Microsoft Patents PgUp-PgDn
from the non-obvious? dept
theodp writes "What do you call it when you're viewing the middle of one page and a Page Down command causes the middle of the next page to be shown? U.S. Patent No. 7,415,666, which the USPTO granted to Microsoft Tuesday for Navigating Paginated Content in Page-Based Increments. It's nice to see Microsoft make good on their pledge to improve patent quality!"
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Filed Under: page up, pagination, patents
Companies: microsoft
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BTW, why am I seeing ads (apparently Google generated) on the right side of the screen relating to the funding of lawsuits and the patenting of ideas (AmericanLegalFunding.com and www.idea4invention.com/patent)?
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Must be something wrong with your browser...
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BTW, fix your browser, no problems here with Ads. Likely your level of expertise isn't up to blocking malware.
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Nope. It's important to highlight how the system is being abused. I recognize that it gets tiring for patent attorneys, such as yourself, to feel the need to defend such obviously ridiculous patents, but that's not my problem.
Not every invention covered by a patent is earthshattering.
And that's the problem. The patent system is supposed to protect earthshattering ideas. Not common obvious ones.
Even if an earthshattering invention did arise, I suspect you would call it either "obvious" or "abusive behavior" if it was ever enforced against others.
If it hinders innovation, then yes, it would be abusive.
I've asked you this in the past, and you've chosen not to answer it. Do you feel that a patent system is okay even if it stifles innovation?
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Your question is a bit disingenuous in that while you use the word "if", your opinions as expressed in articles you post invariably use the word "though". I believe a more correct form of your question would be "Do you feel a patent system is okay even though it stifles innovation?" This seems a fair modification of your question in that you continually reference publications of studies by others opining that patents stifle innovation.
The simple fact of the matter is that I have serious doubts about the validity of such opinions as a general construct for technological advancement, though under some limited circumstances they may have some modest applicability; but certainly not to the exclusion of other approaches.
I cited a couple of weeks ago the following article:
http://www.stanford.edu/dept/law/ipsc/pdf/barnett-jonathan.pdf
Please read it closely with an open mind, and then perhaps we will be able to engage in what I believe would prove a much more productive and informative manner.
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And then you claim that I don't have an open mind. Yeah, ok.
I've been reading the document you linked to and I'll get to a more complete discussion of that in the near future. There's definitely some good stuff in there, but there are a number of rather critical errors in how it portrays the research that it suggests does not hold up to scrutiny.
Please read it closely with an open mind, and then perhaps we will be able to engage in what I believe would prove a much more productive and informative manner.
Funny. When we point you to research, you (without reading it at all) dismiss it as "nutty" or "clueless." Then you complain that we don't have an open mind.
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2. I have read the various references you have cited since I am always interested in learning the pros and cons of any body of law with which I am engaged. I have not read them with any preconceived notion about the patent system. I long ago learned that our patent system is far from being a panacea. In many specific situation I have seen it as little more than a feel good placebo. In others, however, I have seen it as being instrumental in enabling the gathering of human resources and financial capital necessary to take a product to market.
3. I cited the document in part because it does make many of the points you note and speaks of them approvingly. Another reason I cited it, among several, is its point that more than just patents are in play as incentives for promoting technological advancement. Other than its use of the pejorative term "utopia", I found it to be a much more objective analysis than the majority of academic papers I have read that dismiss out of hand studies of the kind you have cited in your many articles on the subject of patents.
4. I look forward to your observations after you have read the paper. Who knows? Perhaps it may merit an article on this site pointing out its strengths and weaknesses.
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Most of us have serious doubts about the validity of your opinions, too. But we can just write you off as a crackpot and a stooge.
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And, by the way, the word is "salutary" (having beneficial effects), not "salutory." Honor thy spell-checker.
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Re: Re: Re: anonymous coward & techdirt
In the context of this particular discussion, U.S. Patents (which are distinct from patents elsewhere in the world), which have become a farcical imitation of what they were intended to be.
The U.S. Patent Office should be a very calm quiet place where few people have cause to visit. Why? Simply because true innovation in any field is considerably more rare that the USPTO would lead us to believe. The Patent Office is as busy as it is just because patents like this which is obvious to most, and simply there to to enlarge a patent war chest used to threaten others.
The threat is not from true patent infringement, but from the cost of the legal action itself. It would be a trivial cost for M$ to fight a battle over this patent but devastating for a small company or a single developer.
Anonymous Coward, you are looking for an enlightened academic discussion in the wrong forum. You won't find what you are looking for here. This forum is quick, fast and easy discussion forum where people say what they think in a succinct easily understandable manner.
Cheers,
Davidf
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Quit using IE, your browser got pwnd.
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Google Adsense analyzes the content of the page it is on, then automatically serves ads with related keywords found.
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Re: Patents Ads
Enable ad block and then you're safe of content based ads.
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This is insane
Obvious patent applications should be punished. If you submit something obvious to be patented (ie. the patent is rejected) then you should be banned from submitting patent applications for a year. That should reduce this insanity. And if an examiner approves a patent that, on a reexamine, proves to be obvious, that examiner, along with the patent office itself, should be liable for all costs incurred as a consequence of the patent (I feel the same way about judges who make bad calls. If you cause someone to lose their ability to work, you should be personally responsible for all the money they would have made if not for your decision as well as pain and suffering damages due to being outcast etc.).
