Microsoft Patents The Task List

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."

Easy...

3. Sue itself!

Re:Easy...

No, not quite.....

3. Sue everyone else.

This is what they're up to. I've been pondering what it was that they've been doing over the past year or so with all these settlements of lawsuits, and now we see all these patents being granted -- they're going to bombard the USPTO in patent applications hoping that given the sad state of affairs there that a fair amount like this will be granted, regardless of any prior art.

Then, once a critical mass of patents have been built, they'll bury the US legal system and competitors in so much paperwork for patent infringement that neither the courts nor the defendant parties will be able to react. With patents in hand (legit or not), there's little that the courts can do to them for bringing frivolous lawsuits, and the people being sued won't be able to keep up with the sheer amount of litigation in either time or cost.

Then, once a sufficient amount of patent lawsuit success is obtained and precedents are set, they launch the blitzkrieg against IBM. What better way to fight a patent war than to have your own arsenal of battle-tested patents.

And while all this is going on, they'll be able to do just about whatever the heck they want, a la the bully days of the 90's. Gobble up companies, steal ideas, squelch OSS innovation due to FUD over whether or not a given product is free of proprietary code....it all makes sense....

Damn....it's just one of those things that is so obvious and so simple, yet so well hidden. It may be worth doing a lookup of pending patents with the USPTO to see what's coming up -- I'm guessing the backlog from Redmond is substantial.

Re:Easy...

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...

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...

I forsee http://patents.groklaw.net/ coming soon to a web browser near you....

Re:Easy...

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...

Actually that number includes all of their partners in that area.

In 2003, IBM received 3,415 U.S. patents from the USPTO. This is the eleventh consecutive year that IBM has received more U.S. patents than any other company in the world.
linky [ibm.com].

So not quite 6K, but more than I thought (almost 10 a day!) Their 10 year average is closer to 7 a day, and if you go back 26 years I'm sure it's even lower. Of course the rediculous number makes my point even more clear that fighting IBM in a patent battle is sheer stupidity.

Re:Easy...

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...

Don't forget "invade Russia in the winter." That's always a classic.

Re:Easy...

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...

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:Easy...

7. Kill yourself because your GIRLFRIEND is a fat virgin Slashdot troll who lives in YOUR basement =>

Hehehe. Sorry. Couldn't resist. But it'll be worth it even for the negative mods.

Re:Perfect Setup

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.

Re:Perfect Setup

No, they were all conditioned and believed firmly they are being attacked and threatened by the Jewish minority. No kidding, they would have sworn it was them who began the aggression and could have counted a looong list what they had done to them. That it all was faked and made up by the regime to incite hate and to create a scapegoat would not have sprung to their minds. And yes, they believed their newspapers were still independent. They believed anti-semitism and the assault on neighboring Poland was a kind of revenge on those who attacked them.

And so many people believe it is the Arabs who started a kind of war with the US and that a war on terror or torturing them in concentration camps is fair "revenge" for something "the Arabs" (all 800 million of them?) had supposedly done.

Add to that the incarceration without lawyer or notice, torture, prison camps outside the borders (like many German camps back then, most of them were in former Poland!) media and population control, a "war on everything" and you're pretty close on what kind of state 1936's Germany was in.

Be Fair

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:Be Fair

But what they need to do is spend less time patenting the TODO list and spend more time shortening it.

Re:Be Fair

How can this one be legit? I've been doing this for years! /* TODO: add extra format checking */

hostname$ grep TODO *

Re:Can I play too? Microsoft's To-Do List

or the buffer overflow

Re:Avoiding the TODO

s/TODO/FIXME/g

This sed script to avoid this patent is released under the GPL.

Re:Perfect Setup

In defense of the beast, they've been getting hit with bad patent law suits worse than anyone.

To name a few from the last couple years:

There was the incredibly broad Eolas patent.
There was the burst patent.
There was the down right stupid DRM patent.
There were a couple hand held device patents.
There was the supposed "relational database" patent, which really offended me.

And others.

If I were getting sued anywhere near as much as they are, you better believe I would patent every stupid feature I came up with.

Yet, in most of these stupid patent cases that actually make it to court, they lose. And they keep losing.

Not that they can't afford it.
It's the principle, I guess.

Of course...

I haven't read the patent (it is Slashdot after all), but the Eclipse development environment does this.

