)

      by molarmass192 (608071) on Tuesday June 08 2004, @07:09PM (#9372345) Homepage Journal
      The @todo tag has been an unofficial part of Sun's javadoc utility since at least 1999, possibly earlier. However, I don't think javadoc generated a task list from them.

    • Re:Prior Art: Eclipse Project (Score:5, Insightful)

      by zurab (188064) on Tuesday June 08 2004, @07:17PM (#9372427)
      This feature has been in Eclipse for I can recall 2.5 years (not sure on date).

      Well, Eclipse and its users are in trouble then, because the patent application in question has been filed over 4 years ago. Just a reminder to every developer next time you try to implement a feature in your program, don't forget to search all existing patents and patent applications for possible violations. And another reminder to all software users - you are not immune from patent lawsuits if the software you are using (whether closed or open source) is violating other(s') patent(s) and neither you or your software vendor have a license to use or distribute the patented "technology."

      • Re:Prior Art: Eclipse Project (Score:5, Insightful)

        by rzbx (236929) <<gro.xbzr> <ta> <todhsals>> on Tuesday June 08 2004, @08:50PM (#9373160) Homepage
        "Just a reminder to every developer next time you try to implement a feature in your program, don't forget to search all existing patents and patent applications for possible violations."

        This is NOT what one should do when implementing a feature in a program. First of all, developers should not be wasting time with the legal side of software. Most developers do not care for patents. Second, the moment a developer starts sifting through patent portfolios, they are both seeing a solution from the point of view of another developer(s) (or lawyers) and may have a hard time getting past this "better" option and sticking with their own, and they now can not legally say they had no idea the patent existed. I have heard before that even patent lawyers suggest that an inventor/developer not search through patents. What is a developer, a lawyer? No, they are interested in solving problems. Engineers are not interested in making things more complex (and you can not argue that law is about making things simple). Although the process itself may be complex, it is not in the interest of developers and such to complicate things. Fear is what I see in your entire post. Scare tactics. FUD, whatever you want to call it. Let me repeat, DEVELOPERS, ENGINEERS, SCIENTISTS, etc. ARE NOT INTERESTED IN COMPLICATING THINGS. They seek the truth and/or they build machines/software/ideas to solve problems or understand a problem(or event). How many great scientists/developers/engineers do you know that support the patent system? Yes, some will say that we need it, but that it is currently flawed. Yet, even they will admit that they don't have the solution. There have been economists and various other social science professionals on the other hand that are against the idea of the patent system. First you must understand the reasons the patent system was created and why it still exists. You can spout the old myths about progress due to the patent system, but I dare you to show me scientifically (or any other possible, but convincing way) that patents are directly related to progress and I'll give my apologies. I'm very sorry for the rant, but I'm tired of the ignorance behind this patent issue. It is bad enough that people support the system, but to recommend that developers go spend their time sifting through patent files? If the patent system was unenforced though, it would be a great system for sharing knowledge related to inventing/engineering/etc.

  • Microsoft Hit & Miss (Score:5, Funny)

    by CHaN_316 (696929) on Tuesday June 08 2004, @07:05PM (#9372307)
    It feels like Microsoft just comes up with a list of things that have been implemented, and try to patent them. It's hit and miss, but boy, if you score one of the patents, great! If not, try try again... they've got the money to blow. All you have to do is inundate the patent office, and sooner or later, you'll hit the jackpot.

    Microsoft's latest patents:
    • Writing Code on a computer (rejected)
    • Coding on a computer (rejected)
    • Coding on an electronic medium (approved)
    • Uhh...the Internet? (rejected, Al Gore invented that)
    • The Internet (rejected)
    • Inter.Net (approved)
    • ...


    It's a lot like submitting a story for slashdot, but easier, and way more double posts :D j/k.

      • Re:Microsoft Hit & Miss (Score:5, Informative)

        by Tony Hoyle (11698) <tmh@nodomain.org> on Tuesday June 08 2004, @07:40PM (#9372642) Homepage
        Snopes has it wrong this time. They even quote him:

        "I took the initiative in creating the internet".

        There is no other way to interpret this. He was just trying to sound cool and it backfired on him. Note he did *not* say "I took the initiaive in allowing the internet to flourish", as snopes would have you believe, nor did he say "I created the environment in which the internet was allowed to grow". He said "I took the initiative in creating the internet".

