Microsoft Patents The Obvious (Again)

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Barry Ritholtz <ritholtz () optonline net>
Date: September 7, 2004 6:00:56 AM EDT
To: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
Subject: Microsoft Patents The Obvious (Again)

Hey Dave,

Came across this over the weekend; IPers may find it interesting.


Barry L. Ritholtz
Chief Market Strategist
Maxim Group
britholtz () maximgrp com
(212) 895-3614
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Big Picture:  A blog of capital markets, geopolitics, with a dash  
of film!
http://bigpicture.typepad.com/comments/





Microsoft Patents The Obvious (Again)
http://www.braingia.org/webnotes/index.php? 
title=microsoft_patents_the_obvious_again&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1


Looks like Microsoft has yet again patented plainly obvious  
technologies that have existed for years and years.  No, I'm not  
talking about their patent of the sudo command  
(http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/04/08/20/221230.shtml?tid=155&tid=172).   
This time Microsoft has been granted a patent for nothing less than  
using your keyboard to navigate a web page!

Patent 6,785,865  
(http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser? 
Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/netahtml/ 
srchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=6,785,865.WKU.&OS=PN/6,785,865&RS=PN/ 
6,785,865) - "Discoverability and navigation of hyperlinks via tabs."   
From the abstract, "A user may discover and navigate among hyperlinks  
through the use of a keyboard. For example, a user may press a tab key  
to discover and navigate to a first hyperlink that is part of a  
hypertext document. The first hyperlink is, in response, given focus  
and a focus shape is drawn around the text or graphics for the hot  
region of the hyperlink. If the user again presses the tab key, the  
next hyperlink is given focus and a focus shape..."

That's nice, seeing as we've been using that for years in just about  
every browser that ever existed.  That's one of the primary methods  
that one uses navigate when using the Lynx browser.  I'm somewhat  
surprised that Microsoft hasn't attempted to patent HTML itself.

It doesn't stop there. Patent 6,784,354  
(http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser? 
Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/netahtml/ 
srchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=6,784,354.WKU.&OS=PN/6,784,354&RS=PN/ 
6,784,354) - "Generating a music snippet."  Yes, that's right.

My question is:  Where does this all end?  At what point has everything  
been patented?  It's quite obvious that no amount of prior art matters.  
 Likewise, the invention being plainly obvious doesn't seem to matter  
either.  I wonder if there is a patent on the wheel.

 

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