Re:Of course...

I use both. The eclipse development environment got this feature WELL after the dot net betas had it. However, I think they both cloned it from NetBeans...

Re:Of course...

Delphi 5 had that feature in it. I know 4 was 1998, not sure of 5's release date, and I'm too lazy to look it up.

Actually it's much older than that

I've seen programmers littering the code with initialed comments like "FIX ME [NAME]" and running the highly complex "grep" and "find" utilities under *nix and Windows for a couple decades.

The fact that someone formatted it in a pretty dialog box is about as innovative as changing the color of your shoelaces.

The fact that anyone would apply for such a patent just demonstrates how sad and pathetic the American legal system has become as it self-destructs on a diet of lawyers and political kickbacks feeding on the very businesses that used to drive the economy. It's a shame, really. Probably no more than 10-15 years before the nation starts looking to India or Poland for handouts.

OTOH, maybe we should worry. Broke bullies with guns tend to become muggers, not beggars.

Re:Of course...

This patent specifically applies to automatically generated lists in an IDE.

I wouldn't worry about your grocery list...

...unless you generate it from comments in your source code. ;)

Re:I wouldn't worry about your grocery list...

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.

Patent abuse... is a lot of hot air.

If Dyson owned that patent, and a tornado destroyed the Dyson factory, would Dyson be able to sue for patent abuse?

Because it's not what they're actually paid to do

What they actually get their money for is issuing patents.

And they are proud of the fact that they're one of the few parts of government that is a revenue center.

And other parts of government are hungry for their revenue.

This is one of those cases where following the bottom line is going to get you the wrong result.

Re:I wouldn't worry about your grocery list...

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...

Wasn't it in Eclipse first?

// TODO: remove this line or face retribution

I seem to remember using the TODO list feature in Eclipse before it showed up in Visual Studio. Am I wrong?

Re:Wasn't it in Eclipse first?

Yup, definitely there in my copy of J++ 6.0

yeah, I know. J++ 6.0. I feel suitably ashamed, thank you. ;-)

Re:Wasn't it in Eclipse first?

"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?

The thing about patents is, when one that gets granted that's obvious, everyone
runs around saying "WELL THAT'S OBVIOUS!!"

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

Just like someone patented sucking dust through a bit of cloth, and now every
house has one of these wonder-machines. There was a patent filed not long back
in the UK for using two little bits of plastic to stop shopping bags slicing
your fingers off. Now *THAT* was obvious - hundreds of people were doing that
with bits of plastic and cartons for years. Patenting it makes it commercially
someone's, as opposed to "used only in your own personal little world"

There are housewives and street bums inventing shit that is *so* obvious, but
they're the only people who go and try. Why? Maybe they're less cynical than
us. When we think "it's obvious!!!!!", we tend to think it's been done before.

Maybe it hasn't. Maybe it has. You gotta check first :D

By the way, your comments in code are not at risk. Neither is your perl script.
Unless by chance you had them all integrated into an IDE, which automatically
detected that you were typing a TODO comment, and added it to a pretty GUI list,
let you jump to the code in question, and so on, in real time. And then you
tried to sell it.

The Eclipse method may not even be at risk, since the patent MS have filed is
quite rightly quite specific in it's application, and does a lot of things
Eclipse does not.

Neko

Re:Wasn't it in Eclipse first?

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?

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.

Prior Art: Eclipse Project

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

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: Doxygen

Doxygen http://www.doxygen.org [doxygen.org] tags can be used to do lists on TODO since 1997. A nice example can is http://www.stack.nl/~dimitri/doxygen/lists.html [stack.nl]

Re:Prior Art: Eclipse Project

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

"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.

Re:Prior Art: Eclipse Project

First of all, developers should not be wasting time with the legal side of software. Most developers do not care for patents.

Can I quote you on that?

Yours sincerely,
Ken Brown, AdTI

Re:Oh for pete's sake ...

I searched for your prior in comp.emacs.* on google groups but all I could find was this [google.com].

Re:Oh for pete's sake ...

Exactly! I've been doing that with grep since Borland packaged it with their C compiler, which was before Windows 3.1 came out. I haven't read the patent, but since patents apply to the concept, not the copyrighted code itself, I'd say there's a good chance that this is prior art.

eclipse

So when did eclipse do it?
We just need to beat 2000 (when the patent was filed)

Re:sigh there we go again-Prior art anyone?

