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Patents Microsoft

Microsoft Deems Emotiflags Patent-Worthy 157

Posted by Zonk from the cute-little-guys-hey-those-are-smilies dept.
theodp writes "Microsoft said you could count on them to improve patent quality. For an example of how they're raising the bar on innovation, check out this just-published patent application for Emotiflags, which Microsoft explains solves the problem of indicating an emotion associated with an email message. At the risk of infringing on the patent, this one Makes Me Mad!"
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Microsoft Deems Emotiflags Patent-Worthy More

Microsoft Deems Emotiflags Patent-Worthy

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  • Cost: Billions (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    How much productivity is going to be lost when people are spending 5 minutes per day determining the best emoticon for each email they send?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Joebert ( 946227 )
      On the contrary, my productivity will increase due to only spending 2 seconds to figure out the sender of the email is pissed off and likely never should have waited untill they calmed down to send the email anyway, instead of spending 2 minutes actually reading the email.

  • pwned (Score:5, Funny)

    by User 956 ( 568564 ) on Saturday December 16, 2006 @02:12AM (#17266146) Homepage
    They're going to have to fight Despair, Inc [despair.com] for the frowny-face emoticon.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by plopez ( 54068 )
      Technically, I think it is trademarked, not patented. 2 different things. I have no clue what the implications may be however.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by theLOUDroom ( 556455 )
        Technically, I think it is trademarked, not patented. 2 different things. I have no clue what the implications may be however.

        I would suggest that a registered trademark would be pretty clear documentation of prior art.

        • Despair, Inc. is a humor site... (Score:4, Informative)

          by Futurepower(R) ( 558542 ) on Saturday December 16, 2006 @09:42AM (#17268020) Homepage
          They don't have a trademark. Despair, Inc. is a humor site, of course, and they joke about their "trademark":

          Quote: The decision to award Despair, Inc. with a registered trademark for the :-( symbol left many in the field of intellectual property law stunned.

          Suzanna Larkow, I.P. specialist of Larkow, Madley & Associates, said of the issuance, "This is a defining moment in the history of intellectual property law. To extend official registration to an emoticon, one who's common usage predated the existence of the trademark holder by several years, defies common sense and establishes a dangerous precedent."
  • Who on earth is going to care about this stupid feature? Oh man! Have to upgrade to the NEXT next version of Windows Office Vista JUST SO I can have the emotiflag feature! Yeah, great innovation their microsoft...

    • Could it be that Microsoft is flooding the patent office with junk patents just to prove how incompetent they are so that the system gets revamped?

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by camperdave ( 969942 )
        You underestimate the quality of patent applications. Someone holds a patent for a razor with five blades. Someone holds a patent for swinging from side to side. Someone holds a patent for assisting childbirth using centrifugal force. Someone holds a patent for a motorized ice cream cone. Someone holds a patent for playing with a cat using a laser pointer. If the patent system hasn't collapsed under 10,000 of these a year, Microsoft won't be able to dent the system.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )
      So... does this go into that attachment that MS mail programs stick on all your e-mails? You know, the one that most mail readers ignore? I don't know how many emoticon crazy teens use Outlook....
    • Have to upgrade to the NEXT next version of Windows Office Vista JUST SO I can have the emotiflag feature!

      The real stupidity in it is that if it is patented and Microsoft wants to be paid licensing fees for it (which is most likely what they want) then it will never be used but possibly within an organization running Exchange and Outlook. While I think an indicator of the tone for an email is a good idea (as I've seen major misunderstandings arise from not knowing the tone), patenting this idea just means

  • In an unexpected move.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by stox ( 131684 ) on Saturday December 16, 2006 @02:13AM (#17266162) Homepage
    Microsoft patents stupidity. World governments cringe in terror!
    • I'm not sure what sickens me most, the fact that this can be patented or the fact that somebody out there thinks "Emotiflags" are a neat idea.

    • Microsoft patents war. World peace descends as the whole world is tied up in litigation.

  • This is so great... (Score:5, Funny)

    by gQuigs ( 913879 ) on Saturday December 16, 2006 @02:13AM (#17266164) Homepage
    This is so great, innovative, and quite amazing, it solves a common problem of not understanding the sarcastic tone of say... a post!
    • -1 NO EMOTIFLAG

      Your sarcasm wasn't spelled out for me. Furthermore, I'm filing a lawsuit for intentionally causing me confusion and emotional distress while trying to figure out if your post was insulting me or not.
  • This "emotiflags" concept sounds awfully similar to the "current mood" flags MySpace uses for its blogging interface. I'm implying that MySpace created the concept; it's just one example of prior art.

