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Microsoft Frowned at for Smiley Patent
Posted by
CowboyNeal
on Sat Jul 23, 2005 08:15 AM
from the stranger-than-fiction dept.
from the stranger-than-fiction dept.
theodp writes "ZDNet UK reports on criticism of Microsoft's attempt to patent the creation of custom emoticons. 'I would have expected to see something like this suggested by one of our more immature community members as a joke on Slashdot,' quipped Mark Taylor of the Open Source Consortium. 'We now appear to be living in a world where even the most laughable paranoid fantasies about commercially controlling simple social concepts are being outdone in the real world by well-funded armies of lawyers on behalf of some of the most powerful companies on the planet.'"
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Uhoh (Score:5, Funny)
=( (r)
* Disclaimer: "=(" is a registered Trademark of Microsoft Corporation of Redmond, WA. Used without permission.
(Please don't sue)
Re:Uhoh (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Uhoh (Score:5, Informative)
- An app displays the emoticon on the source CRT.
- The app copies the emoticon to the output buffer, which is "assigning a character sequence to the pixels".
- The app/OS sends the emoticon to the destination machine.
"The app" in this case can be any email client, a browser with a text box, etc.This requires the source app/OS to "select pixels" from a font in order to display the emoticon.
(It happens that this is the same sequence that the user originally entered, but the patent does not disclaim this).
Another example is an email client that sends a picture of an emoticon using uuencode or base64.
I think that this patent covers more than I think that you think that it does.
Parent
Re:Uhoh (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Uhoh (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Uhoh (Score:3, Funny)
immature community members? (Score:5, Funny)
I don't know. These days it seems like the editors don't comment as much as they used to...
[rimshot]
All I have to say... (Score:3, Funny)
They want for us to hate them, it must be (Score:5, Interesting)
Stop it, Bill!
Re:They want for us to hate them, it must be (Score:4, Insightful)
Having the patent doesn't mean they're going to go sue AOL, Yahoo, etc. if their messengers have custom emoticons. Clue in, guys.
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Re:They want for us to hate them, it must be (Score:4, Interesting)
Besides which, yes it's a dumb patent, but is that MS's fault, or the patent office's? If I ask you for a thousand dollars and you give it to me, thus ending up unable to pay bills, isn't that your fault for being stupid enough to do it?
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Re:They want for us to hate them, it must be (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:They want for us to hate them, it must be (Score:4, Interesting)
2. What this does mean is that someone wishing to create an instant messenger with custom smilies is in for trouble. No lawyer is going to advise possible infringement.
3. So with this Microsoft may be differentiating their products, making it impossible for other products to have the same feature.
4. Worse, there is no legal requirements (IIRC) on licensing. In other words, although the patent system was instigates to promote publishing ideas in such a way that more companies implemented them, there is no requirement for the patent holder to actually allow it (with or without a fee).
5. Is it MS's fault or the patent office's?
Abusing a broken system is immoral and unethical. Microsoft have shown themselves to be both, which is why I will never buy or recommend their products.
Parent
Re:They want for us to hate them, it must be (Score:5, Interesting)
Microsoft already makes tons of money off the Windows monopoly and that is what all of their actions are about. Since the early 1990's, Microsoft is more worried about protecting their monopoly than expanding in other areas. Expansion is secondary IMO. They spend a couple of $billion per year on losing markets outside the desktop/server but THAT is more about keeping budding technologies/companies from getting too much power and marketshare in the PC periphery sectors. Look at their recent earnings report. ~30% from MS Windows, ~30% from MS Office for Windows, ~20% from MS Windows Server/software, and until last year, EVERYTHING else was losing hundreds of millions each year. MSN advertising brought MSN into the black finally( popup ads maybe? ). Also, failing in the courtroom is not a big concern for MSFT since they'll be using much of this stuff as threats. It only has to LOOK like it has teeth in order to work as they intend it to. With $40 Billion in CASH, they can sue til the cows some home and not make a dent in that cash horde.
IMO, the current IP patent land grab is about protecting the Windows monopoly and very little about making money from new sectors or business markets. Never have I seen Microsoft support a none-Windows based product having over 50% marketshare. Even when Palm had 80% marketshare, every dbase vendor had a PalmOS based micro-dbase except MSFT. They came out with MS Access for WindowsCE when that only had 5% marketshare. The key to understanding Microsofts actions is to know their motivations and that is protecting the Windows monopoly. THAT is their business.
Everything else you wrote is right on target.
LoB
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Re:They want for us to hate them, it must be (Score:3, Insightful)
Uh, MS took action, so yes it's their fault.
When the WTC was hit, was it America's fault or the terrorist's fault?
Re:They want for us to hate them, it must be (Score:3, Informative)
Here you go: Microsoft patents ASF media file format, stops reverse engineering [advogato.org].
