Microsoft Patents Timed Button Presses 552
ScooterB writes "According to TechDirt, Microsoft has patented having the action of a button determined by how long the button was pressed. From the patent listing, it seems to be targeted towards PDA's and other handhelds." Whether patents like this are the chicken or the egg, this relates to an MSNBC article submitted by prostoalex which says "United States Patent and Trademark Office is overwhelmed with incoming requests," and that "Unless the budgeting increases, the review process for a patent could double to 5 years."
Illustrating a point with extreme examples. (Score:3, Interesting)
This deserves... (Score:1, Interesting)
Really, though, I'm constantly asking myself when this craziness will end? More importantly, when will the USPTO finally start to do some hard research on these patent requests and reject them?
It's painful to see the system that was designed to encourage innovation so often abused as a tool to stymie it.
Distributed Patent Review (Score:5, Interesting)
just to add to the list (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:yet another reason to support EFF (Score:3, Interesting)
The Patent Busting Project [eff.org]
Re: Not Prior Art (Score:3, Interesting)
keyboard repeat prior art (Score:4, Interesting)
bash$ xset r rate 250 40
Hmm: Let's see - hold down a key for a brief while:
X
Or hold it down for a long while:
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Re:just to add to the list (Score:3, Interesting)
Prior art from 1844 (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I guess no one at microsoft... (Score:1, Interesting)
Press and hold it, it becomes a palete window.
Re:Prior Art (Score:2, Interesting)
For instance:
Sounds like it's a fairly widespread thing. Seems to me like applying it to a new field is a "logical next step", which isn't patentable.
Re:Defensive Patents ... (Score:2, Interesting)
I have studied in Economics classes where the high technology sector is responsible for America's stellar economic growth compared to the rest of the world, yet we are strangling our cash cow with myriads of legal snarling. Our factories are damn near gone. Our students are losing their love of studying science. Our high-tech industries are moving offshore. It seems the highest valued jobs in America does not concern making anything anymore, its who can argue the best. We have become like a family who no longer works, we just sit back and bicker, each of us "lobbying" the powers that be to grant us power over the other.
I took a course in Object Oriented Data Structures in C++ just for the fun of it. There were seven students in the class ( including me ). The college actually ran the course. I also took a course in Intellectual Property Rights the business college ran... it was full to the gunwales - 50 students - and a line out the door down the hall the first day of class of prospective students trying to beg into the class. If it weren't for my having 100+ semester hours at that college, I probably would not have gotten in on my first try. ( I have been taking evening classes there for several decades ). But that really illustrated to me the future of our country. A couple of guys that actually do something, hundreds bickering over who can do what with it.
I don't think things will change until the general public becomes economically painfully aware that Congress has killed our cash cow with all their penmanship. Right now we are hiding the fact by dropping interest rates to damn near zero trying to flood the market for just a little while longer with unearned borrowed dollars.. so merchants and property owners still see cash flow. But this debt will come due. As a country, we are acting out the parent's worst nightmare, as the kid - unaware of the financial mathematics governing a credit card - goes on a wild melee spending spree.
When the bills come in, and something of value has to be scrounged up to settle them, Congress is going to have some interesting situations on their hands. People don't like stepping down. And people don't like paying tax if they already don't have enough surplus in their spendable income to even hold on to their existing stuff.
My venture is that within ten years, we are gonna see some very interesting twists come up. My suggestion is to learn some trade that can be bartered directly with Joe Public. Going to college just to get some scrap of paper to make you appealing to some corporate entity may be a lost cause. America is full of bickering skills already. I believe there will always be a market for the skills of actually doing something useful.
Prior art that's at least 30 years old! (Score:3, Interesting)
8 of the buttons selected individual patients (it handled up to 8 CCU patients). Pushing and holding the button for several seconds would switch between a graphical display of EKG abnormalities and displaying a summary of ALL 8 patients (showing HR, recent abnormalities, etc.).
In fact, we didn't even have hardware debouncing on the button; we used the minicomputer to sample the signal line and detect when it stayed stable for several milliseconds and treated that as a transition....
This would appear to be VERY similar to the claims in the patent.....
Re:Of course, you're all correct, BUT (Score:4, Interesting)
That's it.
The idea is that it's better to sacrifice the public's ability to utilize a new idea inorder to make it profitable to create new ideas.
Like patented drugs.
A company creates a new drug that is usefull, it can save lives. So they restrict access to the drug to create a profit, then they turn around and take those profits and create new usefull drugs.
The sucky part is that it makes the drug expensive for people that may need it. The good part is that the drug exists in the first place. The company took a risk and created a usefull item from nothingness. Thus it exists.
And because of this then they are free to take the funds created by this patent and create new drugs to patent. If it wasn't for the patent then they wouldn't make money and we wouldn't get new and better drugs as a result.
People who do the innovating are the ones to get money from the innovation and are able then to innovate more.