  • That started on AOL in about 1992 (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ciscoguy01 ( 635963 ) on Saturday December 16, 2006 @02:20AM (#17266200)
    Those emoticons made from parenthesis and colons started on AOL in about 1992.
    Remember Bill Gates's first book, which "ignored the internet"?
    The idea that Microsoft invented any such thing is preposterous, and if the USPTO lawyer drones actually issue such a patent it will completely prove how totally clueless they are.
    We always knew it, but this will PROVE IT. I actually hope they do, because it will bring to light the importance of the REAL reform that is needed at USPTO.
    Even congress will recognize it.

    • Re:That started on AOL in about 1992 (Score:5, Informative)

      by ciscoguy01 ( 635963 ) on Saturday December 16, 2006 @02:25AM (#17266228)
      I was wrong.
      It was maybe 1972.
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emoticons#Background_ prior_to_invention [wikipedia.org]

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rk ( 6314 ) *
        Yeah, I was gonna say those were in common use on BITNET Relay in 1985 when I started college. I figure they've got to date back way before then.

        • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

          by AndroidCat ( 229562 )
          With their writing system, is anyone sure that the ancient Egyptians didn't invent it? Squiggle-Sguiggle-birdhead-hook-smilely face...
      • Emoticons started in 1972, but emotiflags--replacing emoticons with graphical images--are more recent. I believe some of the chat clients started doing that first. By the time this patent was filed, many E-mail readers, chat clients, and wikis were doing it.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Rog7 ( 182880 )
          Try back in the days of early graphical BBSes.

          C'mon folks, smilies are a great example of obviousness via eventuality. Due to the limited ascii character set, people were naturally bound to use characters to indicate intent in short form, sooner or later. And once that was done, the next step to making them graphical once displays and bandwidth made it worthwhile, was also obvious.

          Emoticons, used pretty much anywhere, shouldn't be patentable. The inherent concept of using Emoticons within interfaces is part

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by tgl ( 462237 )
        Um, did anyone actually bother to *READ* the linked-to wikipedia article?

        The smiley as we know it was invented by Scott Fahlman at CMU, in late 1982. I remember, I was there ...

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by jonadab ( 583620 )
      Umm, emoticons are rather older than AOL, dude. I'm pretty sure they were used on usenet since before the introduction of nntp, and I suspect they were probably used on multiuser systems before the internet.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by nomadic ( 141991 )
      The idea that Microsoft invented any such thing is preposterous, and if the USPTO lawyer drones actually issue such a patent it will completely prove how totally clueless they are.

      Patents are issued by patent examiners, not patent lawyers. Blame the engineers, computer scientists, biologists, chemists, and assorted scoundrels who actually are the ones issuing them.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by ciscoguy01 ( 635963 )
        As a patent holder myself, and having had to have discussions with the examiner from "law office 12" at the USPTO about my application, they are lawyers. Government employees, but lawyers to be sure.
        By the sounds of the guy's voice on the phone a young and inexperienced lawyer. Working as a patent examiner, causing problems and mischief for us all due to that youth and inexperience.
  • loads of examples [google.com] exist in the 1980s USENET archives. I wonder how they thought they'd get this one through?

  • Sort of confirms "Microsoft Adrift' hypothesis (Score:3, Insightful)

    by plopez ( 54068 ) on Saturday December 16, 2006 @02:29AM (#17266248) Journal
    One part says 'We're going to be reasonable about patents' while another department is patenting everything they can think of.

    It's typical of a large corporation to do this, where one part of the company has no clue what another part is saying or doing.

    Microsoft has become an 'old style' organization.

  • recently??? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by sholden ( 12227 ) on Saturday December 16, 2006 @02:34AM (#17266286) Homepage
    [0002] Emoticons are graphical icons such as "", or textual representations of graphical icons such as ":-)". Emoticons have become very popular through instant messaging applications, and their use has recently expanded to inclusion in email messages. For example, a user may add a smiley face emoticon after a funny sentence in an email message. Emoticons are typically designed to represent an emotion or feeling.