      • Re:Microsoft Hit & Miss (Score:5, Funny)

        by jeffy124 (453342) on Tuesday June 08 2004, @08:20PM (#9372920) Homepage Journal
        you naysayer. Of course Al Gore invented the internet. It is, after all, based on Al-Gore-ithms.
  • There you have it folks. Patent infringment in one line.

    GJC

  • WTF (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Supp0rtLinux (594509) <Supp0rtLinux@yahoo.com> on Tuesday June 08 2004, @07:07PM (#9372323) Homepage
    Will it ever end? Funny that they get a patent on something I've been doing for 20+ years... I've always made it habit to use #TODO: in my comments for my code for pending things or things that need to be redone, then have a shell script parse my code for the comments and email them to me weekly prior to status meetings, etc. I wonder if any of these will count as "prior art" or its counterpart to fighting this atrocity?

  • Okay... (Score:4, Informative)

    by Mz6 (741941) * on Tuesday June 08 2004, @07:11PM (#9372383) Journal
    So as we have all been reading Eclipse has been doing this since November 2001. Well, sorry! The Microsfot patent was filed on March 6, 2000. Does this mean we will see a lawsuit from Microsoft against Eclipse? Or perhaps forcing Eclipse to license that "feature"?

  • New Slashdot Policy (Score:5, Insightful)

    by torinth (216077) on Tuesday June 08 2004, @07:20PM (#9372464) Homepage
    Good grief. I think we need to institute some kind of reasonable editorial policy here. As is so often the case in articles about Microsoft or patents, the lead is patently misleading.

    The patent is on a relatively complex system that I've never seen or heard of before. It's about an IDE tool that dynamically identifies syntax errors and TODO comments throughout your code, associates them with named tasks and gives them priorities.

    It is not about the little notebook you keep next to your computer, nor about running "grep //TODO *.c". It's about a smart IDE offering a useful and creative way of managing tasks. Should software processes be patentable? Maybe not. Are they? Yes. Does this infringe on prior art? Not really. So might this be a patentable software process? Sure looks like it.

    If anyone of you out there have been working on this kind of thing for emacs or Eclipse 5 years ago, I suggest you speak up now...

    I don't think we'll be hearing much.

  • Patents, and what they are and aren't (Score:5, Informative)

    by -Neko- (67564) on Tuesday June 08 2004, @07:26PM (#9372523) Homepage

    A patent is a description of an invention. It covers the WHOLE invention, and the
    requirement of the patent office is that the description of the invention is very
    very specific.

    Microsoft's "double click" patent you all keep going on about does NOT patent
    the double click. It patents differentiating between different lengths of time
    holding a button on a PDA, in order to start different applications or
    application methods - for the sole purpose of reducing the need for 100 buttons
    on devices with crap input and no screen estate.

    That they mentioned the double click does not mean they patented it. They may
    have patented the use of the double click when combined with time-based
    selection of the application to be launched, but that is FAR from the same
    thing. And as far as I know - hasn't been done on any system anyway. Personally
    I think it'd be rather unwieldy which probably explains why nobody did it :)

    What THIS new patent covers is, and if you go PAST the f**king summary and
    actually read the PATENT:

    In an IDE (interactive!), adding /* TODO */ comments or suchlike are
    automatically, and in real-time, added to a task list. When comments are removed
    or the task is clicked off on the GUI (and possibly in combination with revision
    control) you can see what stuff has been done and has not been done. In real
    time. From an IDE.

    Note that manually running "grep" does not act in real time as you type, display
    it in an IDE or generally do anything listed in the patent.

    It does not patent TODO comments merely because of their mention. Nor is it
    patenting any other COMPONENT of the patented methods. Just the methods themselves
    when brought to a whole.

    It was also filed in 2000. People are whining that Eclipse is prior art. Sorry,
    but Eclipse came about 18 months after the patent was filed.

    The next time I read a "Microsoft patents wiping ass with soft paper" story on
    Slashdot, remind me to explain this again. I'm sure I'll have to, because the
    amount of goddamned idiots here who can't or don't read past the headline (and
    that includes you, story submitter and mr. moderator) and jump to conclusions
    is incredible.