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.

Re:sigh there we go again-Prior art anyone?

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."

If The Trend continues

This is only going to get worse for developers.

A beuracracy of legalities to work through before your project can ever be put in the public domain and Microsoft sueing people who bring us OSS.

Navigating all this will disuade a lot of potential help, and will only stifile Microsoft's competitors.

I can't be the only one seeing this coming.

~ Jon

Actually a neat feature

They've actually had this in Visual Studio for a while: you can easily set any source or error (during the compile) as a "to do", which attaches itself to the project. In .NET, you can have "to dos" over different languages in the same project (which I haven't seen in too many IDEs).

Others may have it, but it's one of those quiet innovations MS has they don't make too much noise about. Like Autocomplete (can't run across a single browser nowadays that doesn't have this).

Microsoft Hit & Miss

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

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

The full quote from the Blitzer interview is:

"During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country's economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system."

He's referring to his support for the Internet and the Web in it's early days. He made sure projects got funding and encouraged the use of the 'Net in government. Here's a quote from Peter Hallam-Baker:

"In the early days of the Web, he was a believer, not after the fact when our success was already established -- he gave us help when it counted. He got us the funding to set up at MIT after we got kicked out of CERN for being too successful. He also personally saw to it that the entire federal government set up Web sites. Before the White House site went online, he would show the prototype to each agency director who came into his office. At the end he would click on the link to their agency site. If it returned 'Not Found' the said director got a powerful message that he better have a Web site before he next saw the veep."

More links about this lovely little mind virus are here:
http://www.sethf.com/gore/

Hell, I had grave doubts about Gore in the last election--so much so that I voted for Nader. But give the man his due.

Re:Microsoft Hit & Miss

Gore wrote and sponsored the legislation that payed for the development for the internet. Thats what that quote means.

Re:Microsoft Hit & Miss

Without Al Gore's hard work to turn the ARPANET of the 80's into the Internet of the 90's none of you closet perv Republicans would be fapping to Paris Hilton. Al Gore did take the initiative to create the Internet, and a lot of us on Slashdot have him to thank for our jobs because of it. Get over it.

Gore Speech before the Senate in 1989
"But I genuinely believe that the creation of this nationwide network and the broader installation of lower capacity fiber optic cables to all parts of this country, will create an environment where work stations are common in homes and even small businesses with access to supercomputing capability being very, very widespread. It's sort of like, once the interstate highway system existed, then a college student in California who lived in North Carolina would be more likely to buy a car, drive back and forth instead of taking the bus. Once that network for supercomputing is in place, you're going to have a lot more people gaining access to the capability, developing an interest in it. That will lead to more people getting training and more purchases of machines."

September 1, 2000, Newt Gingrich, during a CSPAN broadcast
"In all fairness, it's something Gore had worked on a long time. Gore is not the Father of the Internet, but in all fairness Gore is the person who, in the Congress, most systematically worked to make sure that we got to an Internet, and the truth is--and I worked with him starting in 1978 when I got there, we were both part of a 'futures group'--the fact is, in the Clinton administration the world we had talked about in the '80s began to actually happen. You can see it in your own life, between the Internet, the computer, the cell phone."

Re:Microsoft Hit & Miss

you naysayer. Of course Al Gore invented the internet. It is, after all, based on Al-Gore-ithms.

Prior Art

I'm too young for punch cards however my folks aren't. My father just let me know he has prior art. I'm sitting here with a very dusty item processing program on punch cards. On the cards themselves comments are written about things to be added and depricated. So where do I mail this 10lb stack of yellow cards?

grep TODO *.c (of java, or obj-c, etc...etc...)

There you have it folks. Patent infringment in one line.

GJC

Re:grep TODO *.c (of java, or obj-c, etc...etc...)

for developers to locate errors and warnings in code, as well as specify user-defined tasks. The task list is updated in "real time" as the developer completes tasks and generates new tasks.

while [ TRUE ] ; do sleep 1; grep ..blah blah.. ; done

Re:grep TODO *.c (of java, or obj-c, etc...etc...)

grep is not done within an integrated design environment.

Many IDEs allow running shell/batch scripts, and outputting the results to an in-IDE window. So yes, it could run within such an environment. In fact, I have personally used grep in such a manner (though admittedly not to look for "TODO").