    "recently", "expanded". I don't think so.
    • I think that means that email applications have started rendering the text smilies as actual image smilies, and that is a "recent" addition taken from its popularity in IM apps.
      • It seems to me that everyone has short term memories. Smileys have been around since the 80's.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by sholden ( 12227 )
        I specifically defines "emoticons" to include "textual representations" right there in that paragraph, so clearly not.
        • Yes, and it also specifically mentions "graphical icons" in the same sentence, which I would suggest is the part they are claiming has been made popular by IM programs, given that they /are/ the part that has been made popular by IM programs

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by sholden ( 12227 )
            But that isn't what is stated. It isn't saying that graphical representations recently expanded into use in email, it's saying emoticons did which it defines as including the text versions.

            Surely in a patent you are supposed to be accurate about wording?

            Sure "graphical emoticons recently expanded into usage in email" might be reasonable, but that clearly isn't what the paragraph says.

  • Patenting the Obvious (Score:2, Insightful)

    by mpapet ( 761907 )
    Is now mandatory.

    Check the number of patents on the back of that gift card you just bought as a gift. Fancy corners? Got it's own hang tag? All patented and litigated recently.

    The good news is I've patented emoting with ascii characters. :) ;) ;/ ;\ :/ :\ I'll be back for my royalties in 2007!

  • What makes me mad (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    What makes me mad is that someone saved this capture as a JPEG instead of a PNG, which would have been a quarter of the size and better quality.

  • My response... (Score:5, Funny)

    by TerovThePyro ( 970487 ) on Saturday December 16, 2006 @02:51AM (#17266374)
    :-( That is all I have to say about this news.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ozbird ( 127571 )
      This is no time for sadness; it's a time for anger! >:-| (Perhaps I should patent Unicode characters for "pitchfork" and "torch" - muhahaha...)
  • Will we get access to cool new rulesets too? Can we filter all emails with crying faces to the "Crying Face Email" folder?

    D00d, that would be such a ruthlessly efficient method for organizing emails! Sweet!
  • Ignoring for a moment how patently absurd this feature is (pun intended), I can't see how a patent like this would have any value to the holder.

    This seems like one of those features that if it didn't get adopted completely (yahoo, gmail, aol, etc, etc) then it would just be ignored by users. If I were crafting e-mails with emotiflags (and were a 13 year old girl), I'd probably just give up on picking the pretty little icons since all my friends who aren't using Outlook can't see them anyway.

    And this certai

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by MMMDI ( 815272 )
      The value isn't in being able to produce a product, it's in being able to license it to someone else who wants to make it in the future.

      Sure, they may not make anything off of this patent (since it seems pretty stupid, to be blunt), but it must be nice to see a new product hit the market and think "Alright, let's see if this violates any of the billion patents we own, and if so, we're getting paid!"

      Think of it like the PS3 sales: you can go out and pay $600 for a system not because you want to use it,
    • By patenting this particular technology, they are guaranteeing that it'll never succeed. And it's such a retarded idea that I don't want it to succeed.
  • the retardedness of the patent is clear, but this is also a bad idea anyway.

    it looks like it needs to be built into email composers/readers like a standard, but no patent-based addition to an established standard would ever get accepted anyway.

    and even if it did... what's the point? how hard is it to put a smiley face in the subject line? or to actally type "this is sweet". who's going to bother with "this makes me mad" tag when knocking out a quick "fuck you" email?

    argh, this patent is so stupid on every p
    • but no patent-based addition to an established standard would ever get accepted anyway.

      You're kidding right? Patented standards & additions to standards are accepted constantly.

      Even the w3c accepts patented standards.
  • One needs to keep in mind that a published applictaion is nowhere near an issued patent. So far, none of the claims in the app have been examined by the USPTO. Once that happens you can expect to see some of them disallowed.
  • ... or someone else will patent it first !

  • Remember when BT patented the hyperlink? But they didn't just patent it; in a bid to become the worst patent troll the world has ever known, they actually tried to enforce it. [bbc.co.uk]Both BT and Microsoft lobby for software patents here in Europe, but if Microsoft says it is interested in improving quality and only applies for junk patents defensively, it is at least believable. When British Telecom does the same, as it did recently in its submission to the Gowers Review:

    Equally, we are supportive of all efforts

  • emotiflags (Score:4, Interesting)

    by DavidD_CA ( 750156 ) on Saturday December 16, 2006 @03:50AM (#17266624) Homepage
    Say what you will, but:

    1) "Emotiflags" is a brand new term. A search on Google only showed 5 hits, all of which were emoticon flags (as in country flags), not emotional flags like :) and :(

    2) One of the biggest problems people have with email is that it doesn't convey emotion. If the use of this concept becomes commonplace, it could mean good things for email. Being able to look at the emotion prior to opening the message will mean a lot less miscommunication.

