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Patents Microsoft Your Rights Online

Microsoft Patents Keyboard Browser Navigation 32

Posted by timothy from the pan-kisses-you-kiss-the-pan dept.
Scooby Snacks writes "It looks like Microsoft and the United States Patent and Trademark Office have done it again. It would appear that Microsoft, in their extensive R&D labs, have developed a way to control a web browser through the use of a keyboard. What's next, a method for displaying a plurality of running programs, each in its own defined rectangular viewing area?"
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Microsoft Patents Keyboard Browser Navigation More

Microsoft Patents Keyboard Browser Navigation

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  • This is a duplicate article :-( (Score:5, Informative)

    by sycotic ( 26352 ) on Tuesday September 07, 2004 @10:49PM (#10185521) Homepage
    link here [slashdot.org]

  • Redundant news (Score:3, Informative)

    by ubrkl ( 310861 ) on Tuesday September 07, 2004 @10:56PM (#10185578)
    What's the point of posting this as news...? There's so much prior art (Lynx [browser.org]) that this patent will be thrown away as soon as someone challenges it.

    The story should be called: USPTO stuffs up again.

    NTSH, MA

  • An outdated dupe... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Reorax ( 629666 ) on Tuesday September 07, 2004 @10:57PM (#10185582)
    Not only was this story posted a few days ago [slashdot.org], but the patent was filed seven years ago. I may hate Microsoft as much as the next guy, but seven years? C'mon people....
    • It was only granted as a patent on 8/31. (But yes, this is a duplicate /. article.)

      Mircosoft obfuscating facts to obtain patents (and obviously bribing the USPTO) is always news. The web was originally TEXT ONLY. How many roll & scroll applications used a mouse at all in 1997? For the USPTO to say that using a keyboard is an INVENTION is an outrage! Remember when LYNX was the only way to view the 'net?

      C'mon yourself. This is blasphemous.

      • Re:An outdated dupe... (Score:4, Interesting)

        by jerde ( 23294 ) on Wednesday September 08, 2004 @02:47AM (#10186781) Journal
        The web was originally TEXT ONLY. How many roll & scroll applications used a mouse at all in 1997?

        I share your righteous indignation at the stupid patent, but your facts are a bit off...

        Read Tim Berners-Lee's FAQ [w3.org] about the web. The first web browser was designed on a NeXT system, and was graphical. Yes, a line-mode browser was written shortly thereafter, but a windowed point-and-click version came first. Graphics weren't inline, but they were definitely part of the initial idea. But the app itself was indeed GUI based.

        And how many applications used a mouse in 1997!? Dude, all the apps I've been using have been with a mouse since Jan 24, 1984, where've you been? :)

        But seriously, the patent is patently ridiculous, excuse the pun. The "invention" is a method for using the tab key to select a link on a web page. I feel as though millions of geeks all cried out "DUH!" and were silenced...

        - Peter

  • In other news... (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Slashdot pattents duping!!

  • Have the /. editorial staff been outsourced? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by scupper ( 687418 ) on Tuesday September 07, 2004 @11:11PM (#10185684) Homepage
    I am going to be karma flogged for this, but it seems in the last 6 months that the editorial staff of slashdot may have been quietly outsourced. Aren't the number of dupes reaching an unprecidented high in slashdot history?

  • really... (Score:2, Funny)

    by JVert ( 578547 )
    So... they are scared of lynx now?
  • They should patent Control Alt Delete for every time IE crashes.
  • I can understand how articles now and again get duped -- but how does a seven year old patent get mentioned within a week twice? I find it highly coincidental two people were browsing for seven year old MS patents and happened to stumble upon the same patent.

    *TIN FOIL HAT*

    Its a consipracy I tell ya!
  • "What's next, a method for displaying a plurality of running programs, each in its own defined rectangular viewing area?"


    Don't give them ideas!
  • This was pointed out before, but see, this is for CURVED focus shapes, polygons, and the like. Yeah, I think it's brilliant too...

  • Rectangular? (Score:3, Funny)

    by __aafkqj3628 ( 596165 ) on Wednesday September 08, 2004 @01:03AM (#10186314)
    In Windows XP, the top two corners are ROUNDED.... oh shit! There goes my patent idea.

  • Prior Art! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by stinkydog ( 191778 ) <sd@stCOWrangedog.net minus herbivore> on Wednesday September 08, 2004 @10:11AM (#10188567) Homepage
    As the 1980s came to a close, a high tech web browsing tool called LYNX stormed the scene. It was the the browser of choice on my text only VAX account at Wright State University. The arrow keys moved up and down through the links and the spacebar represented the 'click'. I hope microsoft sue on this one, so that they can be laughed out of court. You can still download and use Lynx at http://lynx.isc.org/ [isc.org].

    SD

  • At what point .... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by gstoddart ( 321705 ) on Wednesday September 08, 2004 @03:05PM (#10192957) Homepage
    Will a behaviour which has been available in various applications for two decades be exempt from patenting?

    The use of keys to control a GUI is far from novel, and just because it's the damned web I fail to see anything new or original about this.

    Waay back when Microsoft applications didn't run in windows or anything, and there was no network to connect to, that whole "alt+f" to bring up the file menu was well established in things like DOS' edit program and has been applied to everything since.

    Aeons before that, vt100 terminals and the like could use the tab key to move among fields for data input. Hell, the Motif style guidelines would have included stuff which describes how to do keyboard shortcuts, and it predated Microsoft's patent application by a whole lot of years.

    I've said this before, but why the hell is a method of interacting with a piece of software via the keyboard a novel or patentable exercise, or does it count as innovation???

    If you've had keyboard navigation in applications for over a decade (almost two!), just because you add keyboard navigation to a new application doesn't mean shit.

    Meh.

    • the question is when this kind of behavior (patenting blatantly obvious works) becomes criminal - otherwise microsoft will continue to apply (and likely receive) these idiotic patents.

      just like acacia's 'web streaming' patent that applies to any file downloaded off the internet.

      give me freakin break.

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