Microsoft May Help Everyone In The Long Run

Since Microsoft is going around patenting everything they can possibly think of, as long as Bush and his pro-monopoly group doesn't stay in office forever, they may help everyone else out.

If they patent enough simple and obvious ideas, that will make great fodder for the argument for abolishing software patents. They're going so far out of their way to stiffle competition that, at some point, the government will have to realize that software patents don't help competition, but hurt it.

(Yeah, I know it's the guv'ment we're talking about, but at some point congress will get enough complaints from everyone else that even they might wake up.)

WTF

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?

grep

Microsoft just patented the use of grep.

grep -r TODO * > tasklist

hopefully they won't catch me, this post infringes.

Have fun Novell

Its going to be a joy when something important implementing Mono gets patented. Do you really doubt they are going to do it? Heck, they probably already bought a patent Sun got while doing Java.

It will be even more interesting when all of Gnome is implemented with Mono. Maybe I'm the only one who finds it ironic that a desktop environment founded because the KDE license wasn't free enough is falling over themselves to implement Microsoft technology.

Okay...

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"?

Huzzah!

I cheer every time one of these insane patents is granted. There is a breaking point for all this, and every dumb patent brings us an inch closer to the mainstream calling it all into question. The dumber the better.

I just hope we don't destroy the economy beforehand.

Cheers.

I did this in Hypercard in 1997

I created this sort of system in Hypercard for a massive stack development project. With abotu 50,000 lines of script in hundreds of stakc object, finding "TODO"s was a real pain so I made my own search & task list tool. A search tool on a card for developers found todo tokens in the stack's scripts and listed them for me. Double clicking a list item took me to the item. The thing also had a visitation counter so I could see which items I'd done.

The little tool was actually more versatile than the Microsoft system because I could search, list, and visit on any token (it search scripts for a string) - great for finding all the places that used a certain variable or accessed a particular stack feature. It also had a pull-down list for sorting the "task list" in several different ways. Other tools let me quickly visit "Next" and "Previous" or cull the list by deleting task list items that met different criteria.

The only thing different from my stack search tool and the patent is that my little tool did not change the script code in response to anything. But I suspect that someone with "ordinary skill in the art" could easily have do that.

New Slashdot Policy

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.

More Prior Art

In 1998-9 I created a system that would automatically update the company's bug database (arguably a TODO list) whenever a developer checked in code with the proper comments inserted. It was obvious to me, and it's been obvious to thousands of developers for many years.

Sigh.

Just waiting for someone to patent the concept of Prior Art itself.

Patents, and what they are and aren't

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

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

Re:Patents, and what they are and aren't

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 Patent is not as bad as the Topic suggests

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.

Looks like MS is preparing to go the SCO way.

In this build-up of patents lately, to me it looks more and more the way they will be going is the way SCO has been going for a while now. And as by now everyone knows the lawsuit against IBM is payed by MS in the end, it's of use to keep things so indirect, just get down it directly is more easy.

We all know development at microsoft has stopped for IE, Longhorn is not comming along, we know MS market-share is falling, and recent ./ articles have hinted that it's not the way for the future.

With all that cash lying around, and 'doing business' gets you problems in the EU, it might be better to change from a 'software' business to a 'investment'-business...
Less hassle, less employees, less lawsuits..

To keep it in a ./ fashion

1. Make lots of cash
2. Use cash to patent everything that exists
3. Fire all programmers, and become a legal firm
4. Sue anyone that has cash or can loan money to pay settlements
5. Result: Even a better profit/ROI, to make even more cash !

Visual Studio has had this since 1998...

The TODO, UNDONE, and HACK tokens have been in Visual Studio since at least 1998.

See here...

Task List Window [microsoft.com]

I've said it before....

...and I'll say it again:

"Someday, Microsoft will patent the alphabet. And when that happens, we'll find ourselves paying royalties every time we sit down at the keyboard."

Thankfully...

Thankfully they didn't patent the "FIXME" list.

In related news

Microsoft patents the exchange of Oxygen and Carbon Dioxide via breathing. A spokesman was heard saying that with this innovation, the competition will be smothered.

Missing the point

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.

The new MS - Linux strategy

FYI - you are now beginning to get a tase of the new Microsoft Linux strategy.