    3) While message forums have been doing this for ages, this is the first time I've seen it applied to email as some kind of header deta along with the to, from, subject, importance, etc.

    And for what it's worth, the patent was filed almost a year and a half ago.

    • Say what you will, but:

      1) "Emotiflags" is a brand new term. A search on Google only showed 5 hits, all of which were emoticon flags (as in country flags), not emotional flags like :) and :(

      2) One of the biggest problems people have with email is that it doesn't convey emotion. If the use of this concept becomes commonplace, it could mean good things for email. Being able to look at the emotion prior to opening the message will mean a lot less miscommunication.

      3) While message forums have been doing this for ages, this is the first time I've seen it applied to email as some kind of header deta along with the to, from, subject, importance, etc.

      And for what it's worth, the patent was filed almost a year and a half ago.

      AIUI, patents aren't for "I want to do cool new thing X", but for "I have a cool new way to do X". Given the goal here (let emails have icons like some forum software has), at least the how-to-encode-it part is obvious (new header + an attachment for the image). The how-to-handle-it I can't comment on, since that part of the description relies heavily on some pictures that I didn't see in the linked application.

    • Re:emotiflags (Score:4, Funny)

      by kripkenstein ( 913150 ) on Saturday December 16, 2006 @07:54AM (#17267552) Homepage
      the patent was filed almost a year and a half ago.

      Yeah, a year and a half ago, the idea of using emoticons was an amazing inspiration. Nobody used them then. I don't think they even had the interweb yet.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by trianglman ( 1024223 )
      1) I can call email electro-letters but that doesn't make it new.

      2)This will potentially have the opposite effect since when MS has a patent for it they will start charging people to use it, rather than people freely including emoticons in their emails like they currently do.

      3) Given, but nothing reads this header yet and if they have to pay MS for the right to do so, they probably won't

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by glwtta ( 532858 )
      You understand the difference between inventing something and coming up with a random new word to describe something that already exists, right?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by wfberg ( 24378 )
      1) "Emotiflags" is a brand new term. A search on Google only showed 5 hits, all of which were emoticon flags (as in country flags), not emotional flags like :) and :(

      A word isn't patentable.

      2) One of the biggest problems people have with email is that it doesn't convey emotion. If the use of this concept becomes commonplace, it could mean good things for email. Being able to look at the emotion prior to opening the message will mean a lot less miscommunication.

      Which has no bearing on patentability.

      3) While
    • If this is really so useful, explain to me why no one uses manual emotiflags, like the one in this message?

      Actually, that's not true. Some people do, and they might think it's cool for it to look better/different, but most of us don't, because it just isn't that useful. Text can already express everything we want to say in an email.
    • If "emotiflags" is a new term, Microsoft is free to trademark it. The "invention" they describe isn't new. See the "X-Face" tag and similar items. Using X-Face for emoticons is described in a Usenet post on March 26, 2001:

      http://groups.google.com/group/news.software.reade rs/browse_frm/thread/632ce023cca28fc4/f13f050b2057 44b0?lnk=st&q=X-face+emoticon&rnum=2&hl=en#f13f050 b205744b0 [google.com]

      (and I've seen it in other places; that was just the first one I found in a google search)
    • here's how.

      I am going to refer to an analog of the DOD formatting of message traffic at the paragraph level:

      (U) This sentence or para is UNCLAS (unclassified)
      (C) This sentence or para contains C O N F I D E N T I A L information
      (S) This sentence or para contains S E C R E T information
      (TS) This sentence or para contains T O P S E C R E T information

      Now, I could also refer to SoftArc's First Class BBS features, but...

      Also, just consider HTML in web pages. What about ALL those BBS that use emoticons and avat
  • They also file patents on the emotions anger, frustriation and disgust since their products and marketing tactics are a primary cause of such emotions users should pay them when feeling those soon to be patented emotions.

  • yet another attempt to lock out Linux... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by advocate_one ( 662832 ) on Saturday December 16, 2006 @03:58AM (#17266654)
    by patenting the processing and display of a custom header in the email header, they are trying to get an arm lock on preventing any Linux email client from using this header field to display the emoticon or to put it there in the first place...

    this is basically a stripped down usage of X-Face, using just an "emoticon" to make it less obviously so.