Microsoft is also demanding that people buy licenses to use their FAT file system: Wikipedia article [wikipedia.org]
Re:They want for us to hate them, it must be (Score:5, Insightful)
Why mention that at all, except if on the offensive?
Parent
Re:They want for us to hate them, it must be (Score:3, Informative)
In the real world, people do connect the dots and interpret an indirect threat.
Re:They want for us to hate them, it must be (Score:4, Insightful)
Patent violation is like robbery - it can happen regardless of whether or not a court has found that it happened. Sure, you can't say "legally" that the robbery occured, but you know it did. You don't have to wait for a judge to tell you that (but it isn't legally binding until he or she does).
I am morally certain that there are patent violations in practically every piece of software out there today, and I'm sure Linux has its fair share. All you have to do is look at the patent minefield even small developers have to wade through to understand how much the patent system is bogging us down in software development.
With that backdrop, all you have to do is add the piece about "selective enforcement" and it is easy to see why our system is deeply flawed. Essentially, there is a huge motive to patent everything in sight, to be used defensively, or offensively, which is a decision that can be made sometime in the future. Once you have the patents to use as weapons, you can then use them as bargaining chips, bullying some competitors and not others, at will. I think it would be very inteesting if companies were required to prosecute every violation of a patent issued to them. I think they would have to give a lot of thought to every patent they filed, both from a strategic perspective, as well as a resources perspective (who else does it hurt when I patent this? Are they my business partners? Do I have the legal and technical resources to hunt down every violator?)
In the case of MS, I think they would be perfectly willing to take Linux vendors to court. The main problem is that they wouldn't be able to change a whole lot by doing that, because you can just torrent the downloads and host them in a data haven like Sea Land. Sure, Red Hat would get litigated into oblivion, but then there'd be the next guy. Everyone moves to Debian, or Gentoo, or SuSE, or Mandriva, or whatever.
IBM saw the patent issue for what it is: a sword of Damocles over the head of open source software. So IBM responded by "donating" those patents to open source, i.e., promising not to sue if those patents were used in the Linux kernel (IIRC, not sure if it might have been other software as well).
Anyway, the point is that patents ARE a threat to open source, and one of the worst things you can do is ignore them or dismiss them. We can't afford to wait for a judge to rule about the violations, there needs to be some other plan.
Parent
Re:They want for us to hate them, it must be (Score:3, Insightful)
Bullshit.
Patents and copyrights themselves only exist as artifacts of law. The violation of such cannot be any more "real" than the thing itself.
I agree with your general point, but likening patent violation to robbery, especially in the current ludicrous state of the patent system, is pure bollocks.
Re:They want for us to hate them, it must be (Score:5, Insightful)
In some countries, like Japan for instance, the loser in a lawsuit has to compensate the winner for their expenses and may be assessed a fine. Some judges here in the US require a bond be placed to protect parties from frivolous lawsuits. IMO, the next needed steps in patent reform are, first, fines for filing frivolous patents, and second, clearer criteria for what is and is not patentable. These criteria need to be so clearly written that even government employees can determine if a patent application has merit.
A third reform step is to eliminate the limits on the time a patent can be challenged and overturned. For instance, if no one challenges a patent within two years, the patent holder can benefit from the de facto protection of the patent without recourse, until such time as that protection was determined to be erroneously granted and the patent overturned. My thinking is that a person erroneously granted patent rights should not be granted full patent protection just because someone didn't notice it within the challenge period. I wonder how many thousands of people are unproductively tied up spending anxious hours perusing published patent apps to protect themselves from trivial patent abuse.
Which brings me to the fourth reform: Patent apps need to be screenable by computer. (I wonder who is going to get the patent on that!)
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Re:They want for us to hate them, it must be (Score:5, Interesting)
What about capping the number of patents a single company can own? What if, in order to gain a new patent, one must release an old patent into public domain?
It wouldn't be too much different than our current use of the judicial branch to regulate monopolies. Any thoughts?
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Re:They want for us to hate them, it must be (Score:5, Interesting)
No, people just don't like a company -- any company -- get a patent on something which (a) the company did not invent, (b) already existed more than a decade ago, (c) is really really obvious, (d) is in common use by nearly every computer user today.
It's like Microsoft said: "Hey, nobody got the idea to patent smileys yet! And everything should be patented by SOMEBODY! I mean, we can't have any concept not OWNED by someone, can we? So let's see if the patent office is stupid enough to grant us exclusive rights to something that is currently in the public domain! We can see what we do with such a patent later."
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Re:They want for us to hate them, it must be (Score:3, Insightful)
From The Little Prince, 1943, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (The Little Prince's conversation with a businessman who claimed to own the stars - emph. added):
"How is it possible for one to own the stars?"
"To whom do they belong?" the businessman retorted, peevishly.
"I don't know. To nobody."
"Then they belong to me, because I was the first pers
Re:They want for us to hate them, it must be (Score:3, Informative)
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/09/12/21332
they want to patent emoticons, eh? (Score:5, Funny)
Goatse version (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:they want to patent emoticons, eh? (Score:3, Funny)
Patent THIS! (Score:5, Funny)
Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted!
