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Old 07-24-2005, 10:09 PM   #1
synaptical
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Thumbs down M$ files patent for emoticons


http://news.zdnet.co.uk/business/0,3...9210396,00.htm

there's only one thing you can say:







will they try to patent the alphabet next?

 
Old 07-24-2005, 10:13 PM   #2
AlexV
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All your smilies are belong to Bill

 
Old 07-24-2005, 10:14 PM   #3
kencaz
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Does not surprise me!

KC
 
Old 07-24-2005, 10:18 PM   #4
vharishankar
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I don't think such a patent will ever be granted.

Creating and using smilies are quite generic and nothing innovative. How on earth will any patent committee award such a patent to create images on a computer? I don't see it happening.

P.S. If this does happen this will cheapen the whole concept of patents beyond repair. In fact I think it will accelerate the death of patents in general. This move will be widely opposed I hope by genuine patent aspirants. What a waste of time it must be for them to see such ridiculous patents processed...

Unless the patent awarding committees are as corrupt as politicians.

Last edited by vharishankar; 07-24-2005 at 10:20 PM.
 
Old 07-24-2005, 11:52 PM   #5
sekelsenmat
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Quote:
Originally posted by Harishankar
I don't think such a patent will ever be granted.

Creating and using smilies are quite generic and nothing innovative. How on earth will any patent committee award such a patent to create images on a computer? I don't see it happening
Let me tell you something. A japanese enterprise came to Brasil and found a fruit localy called Cupuaçu. So it decided that it would start selling cupuaçu in Japan and so they filed a international patent for the name.

This fruit has being around here for the last million of year or so and the name is of native origin with at least a 1000 years, probably more.

A national company that started to export cupuaçu was sued and due to the lack of money to counter this they had to clear their product of the Cupuaçu name =(

This is real, and IS happening right now. My country cannot sell Cupuaçu with this name due to a **&%$# japanese enterprise. A quick search on google will lead you to many links on this. The enterprise is called Asahi Foods. Now they are trying to patent the hole fruit...

I bet Microsoft will be granted their patent if noone else pays more for the patents judge.

There are worse cases. Recently "Mad Dog" came to Brasil and I watched his lecture. He said that somewere in Oceania an enterprise managed to patent the cancer resistent genes from local natives!!!! o.O

Recently this patent has being declared ilegal, but this shows what kinds of things happen in this world.

The hole patent issuing thing is corrupt and broken.

Quote:
Unless the patent awarding committees are as corrupt as politicians.
Perhaps not as much (who can beat the politicians???), but I´m afraid they are very corrupt and imoral.
 
Old 07-25-2005, 03:02 AM   #6
darkleaf
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Doesn't surprise me much if they even patented the double click :/ Patent offices are stupid, how are those things inventions?
 
Old 07-25-2005, 05:46 AM   #7
SciYro
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sekelsenmat: patenting genes is actually nothing strange in the US, in fact they say its better for the medical industry ....... (tho, i don't think they can apply it to people that have sex, but i don't remember a case to say there patent cant be used to make sex illegal if you have certain genes .....)

Quote:
I don't think such a patent will ever be granted.
you obviously have more faith in the US patent system then history should allow, i would be surprised if this patent wasn't granted, as long as m$ wants to patent it, the patent office has a history of caving in eventually .....
 
Old 07-25-2005, 05:54 AM   #8
vharishankar
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I have no ideas how patents are granted nor do I care too much, not being in the US.

I meant "I don't think such a patent should ever be granted". Wrongly worded and I admit my mistake.

I also revise my opinion expressed in the previous post, seeing that I don't have a knowledge of patents or history of US patents. I just *assumed* that they had more sense. Obviously not, seeing some of the other posts of people who are better informed.

By the way I have absolutely no faith in the patent system in any case when those *#@*#@ US companies patented the name of our generic Indian product, Basmati rice.

Last edited by vharishankar; 07-25-2005 at 05:56 AM.
 
Old 07-25-2005, 07:24 AM   #9
XavierP
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It's not that they are patenting smillies per se, but that they are patenting the act of converting the text symbols to a picture.
 
Old 07-25-2005, 08:20 AM   #10
sekelsenmat
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Quote:
Originally posted by XavierP
It's not that they are patenting smillies per se, but that they are patenting the act of converting the text symbols to a picture.
That's it! Now I'm uninstalling my Windows haahahahah
 
Old 07-25-2005, 08:43 AM   #11
vharishankar
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Quote:
Originally posted by XavierP
It's not that they are patenting smillies per se, but that they are patenting the act of converting the text symbols to a picture.
That's what I mean. What are smilies but graphic representations of textual representations.

I mean it's a simple parsing code. So simple that a three year old could probably do it: Basically it's nothing but
Code:
if text == ':-)' or text == ':)' then
 show graphic "image/smile_image"
Is this really innovative or deserving a patent? I think not..

My respect for Microsoft was 1000 below zero before this. Now it's gone below -5000.

EDIT: Ironically I had to disable smilies in this post to make my point. **insert the rolling eyes here**

Last edited by vharishankar; 07-25-2005 at 08:45 AM.
 
Old 07-25-2005, 08:50 AM   #12
fatman
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Has anyone ever heard of MS filing a lawsuit based on these patents?

I think MS is actually scared of software patents - they are loading up in order to have bargaining leverage when something they want to do, or already did, is covered by someone else's patent.
 
Old 07-25-2005, 09:00 AM   #13
sekelsenmat
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Quote:
Originally posted by fatman
Has anyone ever heard of MS filing a lawsuit based on these patents?

I think MS is actually scared of software patents - they are loading up in order to have bargaining leverage when something they want to do, or already did, is covered by someone else's patent.
Yeh, but right now they are swimming in money. What would happen if Microsoft started to lose market??? Do you doubt they would start suing anyone they can find???
 
Old 07-25-2005, 09:23 AM   #14
synaptical
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Quote:
Originally posted by XavierP
It's not that they are patenting smillies per se, but that they are patenting the act of converting the text symbols to a picture.
i wondered that, too. from the article, it's difficult to tell:

Quote:
The patent application, which was published by the US Patent Office on Thursday, covers selecting pixels to create an emoticon image, assigning a character sequence to these pixels and reconstructing the emoticon after transmission.
i read "selecting pixels to create an emoticon," as meaning something as simple as just selecting those particular keystrokes. then assigning the character sequence happens with the character-code, etc. and "reconstructing the emoticon" is what happens when it shows up on your screen, or in the email, message board, etc. it's hard to tell, and i'm definitely not interested in wading through the legal jargon in the actual patent to try to find out exactly what they mean.

the link at the end leads to some patent of theirs about language processing -- i wonder if all this has something to do with the voice recognition software they're trying to develop? e.g., barring other VR softwares from being able to use emoticons. which could be huge if VR ever takes off. to use smilies in your VR apps, you'd have to have M$.

otherwise, i think those comments about them trying to gain leverage for other things makes a lot of sense.
 
Old 07-25-2005, 01:07 PM   #15
XavierP
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Companies buy up patents as a pre-emptive strike. Microsoft are probably worrying that someone else will do it and go on the attack. The rule seems to be that if it's not nailed down, patent it. If it is nailed down, rip it out and then patent it.

Ironically, I suspect that frivolously crap patents like this are sounding the death-knell for patents of this type.
 
  


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