  • In Universities professors are under a lot of pressure to get their names onto papers. This often leads to papers that dont really do much to advance human knowledge being published. I have a few friends that have gone on to work for big research labs rather than stay in academia and I hear prettymuch they same thing from them. You have to produce something tangible to justify your existance and for most researchers in big companies this means you must apply for patents. Same problem as academia, just r
  • "Microsoft said...."


    And acts the other way....

    Very common tactic - mainly in politics: Put out the "word" - do what you "need" to do anyway

    A sufficient number of people read the "word" and are convinced that Microsoft is actually a well behaved company.

    Of cause that depends on your criteria. In extracting money from other's they are brilliant.

  • Microsoft said you could count on them to improve patent quality.
    someone should tell them the difference between quality and quantity... they don't seem to know...

  • omg yet another slashdot-published microsoft-bashing (love those -s) article. let's try and figure out which email client (outlook, evolution, hotmail, gmail or the one that your mom wrote) currently uses emoticons to tag messages.

    c'mon people. this is slashdot. surely there's emoticonmail on sourceforge that lets you collect your email and tag it by emoticon and runs on gentoo (or another esoteric linux distro which could be cited as prior art).

    NO?

    oh well. so microsoft has no precedent to worry about.

  • If this patent goes through, then wouldn't that give Microsoft incentive to start suing blog sites such as Livejournal, Blogspot, and Myspace for royalties because "in a sense, blogs are like e-mails except more people read them"?
    • No.

      Even if they successfully make that argument, then I would imagine the patent would be annulled because of prior art.

      Then again, IANAL and I don't even live in the US, so I might be trying to apply common sense to something that has none...
  • Countries have patent law to enable companies and individuals to recoup the costs of some venture. They safeguard the competitive edge that they have gained, and prevent others from merely copying and avoiding the venture costs. This protection is not given forever, but for a reasonable time over which the venture costs may be assumed to be recouped. Such protection should encourage innovation and wealth production.

    One of the first patents in England was for colouring for stained glass. Anyone who could m

    • The Antykithera mechanism shows what happens when there is no patent law - the technology and science for making geared computers for complex calculations was so well hidden that it was totally lost and forgotten
      Or perhaps it wasn't due to lack of patents. Without the printing press, written records of such technology would be rare, patent or no patent. Perhaps the full plans of the mechanism were filed in the Royal Library at Alexandria, and were later destroyed.
  • To change a lightbulb?

    None, They just patent "Darkness" and call it the new standard!
  • For a second there I thought MS was going after those annoying kids who shop at Hot Topic. And chose to use a very politically incorrect term to refer to them (my version didn't have the 'ti' or the 'l').
  • Which wouldn't be an entirely bad thing, except that the fuckwits have substantial influence over the patent laws of other countries.

    I couldn't really give two shits whether the USA cuts its own balls off by making it impossible to innovate without treading on idiotic patents, but it does piss me off that the USA's stupidity is allowed to influence the rest of the civilized world.

    FOAD, US Patent Office.
  • If something is obvious, not innovative, and done before, can you patent it? Yes! As long as you are the first person to patent it, you can patent anything!

    I say this is all seriousness, because that's what the system as devolved to. This is why companies try to patent everything, because if they don't their competitors will.
  • Now I don't have to spend any time trying to compose a written letter which has to convey both the objective and subjective meanings. I can just blast out whatever comes out first and then cover my ass with an emotiflag so I don't really sound like an asshole. I wonder if it's binding?
  • Dear christ people. The company that is willing to lay down major bucks and risk far, far more by fighting for patent reform, and everyone assumes that they WANT a patent on 'emote flags', or whatever the hell else they patent.

    M$ certainly has a lot of patents that they really, really like. Some of them are even rather important in industry. I doubt this is one of them. This is called a defensive patent: 'I have the patent, it was approved, nobody else can get it and sue me later'.

    The USPTO created this sit
  • Qualcomm's Eudora has had "mood watch" for a long time. The hotter the flame inside, the more chili peppers the message earns. This seems to be significant prior art.

  • Hi!

    Nope--I'm not stoned, and I'm not insane. And while I'm not a patent attorney, I am involved with patents and intellectual property development for an electronics company.

    Why patent something this simple?
    There are zillions of patents out there for seemingly trivial things. Case in point: Amazon.com's infamous "one-click" shopping patent. Why in the world would anybody want to patent this? The patent application in TFA would seem to fall into the same category--why in the world would Microsoft want

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