Reason: Your comment looks too much like ascii art.
while you were all posting, i patented these :) (Score:5, Funny)
Re:while you were all posting, i patented these :) (Score:5, Funny)
Or did Microsoft beat you to it?
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Being a lwayer (Score:3, Funny)
Unusually specific, but still dangerous (Score:5, Informative)
It's still quite dangerous though. I don't think that any other IM client that implements MSN's custom emoticons would infringe it, because none of them use a web browser cache to store images. Every other claim is pretty much required to interoperate with Microsoft's client. So if you implemented a full MSN client as an extension to Firefox, for example, it almost certainly would infringe on this patent. Or if your operating system had some unified cache for storing any downloaded content that is used by both the web browser and IM client.
I certainly wouldn't consider it patentable. It's hardly complex, innovative, or non-obvious.
A good indicator is that the patent application probably took them far longer to write than it took to design and implement the thing in software.
Re:Unusually specific, but still dangerous (Score:3, Insightful)
from the USPTO [uspto.gov]:
It's not that simple. (Score:5, Informative)
It's not ASCII :-) it's the image version (Score:5, Informative)
"Methods and devices for creating and transferring custom emoticons allow a user to adopt an arbitrary image as an emoticon, which can then be represented by a character sequence in real-time communication. In one implementation, custom emoticons can be included in a message and transmitted to a receiver in the message. In another implementation, character sequences representing the custom emoticons can be transmitted in the message instead of the custom emoticons in order to preserve performance of text messaging. At the receiving end, the character sequences are replaced by their corresponding custom emoticons, which can be retrieved locally if they have been previously received, or can be retrieved from the sender in a separate communication from the text message if they have not been previously received."
The patent is not for smilies.
It is for having both ends having pre-set images displayed for certain character sequences in text mesages, be they
See? (Score:4, Funny)
Prior Art: ligatures (Score:5, Informative)
Typesetting already has well established prior art of having a special optimized representation for a sequence of characters.
It's called a ligature. "To" is an example of a sequence that is frequently optimized with an alternate image (that moves the 'o' closer to the 'T').
Custom Smiley (Score:4, Funny)
Look, I can lick my nose!
WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG! (Score:4, Informative)
"OMG M$ have patented teh smilies!!!!1" - wrong
The patent APPLICATION is for encoding and transfer of CUSTOM smilies. ie an arbiary image or animation on one computer being transferred to another one automatically in a seamless manner via encoing, transmisson, reconstruction.
Not to say that this application is good - it's not. Just that 99% of people here have it so wrong that it's laughable.
From TFA:
""Thursday, covers selecting pixels to create an emoticon image, assigning a character sequence to these pixels and reconstructing the emoticon after transmission.""
*Note the key words such as CREATE and RECONSTRUCTING.
*Note the lack of the words "changing
Isn't it time (Score:3, Insightful)
ANOTHER Patent MS can't defend (Score:3, Insightful)
But, again, they can't defend it.
Vioations: any image 19x19 or otherwise, is converted to characters when being transferred by email. And, the character sequence representing an icon (avatar) has been with us since FACES graced our email. The fact that MS doesn't render FACES is... well, not relevant.
The next step -- which is replacing a long sequence by a shorter sequence to be filled in by the receiver -- in a nutshell, that is gzip compression. And using pre-computed huffman tables has been with us forever as well.
The LAST step -- which is to tie this all to "emoticons" used for IM. If you can send pictures via IM (which is NOT something being patented here)... the emoticon is simply an interpretation of the picture.
Again, I am really happy for Microsoft for getting this patent, but don't sweat it -- they can't (and won't) defend it. May use it to threaten someone, though.
Ratboy
Reply from microsoft (Score:3, Funny)
Microsoft Frowned at for Smiley Patent
Now you frown, till we patent thatRe:Prior ASCII Art??? (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:Prior ASCII Art??? (Score:5, Informative)
then you have (*)(*) for pert, firm pointers
or you have (o)(o) and if you like them bigger, (O)(O)
and of course there's (0)(0) or if you frequent tiddy bars these might look familiar ($)($)
( O )( O ) and if you like them extra large..
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Re:Prior ASCII Art??? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Oops :( (Score:4, Informative)
(p.s. that is one awesome website. the posters are bloody hilarious [despair.com]
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Re:What came first: Emoticons or Microsoft? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm sure there will be many, probably thousands or tens of thousands, who will want to challenge it but who is going to pay for the challenge? As we know MS has more than enough cash to hire as many lawyers as it takes to defend their patents, it will take other lawyers ($$$) to challenge it.
Re:Prior art? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:And my opinion is... (Score:5, Funny)
I saw where Microsoft has patented their new emoticon for their Linux strategy.
o
|\__o
Bastards.
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