Microsoft's Bold Patent Move

theodp writes "On Thursday, the USPTO disclosed that Microsoft has a patent pending for displaying numbers in a box to make them stand out. " Check out the images to see the power of this breakthrough patent. That's almost impossible to do without patents.

Well...

[Lord Grey]

OK, I like bashing Microsoft just as much as the next guy. But I just skimmed through the application and they're not simply trying to patent "displaying numbers in a box." The application is for dynamically highlighting (or whatever) all numeric elements within a document, even if the numerics are expressed in words (e.g., "one thousand") in any supported language. While possibly of limited use, this does seem to be a unique feature.

Now, whether Microsoft (or anyone) should be allowed to patent such thing... I don't know.

Re:Am I dumb?

[Saven Marek]

what it patents is if there is data in a document that should be brought attention to, microsoft has patented the idea of giving it a standout attribute
like putting a box around it or underlining it or boldening it or making it a brighter color.

so if you have a document with an underlined word in it now you are infringing on microsofts patent. you better pay them your $699 or they will come after you.

Re:Well...

[Anonymous Coward]

IMHO they POSSIBLY could patent their search algorithim to find such numbers, but not the display method of placing a box around them, since that could be considered 'obvious'.

Post Text Missing?

[SwornPacifist]

Shouldn't the link text be Microsoft has a patent pending for displaying numbers in a box?

Not trying to be a grammar nazi, but there's a whole friggin' word missing there...

Re:Well...

[Tester]

OK, I like bashing Microsoft just as much as the next guy. But I just skimmed through the application and they're not simply trying to patent "displaying numbers in a box." The application is for dynamically highlighting (or whatever) all numeric elements within a document, even if the numerics are expressed in words (e.g., "one thousand") in any supported language. While possibly of limited use, this does seem to be a unique feature.

Actually, you are misreading the patent. In a US patent, each claim stands on its own. If only have to reproduce one of them to infringe on the patent.

And claim 1 is: A method for emphasizing numerical data contained in an electronic document, the method comprising: determining whether a request to emphasize all of the numerical data in the electronic document has been received; and in response to receiving the request, locating all of the numerical data contained within the electronic document and emphasizing the located numerical data.

This is really as ridiculous as we beleive..

Re:How about patenting these images too?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a tiff image, which is a pretty standard and pretty default way to store scanned images, so it's Firefox (gasp) rather the USPTO. Fetch the thing manually and try opening it in the GIMP.

Re:Nice summary.

[October_30th]

The summary is definitely flamebait, but hey, this kind of articles sell ad- and maybe even subscription-wise. Slashdot is well on its way to becoming the National Enquirer [nationalenquirer.com] for Nerds.

Re:Well...

[thing12]

Of course it can -- take a look at Perl's Lingua::EN::FindNumber [cpan.org].

qr/((?:b(?:akers?dozen|illi(?:ard|on))|centillion| d(?:ecilli(?:ard|on)|ozen|u(?:o(?:decilli(?:ard|on )|vigintillion)|vigintillion))|e(?:ight(?:een|ieth |[yh])?|leven(?:ty(?:first|one))?|s)|f(?:i(?:ft(?: een|ieth|[yh])|rst|ve)|o(?:rt(?:ieth|y)|ur(?:t(?:i eth|[yh]))?))|g(?:oogol(?:plex)?|ross)|hundred|mi( ?:l(?:ion|li(?:ard|on))|nus)|n(?:aught|egative|in( ?:et(?:ieth|y)|t(?:een|[yh])|e)|o(?:nilli(?:ard|on )|ught|vem(?:dec|vigint)illion))|o(?:ct(?:illi(?:a rd|on)|o(?:dec|vigint)illion)|ne)|qu(?:a(?:drilli( ?:ard|on)|ttuor(?:decilli(?:ard|on)|vigintillion)) |in(?:decilli(?:ard|on)|tilli(?:ard|on)|vigintilli on))|s(?:core|e(?:cond|pt(?:en(?:dec|vigint)illion |illi(?:ard|on))|ven(?:t(?:ieth|y))?|x(?:decillion |tilli(?:ard|on)|vigintillion))|ix(?:t(?:ieth|y))? )|t(?:ee?n|h(?:ir(?:t(?:een|ieth|y)|d)|ousand|ree) |r(?:e(?:decilli(?:ard|on)|vigintillion)|i(?:ginti llion|lli(?:ard|on)))|w(?:e(?:l(?:fth|ve)|nt(?:iet h|y))|o)|h)|un(?:decilli(?:ard|on)|vigintillion)|v igintillion|zero|s))/i;

It may look ugly but it's quite simple.

Re:How about patenting these images too?