    Before we get started on this whole patent argument: yeah I think Amazon's
    one-click shopping thing is a bit rich. But that's different, it's a feature we
    can all remember using since the dark ages when cookies first arrived, the
    current batch of MS patents are actually quite original thinking from people,
    and generally well thought-out well-defendable inventions.

    Neko

    • Re:Patents, and what they are and aren't (Score:5, Insightful)

      by steveha (103154) on Tuesday June 08 2004, @08:16PM (#9372890) Homepage
      It patents differentiating between different lengths of time
      holding a button on a PDA, in order to start different applications or
      application methods - for the sole purpose of reducing the need for 100 buttons
      on devices with crap input and no screen estate.

      Kind of like the digital watch I had in 1979? Or the bike computer I had ten years ago?

      I really don't understand how they got that patent. It flunks both the prior art and "obvious" requirements.

      steveha
    • A couple of people have mentioned Delphi. Maybe you did not notice, but Delphi 5 released in 1999 Takes comments typed in source code, of the form:

      // todo 1: blah


      And converts this to a todo list idea subject=blah, with priority of 1.

      It does this in real time, as you type in the todo comment. This is prior to when the patent was filed by MS. So yeah, I think this is patent law abuse. I think it is primarily the government's fault (to date, MS is apparently playing the defensive patent game -- though I may have missed news where they attempt to enforce patents -- if so, shame on MS again).

      Now, maybe you can argue that MS has a better, more complete implementation that Delphi did/does. But that is the purpose behind copyright law, not patent law. Surely MS is protected adequately in such a case by copyright law. I can't pirate/steal their product legally when protected by copyright instead of patent.

      U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 8:
      Congress shall have the power ... To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;

      Congress has the right (not the requirement) to grant patents with the intent to promoting science and the useful arts. Please, explain to me how granting MS excludsive use of automated todo lists advances science or the useful arts. If that's not good enough, give a single example of a software patent that advances science or the useful arts. Specifically in ways that are better than copyright protection.

      Software patents are the result of a revisionist judge deciding that he (not Congress) had the right to grant software patents.

      Patents must also display "more ingenuity" than the work of a mechanic skilled in the arts. Usually this is referred to legally as novelty again, I ask what is really novel in this patent.

      The patent system, as applied to software does not serve the purpose to which constitutional authority grants Congress the priviledge of patents. State of the art in software advances in spite of software, not because of patents. Only real advantage that I can see in the U.S. patent system is lining the pockets of patent attorney's and giving large corp with a patent portfolio a bigger stick with which to beat up the competition.

      I feel better now at least.

  • The topic seems a little alarmist concerning patenting #TODOs in source code. After reading the article, it doesn't seem that outrageous of a patent. Putting code/greps in to find TODO's and saving them off is trivia. Going the extra mile and cataloging them, managing them and "removing after the task has been completed" is complex and a little ingenious . While I appreciate the article, who ever posted this to slashdot should have summarized it without all this chicken little tactics.

  • Visual Studio has had this since 1998... (Score:4, Informative)

    by burnsy (563104) on Tuesday June 08 2004, @07:29PM (#9372542)
    The TODO, UNDONE, and HACK tokens have been in Visual Studio since at least 1998.

    See here...

    Task List Window [microsoft.com]

  • Thankfully... (Score:5, Funny)

    by inkswamp (233692) on Tuesday June 08 2004, @07:47PM (#9372679)
    Thankfully they didn't patent the "FIXME" list.

  • Missing the point (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Mostly a lurker (634878) on Tuesday June 08 2004, @07:53PM (#9372726)
    A lot of the comments thus far are attacking the wrong issue. Microsoft is not claiming that they are the first to consider embedding comments and keywords in source code to identify needed actions. What they are claiming is that they are the first to use the information for maintaining task lists in real time.

    I am unsure if their claim is correct but, even if it is, it should have been thrown out as a totally obvious extension to routine, long standing software development methodologies.

  • Allow me. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by OneIsNotPrime (609963) on Tuesday June 08 2004, @08:48PM (#9373142)
    To the poster: I agree that many of the MS patents that have been popping up as front page news on Slashdot are ridiculous at face value. Whether that is because they are really so ludicrous, or because the details of a 100+ page patent can't be bioled down to a 1 paragraph summary by one of Microsoft's opponents, I can't say (because I am too lazy to read the stinkin' article). Perhaps it is a 50/50 split. Anyway, this patent doesn't look ludicrous to me from the summary. MS didn't patent a grocery list. They patented the autogeneration of coding task lists based on 'TODO:' comments in the code. This doesn't seem like a glaringly obvious idea to me, and I'm not aware of any prior art. If you are, or it seems glaringly obvious to you, speak up. But don't overgeneralize the patent just to make it sound overly ridiculous - that delegitamizes your argument.