In fact they HAVE to innovate MORE, otherwise when the patent runs out THEY ARE Shit Out Of Luck.
No more money no more profits.
In a communist country that doesn't have intellectual property laws/rules, then progress is stiffled because the productive members of sociaty have no way to profit, unproductive members benifit equaly to productive ones. Thus productive members have no way to promote new ideas and take risks on their own. Thus over time EVERYBODY suffers.
Just remember the PURPOSE of patents is to promote innovation and progress. NOT to protect ideas. Protecting ideas is what they do, not their purpose. Like when I drive to work, I drive to get to work. I don't drive just to drive, I'd rather just take a nap.
Thus when the patent system is used as a tool to stifle innovation or is simply useless to the majority of sociaty and a drain on it's funds, then it's time to re-examine the patent system and modify it's behavior.
Like for example shorten the life of software patents down to 1 year, instead of the 7 years or whatever. Which is much to long for the fast paced software industry.
Take for example the Jpeg's compression patent. It was valid and usefull for a year or so after it was created, but the creators of the patent all of a sudden suing people years and years later after it becomes a industry standard is obviously counter productive.
Re:Prior Art (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:obvious is right.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Patent Lawsuits are PARTICULARLY EXPENSIVE ones to Litigate. They're going to get a massive array of patents and then in a blitzkrieg, they'll fire out an overwhelming number of cease and desist letters to all the key open-source projects that even remotely resemble one of their patents. The end result is going to be a lot of "settlements" because the cost of litigating will be prohibitively expensive (especially for open-source projects). The settlements will basically read, "take down your website / remove the project and we won't sue you out of house and home".
The average open-source programmer would most likely rather close up shop than try to defend himself from a long-drawn out legal battle with MSFT's attack dogs.
The larger issue is why insufficient funding. (Score:2, Interesting)
The issue of this patent may be finished, but the larger issue of why the patent office is not receiving enough funding is extremely important.
Those who want corruption in the U.S. federal and state governments have found a new way of accomplishing it. They arrange that there is not enough money to do the work. This is happening throughout the United States. Here is a quote from an article written by the president of the Oregon State Bar Association:
"The crippling loss of nearly one-third of their staff have left our [Oregon State] courts unable to hear criminal cases such as car theft, shoplifting, prostitution, fraud and identity theft. Criminals, meanwhile, have figured this out and in some cases are operating virtually unchecked by a broken public safety system." [From "In Our Opinion", by Charles Williamson. Published in the Oregonian newspaper on 2003-06-24. Available from OregonLive.com for a charge for archive access.]
The U.S. is a rich country. It is not that there is not enough money. This is widespread corruption. This is deliberate degradation of government by those who want to use governmental power to make money.
The corruption in the U.S. government is becoming severe. For example, read the book, House of Bush, House of Saud: The Secret Relationship Between the World's Two Most Powerful Dynasties [amazon.com]. (I make no money from book purchases.) If you haven't been reading books and magazine articles about this is the last 20 years, you will learn that a close Bush family friend knows Osama bin Laden, and that George W. Bush served in the national guard with someone who has done a large amount of business with one of Osama bin Laden's brothers, and with the Bush family.
This week the U.S. Supreme Court is hearing a case [usatoday.com] about U.S. vice-president Dick Cheney's secret activities involving large oil businesses. One of the Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court, Antonin Scalia, is a long-time friend of Cheney and is judging this case, even though there are strong rules against conflict of interest.
Remember that it was Republicans on the U.S. Supreme Court that decided that George W. Bush would be president of the U.S., not the voters. For more about that, see the book Supreme Injustice: How the High Court Hijacked Election 2000 by Alan M. Dershowitz [amazon.com]
Here are some tips for those who plan to take an interest in U.S. government corruption:
1) Most people don't read books. Only 2% read non-fiction about subjects other than their work. So, although there is plenty of information available about U.S. government corruption, most people don't know that.
Television, magazine, and newspaper news reporters rely on being granted access to politicians, and therefore cannot say anything very negative without risking losing their jobs.
Only books have comprehensive information. A book author has the luxury of spending two years gathering facts.
Of course, not all books are written by authors who care primarily about the facts. Bob Woodward, for example, is known for being especially positive toward those who grant him access. That creates a kind of blackmail in which people grant him access to avoid having negative things written about them.
Those who corrupt government for money don't care about what book authors say because only 2% of the population reads books.
2) When someone is reputed to be an "oilman", that does not mean he has an interest in geology. That means that he is interested in profit.
It's wrong to say that the U.S. government goes to war over oil. The amount of oil is the same. It is who gets the oil profit that motivates U.S. government violence.
Re:Prior Art (Score:3, Interesting)
That's good enough for me. For the record, my intent wasn't to defend Microsoft so much as to clarify what prior art would have to be to shoot this cas down. Based on some of the other responses I recieved, I think the impression was that I was saying Microsoft's in the clear. Not really the case, but I didn't express myself clearly enough.
