IBM Patents Changing Color of E-Mail Text 132
theodp writes "Last week, the USPTO granted IBM a patent for its 'System and method for comprehensive automatic color customization in an email message based on cultural perspective.' So what exactly did the four Big Blue inventors come up with? IBM explains: 'For example, an email created in the US in red font to indicate urgency or emphasis might be mapped to a more appropriate color (e.g., blue or black) for sending to Korea.' IBM took advantage of the USPTO's Accelerated Examination Program to fast-track the patent's approval. BTW, if you missed the 2006 press release, IBM boasted it was 'holding itself to a higher standard than any law requires because it's urgent that patent quality is improved.'"
But... wait... (Score:5, Insightful)
Can't we just tag the text with some kind of semantic markup, and then use some kind of "sheet of styles" that relate the markup to the appearance? Sound familiar?
nice (Score:3, Insightful)
IMO this isn't such an bad way to do it. Might even be patent worthly as noone is doing it.
I myself really dislike stupid red fonts in emails or whatever *urgent* messages. I understand it by words anyways and it just makes me feel offended. But if its just cultural differences, then good job IBM.
Why we think all or almost all s/w patents are bad (Score:5, Insightful)
Because most of them would take most competent software engineers about 5 minutes to think up themselves if presented with the problem that the patent claims to be a solution to.
The programmatic solution is often obvious from a routine logical analysis of the problem and its domain, and standard modelling techniques.
The examiners seem not to be able to have a proper idea of non-obviousness (to a practitioner in the field), when it comes to software patents.
This causes areas of software work to be unreasonably closed off to any reasonable creative developer, and that's just a pain in the ass. So we basically say, look, if I could have thought of that without breaking a sweat just by using the standard analysis and coding techniques of the trade, then I'm pretty much going to ignore the "patent" on it, aren't I.
Re:Well I'll be dipped in dogshit... (Score:3, Insightful)
This should be modded +1 Funny, because there is no way that this post can be serious. Writing a letter with a multi-color pens gives you a letter with multiple colors. When you send it to people with different cultural backgrounds, the colors of your letter don't automatically change so that they have the same cultural meaning for your recipients as they do for you. Maybe such a pen exists in the world of Harry Potter. But in the real world, this doesn't come even close to prior art that anticipates this invention.
Re:Black is the New Red (Score:3, Insightful)
So all your friends in Korea are old people?
Re:Why we think all or almost all s/w patents are (Score:1, Insightful)
Why not? Many, many inventions solve problems people didn't realize they had and change the world. In fact, the best inventions often do.
People who've never had a hot shower don't know what they're missing. People who rode horses everywhere didn't see the need for cars. People who like to shop didn't see the problem being solved by the internet.
You don't invent things just to be novel, you invent things to solve problems. The implementation does not need to be complex, the invention merely has to be novel. As far as I know, no one has done this before and it wasn't really obvious. People have been writing e-mail clients and servers for decades without thinking to do this, so I think this patent is a poor example of "bad" software patents. They really are doing something new here.
Re:Why we think all or almost all s/w patents are (Score:3, Insightful)
The examiners seem not to be able to have a proper idea of non-obviousness (to a practitioner in the field), when it comes to software patents.
So, are you a practitioner in the field of patent law with a proper idea of the legal requirements of 35 U.S.C. 103, or are you a practitioner in the field of software programming, with a proper idea of "obvious", as defined by Webster's or the OED?
My guess is it's the latter rather than the former, and you're criticizing the patent examiners of - oh, gosh - following the law.
Re:Why we think all or almost all s/w patents are (Score:4, Insightful)
How many of you think this will actually be used? It won't be, it however, does prevent me from making a program to solve this "problem".
Re:But... wait... (Score:4, Insightful)
I prefer plain text because its 100x more secure than HTML with how its rendered. Theres various exploitable software and even drive-by-download exploits, and then you can use hotlinked images to track who reads emails (and spam them even more).
Yes, my email client supports html emails. It even has it enabled by default. But because of that, I changed it to show text version to me before and just when I click it will show me the html version
Re:great ideas make the world go round (Score:1, Insightful)
I can understand IBM filling a patent for something as useless as this...
But I fail to understand /. editors posting this here.
No more HTML e-mail? (Score:5, Insightful)
Does this mean we can expect IBM to start suing anyone who uses HTML-formatted e-mail? Because I think that would probably be a good thing.
p
Re:color me unimpressed (Score:2, Insightful)