    • Easy... (Score:5, Funny)

      by Karpe (1147) on Tuesday June 08 2004, @07:01PM (#9372251) Homepage
      3. Sue itself!

        • Re:Easy... (Score:5, Insightful)

          by afidel (530433) on Tuesday June 08 2004, @08:15PM (#9372884)
          Dude, no one competes with IBM on patents, they have averaged more than a patent a day for as long as any currently enforceable patent has been in existance. That is one game even Gates won't try. It would be like trying to win a land war in China, you might suceed for a while but eventually the sheer mass of your opponent will wear you down.

          • Re:Easy... (Score:5, Interesting)

            by WhiteDeath (737946) on Tuesday June 08 2004, @08:46PM (#9373137) Homepage
            A patent a day?

            At that rate surely IBM (and/or others) have patents for just about everything MS are trying to patent... or for most components of the patents.....

            Is "somebody else patented that before you did" a valid argument in patent law?

            IBM won't enter into it unless MS are stupid enough to take them on directly, but the little people MS are using as a leg-up for their argument might just be able to say "your patent is just the combination of all these patents, all owned by other people" - which might remove any argument they can throw at you. (obligatory: IANAL)

            All that remains is finding time to find all the necessary patents. Perhaps this is a good open project: looking up the patents that cover stuff MS has patents for/is patenting. Make the info available on a web site so anyone under threat has a ready-reference of defenses, and cases they hae been successfully used in. People will still get dragged into court, but it will only take them an hour to do the research, rather than possible years.

            Who knows, maybe one day there will be a ruling of "invalid as listed on the Many Silly PATENTS web site - mspatents.net"

          • Re:Easy... (Score:5, Informative)

            by nacturation (646836) <nacturation@BALD ... com minus author> on Tuesday June 08 2004, @09:21PM (#9373351) Journal
            Dude, no one competes with IBM on patents, they have averaged more than a patent a day for as long as any currently enforceable patent has been in existance.

            I think your numbers are just a *tad* off. Yes, they do a bit more than a patent per day. In fact, according to IBM [ibm.com], they get over 6,000 patents per year. That's over 16 every day of the year, or about 24 per business day.

          • Re:Easy... (Score:5, Funny)

            by gilroy (155262) on Tuesday June 08 2004, @09:24PM (#9373374) Homepage Journal
            Blockquoth the poster:

            It would be like trying to win a land war in China, you might suceed for a while but eventually the sheer mass of your opponent will wear you down.

            Next, I hear, Microsoft plans to go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line...

          • Re:Easy... (Score:5, Interesting)

            by RickHunter (103108) on Tuesday June 08 2004, @11:43PM (#9374171)

            What's even scarier. Not only does IBM have a massive patent portfolio... But, since the antitrust trial in the early '80s, they never, ever abuse them. They know just how much damage attracting the government's attention and earning the ill will of the techies can cause. So instead, they take the simplest, most direct road to success. They play fair.

        • Re:Easy... (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Gyorg_Lavode (520114) on Tuesday June 08 2004, @08:17PM (#9372896)
          Lets be fair. We all know microsoft loses a lot of money from copying other people's IP. MS is creating a huge portfolio of things everyone who writes software will be in violation of one of them. MS is creating these patents not to attack innocent people, but to defend it's illegal activities.

    • Re:Perfect Setup (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 08 2004, @07:09PM (#9372357)
      This is another news post that throws crap into the face of the public. I could write the whole day comments like this [slashdot.org] and never be off-topic.

      Remember our tea-throwing ancenstors. Corporations, governments cannot, must not control the people. This is another disgusting move to get to own each and every aspect of the peoples lives.

      Remember the phrase "divide et impera" - it's used again one fringe minority each time. "No one cares about Microsoft but the zealots", "No one cares about civil liberties but the conspiracy nutcases", "No one cares about media consolidation but the art freaks", "No one cares about the environment but the rabid tree huggers", "No one can think $something but $fringe/criminal/outcastgroup_X"

      Stop being indifferent about it. "First they came for the jews, then for them and for them and last for me", you remember that poem.

