Warp wrote:
> .... and neither the concept of "too trivial to patent".

While I agree, I'll have to note that the page-up and page-down keys 
indeed don't do what is patented here. Page-down takes you down one 
screen, not one page.

FWIW, the patent courts have started saying it's OK to reject a patent 
on something that's informally "obvious" without it being formally 
"obvious."  Before recently, being "obvious" was a technical legal term, 
and things that are "obvious" to you and I aren't "obvious" in a legal 
sense.

Also, you have to look at the prosecution history of the patent. If the 
person tried to patent "page down" and the clerk already said "here's 
three ways in which page down is already patented", and the inventor 
then said "Ok, I'll only cover this forth way", then that's what's 
patented, even if the patent language still says it covers all four 
methods.

You really have to look at the claims, and even the legal proceedings, 
to understand what's covered, not just the abstract summary.

But yes, I'll grant you on this particular patent, it's rather obvious 
and probably shouldn't have been allowed. :-)  Especially given cripes a 
2008 publication date. It definitely looks like some bizarre Microsoft 
lets-file-so-many-patents-it's-ridiculous sort of thing.

Given that I have a patent on "printing out different credit-card 
receipts depending on what you bought", and given that the top four 
credit card terminal manufacturers in the world all told me doing so was 
impossible (and hence the patent), I can imagine some weird "obvious" 
things get patented that are only obvious to some folks.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

Post a reply to this message