Thank you for being civil.
Re:Prior Art (Score:3, Interesting)
Perhaps, but thanks to the way patents work, using it on a PocketPC or mouse driven PC is different 'enough'.
I understand this "just add 'on the Internet' to a previous patent and it's a new one" argument, but I think there is more to it in this wristwatch example.
Microsoft, specifically, and many others have been pushing the convergence of many consumer devices by pushing (or proposing to push) their OSes into them. Wristwatches were specifically mentioned as a potential platform for Windows CE at its introduction, and Linux is already there. They have been telling us, for years, to think of these as just alternate instances of the same thing, and that this is where the industry would be headed.
At the very least, I think this greatly dilutes any recent argument that it's a novel concept to apply any specific wristwatch concepts to any other computing platforms (or vice-versa). More than that, I think it totally invalidates such an argument.
And in this particular case, it's one of the very companies that has been strongly pushing the convergence for a long time that is now trying to patent one of the things they have been "converging".
OMFG... (Score:3, Interesting)
If you're going to grant every single idiotic patent that comes your way, you might as well just replace it with a motion-activated tape player that says "Patent Granted!"
On a more serious note, I want to know how on earth they could possibly review a patent for *five years* and not see glaringly obvious prior art from at least 20 years ago. They can't all be this stupid, can they? *whispers in my ear* I'm going to go cry now...
Y'Know, I think I'll apply for a patent on "A means to generate an electromotive force by motion of a conducting material through a magnetic field" and for "A means to drive said conductor through magnetic field by union of carbon and oxygen atoms." Not only is it glaringly obvious, but the level of scientific knowledge required to understand it is far beyond anything these morons are capable of. Then you'll all have to pay me for the alternator in your car
I see some potential prior-art (no, not a watch) (Score:2, Interesting)
No big surprise.
Regardless, I think I've almost found prior art (this is really close & quite debate-worthy).
1. Look at Mac OS X's "Dock".
A single click on an application-icon or document-icon starts up the app or document as normal.
A control-click, right-click, or long-click causes a menu to drop down from the icon.
If the icon is an active application, the menu usually has some stuff like "hide", "show in Finder", "Quit", and anything else the programmer would have added.
If the active application's icon is an icon that only appears while the app is active (you can have inactive app-icons kept there too) there is one more option, "Keep in Dock"
Though I don't see a perfect claim-match, it's pretty damn close.
Apple might even be able to debate that the "Keep in dock" option is similar/same to "restore it to it's last known state." because by default, the Dock doesn't retain the icon of an app when it quits. You have to have told to keep in dock (not a default).
Wether or not Apple has prior art depends on the interpretation of "restore it to it's last known state".
2. MacOS's "spring loaded folders" also match the timer threshold part, but not the rest of the claim.
3. Though unimplemented, Apple does already hold a patent on an OS interface feature called "piles". Piles could hold folders, applications, documents, etc. As you click & hold, the stacked icons would levitate up so you could see the icons without them overlapping, and you'd release on the file/folder/app you wanted.
No, none of these are a perfect match, but still noteworthy since they are quite similar to the claim.
Replace reviews with challenges (Score:3, Interesting)
I would also suggest that these challenges be on a loser pays basis. Thus, the patent examiner will be under no quota that forces them to reject/accept applications with only a cursory review. Further, if one side realizes that they are in the wrong, they have an incentive to admit it and not run up the bill more (or at all; they could admit it before the challenge review).
In this system, a patent application would just be filed. No review would be done until the challenge. Note that this also allows for your distributed review. If you wish to comment on a patent application, you should be able to do so. That information would then be available in the case of a challenge.
The beauty of this is that it moves the patent examination to a time when someone has the resources to fully examine the issue. Also, it makes it cheaper to apply for a patent (encouraging an increase in the information sharing aspect) and increases the rigorousness of the patent examination.
Note: this would still require a clarification of the patent rules. The problem that I see with the current patent is the idea that someone could patent "holding the button down to get a different effect than a quick click." Patent a particular physical implementation? Sure. Patent the concept (even limited to a specific platform)? That does not promote information sharing, so it should not be part of the patent process.
New prior art idea (Score:2, Interesting)
How about an organization and website dedicated to creating prior art. In other words, we simply document any idea that any of us thinks about. These ideas are then timestamped, so that if someone tries to patent any of the concepts after they were submitted to the website, we immediately have a source and documentation for prior art.
Is this legally feasible? Does prior art begin the day before a company files for a patent? Or is there a grace period that could cause a problem with people patenting things too soon after entries are made?
If it does work, then all we have to do is fill the public database with ideas. Then, any patents covering those ideas filed for after the data of any entries can be easily invalidated, and perhaps with patent reform, even prevented.
What do you think, /.?