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Microsoft Patents Group Taskbar Buttons

Too Much Free Time

from the patent-everything dept

Tue, Jun 29th 2004 8:58am — Mike Masnick
theodp writes "What do you call it when three IE buttons on the Windows Taskbar disappear and are replaced with a single 'group' IE button when you open a fourth IE window? Annoying? Nope. The correct answer is U.S. patent no. 6,756,999, granted to Microsoft Tuesday for a Method and system for clustering and grouping taskbar buttons." Indeed, this is one of the very first things that I make sure to turn off on any Windows box that I end up using.
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  1. identicon
    Lee, 29 Jun 2004 @ 9:50am

    does gnome infringe?

    I don't know enough about patents to tell if something like the gnome tasklist infringes, but I did notice that the gnome taskbar grouping was added to the documentation a couple of days before MS filed this application: CVS entry

    [ link to this | view in thread ]

  2. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 29 Jun 2004 @ 10:58am

    Prior art detected!

    Yay! I love the USPTO

    [ link to this | view in thread ]

  3. identicon
    Chris, 29 Jun 2004 @ 3:16pm

    prior art

    KDE has had this function for a while now.

    [ link to this | view in thread ]

  4. identicon
    brian, 29 Jun 2004 @ 9:46pm

    No Subject Given

    BeOS had it at least 5 or 6 years ago.

    [ link to this | view in thread ]

  5. identicon
    Galley, 30 Jun 2004 @ 7:43am

    Re: No Subject Given

    Yeah, leave it to Microsoft to patent something innovated by a competitor years earlier.

    [ link to this | view in thread ]


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