That is - patent the daylights out of everything, hopeing to catch, snag, and delay Linux somewhere along the way. (Well you didn't actually expect them to innovate did you?)

The next frontier in liberty - Project Libertopia [inetsoda.com]

prior art

I've been doing this for years:

grep "TODO" *.tex

It's probably in my history right now.

Seriously, how is this different? Check off the task and the source code changes. Wouldn't it be easier to just delete the comment since you're already editing the source code?

Time to dump MS stock...

Not on political, pro-Linux grounds, but because the company is starting to look a little desparate. First was this article [slashdot.org] where MS announced they were significantly lengthening support periods for older software versions. This was a dramatic reversal of its previous practice of using strong-arm tactics to force corporate customers into frequent and regular upgrades.

Then there was this article [slashdot.org], discussing how Microsoft has begun making changes to its previously onerous licensing terms in favor of its customers.

Now we've seen two patents in recent weeks which seem to be the overly-broad type normally associated with companies who are desparate to produce licensing revenue, and not real products.

Combine this with the fact they have been forced to delay much new product development because they must finally start focusing on security, and it all adds up to clear indications of bad times coming for them. (Of course, they have plenty of cash to tide them over for quite a long period.)

Easy to overcome

The patent is titled "Task list window for use in an integrated development environment" at the patent office. So, run your grep on other machine. Then, you will have a DISTRIBUTED, not INTEGRATED development environment. Do not show results in "window", but call it "virtual screen". Patent showing results in window, especially if you have a 30 years old prior art.

Or, use emacs. That's a platform, not IDE....

Allow me.

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.

Microsoft should patent buggy code...

...that way all future non-MS applications would be bugfree for fear of infringing patents.
Suddenly no-one uses MS's bugged products anymore! :)

Already been done.. its an illegal patent

Last time I checked, http://www.nat.org/dashboard/ has been doing this for a very long time.. So this patent probably isn't legal.. http://www.nat.org/dashboard/fixme.php3 thats their automatically generated todo list.. So, I guess this patent wont last long...

The problem is simple

The problem is that the whole way the USPTO works is that it is geared towards passing patents.
Specificly, its better finantially for the PTO to pass a patent than to reject it.

This has to change before anything good will happen.
Simply change the way the PTO works so that its no longer finantially better for the PTO to pass a patent than it is to reject it.
Then (assuming they do what they are supposed to and use patent examiners who are qualified in the field they are examining patents in), crap like this wont be granted patents anymore.

fellow Europeans!

Vote this weekend so that the software patent law is stopped by the EU parliament. If you're planning on not voting, go do it anyway, for this reason if nothing else.

#WARNING

I can't be the only person who uses #WARNING statements in his code to do just that, create a task list.

Rate companies by their patent abuse

I had enough of such worthless patents. Whenever one thinks of
a simple obvious idea, one is forced to think "is this patented already?".
What a waste of time!

Here's an idea:
- a independent patent-rating site
(cross-linked to various gov patent sites worldwide)
- free membership
- members rate patents
- not all patents to be rated. reasons to rate a patent could be outragiousness, and history of patent abuse by patent holder
- members belong to various 'groups' which have their own
(enforceable) philosophy on admitting members, and rating patents
- patents ranked by 'patent worthiness rating' (as ranked by group you subscribe to)
- corporations ranked by 'patent abuse ranking' (as ranked by group you subscribe to)
- members to a 'default group' that (hopefully) would rate
the RSA 'PK crypto' patent valid, but the Eolas 'ActiveX' one invalid.
- maybe a federation of such sites internationally

I'd LOVE to see companies I buy things from, 'utilize' the patent system.

AutoDoc did this 10+ years ago

For AutoDoc references, Google search for:
autodoc source code todo

Also I (and others) emailed Microsoft about 10 years ago, asking them to add what sounds like the patented functionality to their C++ compiler. They were keen on the idea, but eventually it wasn't high enough priority to make the cut.

No way is this a recent Microsoft invention.

- Pete Austin

PRIOR ART!!

Borland has had this feature in Delphi since at least version 5. I don't use C++ Builder but I'm sure that it has a similar feature. This whole patent thing is out of control.

Re:Other IDEs

As far as I recall, Eclipse didnt start doing this till well after 2000 when this patent was applied for. That being said, I dont think Microsoft has ever filed a patent lawsuit?