      Ever asked why no one in Germany resisted Hitler? They always thought "it's not gonna be THAT worse, calm down!". They didn't believe the thing about Auschwitz even if they saw it afterwards.

    • Be Fair (Score:5, Funny)

      by nick_davison (217681) on Tuesday June 08 2004, @07:38PM (#9372616)
      Hey, be fair to Microsoft!

      I'm all for the usual baiting of Micro$oft as the evil monopoly that they are but this one's legitimate.

      I think anyone who ever installed a copy of Windows ME will agree that Microsoft need all the help they can when it comes to itemising the TODO list in their source code.

        • Re:Wasn't it in Eclipse first? (Score:5, Funny)

          by scmason (574559) on Tuesday June 08 2004, @07:32PM (#9372569) Homepage
          "It's not like this going to show up in a shipping product"

          Are YOU crazy? "TODO" items must be like 98% of their code base. Here is a sample of their kernel that I yanked off the internet:

          int main(){
          TODO: WinFS
          TODO: Trusted Computing
          TODO: Network Security
          TODO: Usable Kernel
          bsod();
          exit(-1);
          }

          • Re:Wasn't it in Eclipse first? (Score:5, Insightful)

            by FirstTimeCaller (521493) on Tuesday June 08 2004, @07:57PM (#9372754)

            Yeah, and if you were really as smart as the inventor, you'd have patented it first.

            I figure that if I can (and did) come with it independently, then it must be obvious. The fact that the inventor chose to pursue a patent has no bearing on whether it is obvious or not.

            This is not a case of hearing about an idea and saying "Oh that's obvious". This is a case of lot's of people (not just me) saying "I've been doing that for years."

                • Re:Wasn't it in Eclipse first? (Score:5, Informative)

                  by servoled (174239) on Tuesday June 08 2004, @08:56PM (#9373200)
                  You must be careful with which definition of the word "obvious" you are using. The dictionary defintion and the legal definition as interpreted by the US court system are fairly different. For example, the dictionary definition [onelook.com] is given as "easily perceived or understood". The legal definition of obvious is a concept which must be proved and is not open to individual interpretation. See for example, MPEP 2142 Legal Concept of Prima Facie Obviousness [uspto.gov] which states:
                  To establish a prima facie case of obviousness, three basic criteria must be met. First, there must be some suggestion or motivation, either in the references themselves or in the knowledge generally available to one of ordinary skill in the art, to modify the reference or to combine reference teachings. Second, there must be a reasonable expectation of success. Finally, the prior art reference (or references when combined) must teach or suggest all the claim limitations. The teaching or suggestion to make the claimed combination and the reasonable expectation of success must both be found in the prior art, and not based on applicant"s disclosure. In re Vaeck, 947 F.2d 488, 20 USPQ2d 1438 (Fed. Cir. 1991). See MPEP 2143 - 2143.03 for decisions pertinent to each of these criteria.
                  Something may seem obvious to you (with the benefit of hindsight) and still be nonobvious according to the legal requirements of the term.

    • Re:sigh there we go again-Prior art anyone? (Score:5, Informative)

      by sroddy (216493) on Tuesday June 08 2004, @07:10PM (#9372373)
      1999 article discussing the ToDo features in Delphi 5:

      Here you go.... From this page: http://www.marcocantu.com/papers/face5.htm

      "The ToDo List is a great tool for tracking the progress of a single person or an entire team in developing and debugging a project. The ToDo Items window automatically scans the source code of the entire project, looking for ToDo comments and the project's special ToDo file. Its visual support is outstanding. I'm using the list frequently with my projects."
      • Actually that wasn't (just) an attempt at a 'funny' mod.

        The second page of the linked article in the parent explains that this might even be technology that Borland did give Microsoft from the Delphi stuff.

        • In exchange for a desperately needed $125 million cash infusion, Borland gave Microsoft the blueprints for much of its key technology, let Microsoft off the hook by settling long-standing patent disputes, and agreed to tie its own tools even more tightly to the Windows operating system. Inprise agreed to provide full access to more than 100 of its technology patents, including spreadsheet technologies and pending patent applications related to newer products. This transaction signified final victory for Microsoft in an epic battle to control the desktop database and development tool businesses.

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