[bunratty]

Firefox can't show the images because of Bugzilla bug 160261. There's nothing wrong with the images on the web site, it's just that Firefox can't display TIFF images.

Re:Context highlighting?

[Zordak]

Prior art is not just as easy as saying, "I'm pretty sure I saw somebody do this on Emacs back in '89." Prior art is very technically defined by 35 U.S.C. 102, and at a bare minimum, has to be published. If you can find a published reference showing how somebody did this prior to the application date for this patent, you're in business. If you can find it within the next two months, you may be able to stop this patent from ever issuing. If not, the only hope is that the examiner will give it a 35 U.S.C. 103 Obviousness rejection, but that bar seems to be pretty low in anything related to computers.

Re:Well...

[interiot]

It may look ugly but it's quite simple. Aren't the two mutually exclusive?

No...

It's simple because it's completely table-driven... it doesn't require the complicated set of if/length/substr/== commands that you'd originally think it would.

More formally, so people don't try to ding me when they don't see the difference... finite state automata [wikipedia.org] are clearly simpler things than turing machines [wikipedia.org]. This clearly explains the "aren't they mutually exclusive?" issue. The first thing you think of when you think of implementing number-matching for human-languages is that it can't be expressed via DFA's. It's a little surprising that it can be. But the fact that you can wedge something that otherwise would more naturally be expressed as a full algorithm into a DFA, means that it's going to be messy as hell.

Re:CSS

[AKAImBatman]

Since IBM and Sun don't write word processing software anymore (AFAIK)

Really? *cough*SmartSuite [lotus.com]*cough*StarOffice [sun.com]*cough*

I think its more likely that the patent is targeted at the various free word processing programs.

I don't think it's actually *targeted* at anything. Targeting something with a patent would imply that the feature exists. (Which would invalidate the patent.) Instead, Microsoft is simply building a large portfolio. The idea is that if they cast a large enough net, they can eventually threaten any would-be attacker with hundreds of vague claims. While none of them would probably hold up in court, the claims would tie things up for long enough to bankrupt or entirely block the attacker.

Re:How about patenting these images too?

[srleffler]

The problem is that the patent office uses a relatively odd TIFF structure, that they are bound to by international agreements. You can get a free viewer for Windows here [alternatiff.com]. Choose option 3: standard web browser plug-in (Netscape style). It works fine in Firefox (although older versions failed to install automagically and had to be manually moved fo Firefox's plugins directory.)

Firefox's automatic plugin finder is unlikely to work because even though the patent images meet the TIFF standard their format is not recognized by most TIFF viewers.

Re:CSS

[leshert]

Not quite. Claims in a patent are independent, except where they specifically refer to other claims. If you infringe on one claim but not the other 20, you're still in infringement.

That's why patents usually have a long list of claims, starting with the first, most general claim and ending with the last, most specific claims.

It's a defensive technique: prior art can invalidate the most general claims, but not the later, specific claims. Competitors' design-around-patent efforts can avoid the later specific claims, but may still infringe on the earlier, general ones.

Re:Well...

[databyss]

No, that doesn't match the patent.

Re:Well...

[Fedallah]

Can these monstrosities be generated algorithmically?

The quoted regular expression in the GP was generated algorithmically. It was originally a word list from the Lingua::EN::Words2Nums [cpan.org] module (Check out the source if you want to see the list.) To generate the regex, the list was passed through the Regex::PreSuf [cpan.org] module, which creates fast-running regular expressions out of word lists.

Large regular expressions are simple and ugly...

[fprog26]

In fact this is one of the regexp that I find easy to read.

For those who don't like Perl, the same regexp
is also valid for PHP, Python, Ruby, Java or JavaScript or Qt3.

Just get rid of the ?: which is just there to say
that the parenthesis should not be "tagging".

Basically, it's just a condensed enumeration of all possible numbering nouns with a bunch of -OR- operator all over the place with repetition where the language makes sense.

and the /i is just for case insensitive...

of course, you could also rewrite it as a large sequence of small regexp if you prefer that...

Re:Prior art + obviousness

[thebdj]

All I can say is to hell with that. I work at the patent office. We all have a minimum BS in our field, and to be quite honest we do not simply rubberstamp anything. You realize that if anyone thinks a case is allowed on first action they have to consult like 5 different people, do more searching and most cannot get anyone to sign off on the work until it has been beaten to death for nearly weeks. Quota or not we reject, reject, reject. The quota isn't for patents issued, first rejections and abandoments or RCE (request for continued examination), along with some other things also count towards quota. So before you express to know what goes on at the patent office, go do it, and if you did and left cause you didn't like it, don't complain that the rest of us don't do our damn job, cause we do.