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Re: This is insane
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Re: Re: This is insane
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Eh, the US is going to fail soon anyway..
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Join the Dwight Schrute Army of Champions
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Join the Dwight Schrute Army of Champions
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Broken Patent System
Patents should not protect ideas at all, it should protect the effort and investment that it takes to discover something.
Research must to be protected, a medicine pill for example may cost few pennies to produce but billions to invent, therefore a protection is needed to ensure that companies continue to invest their time and money in discovering new drugs.
On the other hand, ideas will always come, people will not stop thinking of new ideas if the patent system isn't there to protect it. Granting someone a monopoly over an idea that is obvious enough to be discovered in the natural course of science advancement does not make much sense.
In this specific example, the Page Up/Down, Function keys, ALT, CTRL, TAB.. All were going to be "invented" by some computer person or another if MS hasn't done so. I don't see the reasoning for granting MS an exclusive right to that concept, I don't see what is being protected here.
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Re: Broken Patent System
Alt/Ctrl/Tab were on many keyboards even earlier than that.
The specific function described in the patent has been around since the early days of visual page-based printing software, so the 60s/70s. That was 38+ years ago.
Patent office gets a vote of FAIL.
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Re: Broken Patent System
Its always been my understanding that you cant patent an idea, only a process?
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it's not the general anad broad concept of pgup/pgdn that is protected by this patent but something much, much narrower
1. In a computing environment, a method comprising: displaying at least one page of a document that has multiple pages, at least one of the multiple pages, and the displayed at least one page including a first page displayed beginning at a starting point offset from a top of the document and from a top of the first page; calculating a height of at least the first page; calculating a row offset of the starting point of the first page; calculating a vertical offset at the starting point of the first page, wherein the vertical offset is calculated according to a formula of the form {[(p-1)/c]h}+r, where p is equal to the number of pages in the document, c is equal to the number of columns of the document which are simultaneously displayed, h is equal to the height of at least the first page, and r is equal to the row offset of the starting point of the first page; receiving a command indicative of a whole page-based incremental scroll request related to changing first content currently being displayed in the at least one page; determining a whole-page increment for scrolling from first content to second content, wherein determining the whole-page increment includes calculating a vertical offset at a second starting point in the document, the vertical offset being calculated according to the formula V.sub.1.+-.(cr), where V.sub.1 is the vertical offset at the starting point of the first page; and changing the display to display second content, by replacing the at least one page of the document with at least one other page, the display of the at least one other page beginning at the second starting point.
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Re: it's not the general anad broad concept of pgup/pgdn that is protected by this patent but something much, much narrower
that's completely new and original!
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Re: it's not the general anad broad concept of pgup/pgdn that is protected by this patent but something much, much narrower
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it IS broad
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I want my Cent, Double, and Triple buttons back.
http://www.synctronics.com/images/case_studies/sync_a_large.jpg
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What is the name of the Patent lawyer and the patent examiner...... they are the ones that should be disbarred and fired... and lacking that turned into public figures that so that have no more privacy.
Then we can have questions about their specie preference and if they have more neurons than a newt and whether their children will have the same infliction.
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preventitive patenting
However, I would like to now propose that the real problem with patent system is those who try to act upon their frivolous patents. So long as Microsoft never considers its patent to be actionable, who cares what they patent. In fact, better to have Microsoft, or Google if you really trust them more, patent every stupid little thing just to prevent anyone else suing them over it.
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Re: preventitive patenting
ms has enough power to stifle FOSS innovation without ever suing anybody, and to do that they are using the NUMBER of their patents, never mind if any of them are enforceable
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WHY ????
there already were those keys on the 3/15 computers.
And they had a separate "field exit" key that was sending the cursor from field to field, not using the tab key as they do now...
And what are those function keys made for ? A "help" key to replace F1, OK, but the others ????
And that "scroll lock" key that has never been used by anybody ??? Not yet patented by the GlassMonkey ?
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sigh....
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Microsoft Patents PgUp-PgDn
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Re: Microsoft Patents PgUp-PgDn
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And so... Microsoft Patents PgUp-PgDn... Then Sues Microsoft for infringement?
And since the software interpreting the keyboard input is the operating system, that only leaves a few possible sources of infringement.... Since Microsoft is the one getting the patent, they aren't going to be suing themselves, which leaves Apple, and all the open source operating systems as the target.... Another interesting way to 'take out' the competition from Microsoft.
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If Microsoft didn't, someone else would
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Re: AC #46
>on the document down or up a window, they are moving the
>document up or down a page (8.5x11 for example) into the
>windows view. A subtle difference.
My PgUp/PgDn has never moved the window, only the content.
So what's your point?
Sure, if MS attempts to assert this patent against a developer it would be easy to get invalidated. Assuming the developer happens to have the $2M or so needed to even enter the courtroom...
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IP = innovative pursuits
Then along came the truly idiotic concept of 'Intellectual Property' (the ownership of thought), the only purpose of which is to levy a toll on culture and research; not for the sake of the artists, be they engaged in cultural or scientific pursuits, but for the benefit of those who see in other's efforts a way to turn a buck for themselves.
The IP brigade resembles nothing as much as a malignant tumor.
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Let's change the definition!
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