Various organisations have criticised Microsoft for attempting to patent the creation of custom emoticons.
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.
Mark Taylor, the executive director of the Open Source Consortium, said on Friday said this is such a basic concept that he would not have been surprised to see it posted as a fictional patent on a technology site.
"I would have expected to see something like this suggested by one of our more immature community members as a joke on Slashdot, and probably would have chuckled at the absurdity of the notion. We now appear to be living in a world where even the most laughable paranoid fantasies about commercially controlling simple social concepts are being outdone in the real world by well-funded armies of lawyers on behalf of some of the most powerful companies on the planet," said Taylor.
He said the patent could be particularly problematic as it covers basic human communication. "Emoticons are a form of language, and a precedent allowing patenting of language constructs is very dangerous indeed," said Taylor.
Jonas Maebe, a spokesman for the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII), said that such a patent could be used by Microsoft to prevent competitors from developing applications that compete with its MSN Messenger application.
"It is unfortunately quite clear such patents have nothing to do with protecting investments nor R&D, and only with obtaining exclusion rights which can help them [Microsoft] maintain their dominant position in the market," said Maebe.
Such patents are in contradiction to the original purpose of the patent system, according to Maebe's colleague at the FFII, Felipe Wersen.
"Patents were ultimately designed to benefit society — to have companies disclose things that benefit society which they wouldn't otherwise disclose. Who does this patent benefit?" said Wersen.
Although Microsoft does not appear to have filed this patent in Europe, it has filed a number of patents around natural language. These include a patent for segmenting text strings into tokens to allow further language processing.
A Microsoft spokesperson said that comments on its patent applications can be submitted to the US patent office.
"Microsoft receives dozens of patents every week. We support the ability of anyone to submit prior art or input on a patent application with relevant authorities before a patent is issued," said the spokesperson.
The Microsoft patent that organisations are concerned about is patent number 20050156873, which was filed in January 2004. The US Patent Office has not yet made a decision on whether to accept the patent application.
Talkback
That language parsing patent's only technical aspect is that it can run on a computer. Without the computer its not technical. With the computer, its a computer program and disallowed under Article 52.
http://v3.espacenet.com/textdes?DB=EPODOC&IDX=EP1178408&F=0&QPN=EP1178408
[0020] FIG. 1 illustrates an example of a suitable COMPUTING SYSTEM environment 100 on which the invention may be implemented.
More to the point, read up on word stemming algorithms, its in common use and has been since the 80's! Perhaps it's time to apply a fraud penalty when companies knowingly submit these false 'inventions' in order to extort money from other companies.
Microsoft did think the internet would grow to what it is today. They realized too late the implications of a world wide web. They [Microsoft] are no longer a fore runner in internet technology. They can't control the internet with their Windows OS. So, they are attempting to control the web content. Through DRM, patents and the high-jacking of open standards Bill Gates hopes to control the keys to the kingdom. What home user would want to go to an internet site that is pure text only? Average Joe User wants rich web media experience. Microsoft wants to be the only player in town to provide that experience.
This is the kind of shit I want to keep out of Europe!
Well said, Samuel,UK
wasn't there somthing about wherther open source movement can trust Microsoft. Ofcourse NOT!!! This is proof!!!!!!!!
Microsoft is dead. Software Patents are dead. The first time Microsoft takes someone to court over something so stupid it will have a PR and economic revolt on it's hands so large even Steve Ballmer couldn't shove it up his fat arse.
Screw Microsoft. Actions like these are why the tech industry hates them so much.
I wondered how this differed from what a lot of open source software does - even the old Emacs mail reader - translating smileys into pretty pictures. The "novelty" if it can be called that is the customisation, though I wonder whether things like the old XFaces system could count as similar. (That was good when it was popular). XFaces embedded the image in the email header.
This is typical of the bad software patents that don't protect a true invention but in this case a whole product feature. They're not as bad as the whole problem domain patents - things like the patent on e-commerce - but its not much better.
Now of course, if the patent covered the specific implementation of how the original image is to be fetched, along with cache consistency handling, but then again such an implementation would be protected under copyright.
Patents in the physical world are more like copyright in that they cover a specific implementation. Software patents just cover the idea of the problem.
The item you link to is a patent application, not a patent. The application has not yet issued as a patent. The application will be examined by the US patent office and it may or may not be allowed.
What's next? Microsoft attempts to patent fonts and the indo-european alphabet?
that sort of shit gives me a microsofton!
I think Microsoft is lacking talent, thats why their ideas of innovation are like this. No wonder linux is better...
I thought the most funny and stupid patent granted was the Amazons comparison of two products patent, but this ones also comes under that category.
A true technical innovation (not)
At first I thought, Microsoft had invented al algorithm to convert a Bitmap into a Smiley of the reduced form that we are used to know. That would have been a limited innovation, even though I am strictly against allowing to patent that, for many other reasons.
Then I realized that something like that (even though not generating reduced smiley) already exists since years. It's called aalib and can even play DVDs on a large console! (That's the "DOS command prompt" for the Windows people.) See http://aa-project.sourceforge.net/gallery/. And that's even open-source, and has not been patented.
Then I read the summary of the Microsoft patent in the original and saw that it's simply about sending the *bitmap* itself and the text is primarily a placeholder. If you read further, you see that it's not a text representation of the smiley, the text is rather just an ID and a URL! Thank you, but we could do that with AIM (HTML msg with img alt="..." title="..." id="..." src="...") and other systems. And with email, that was possible before "IM" even existed. The embedding of images in messages is truely nothing new.
Basically, this is just am img-tag and the publication of small PNGs.
PRIOR ART -- what Microsoft is patenting has already been in use for more than 15 years; just take a look at the unofficial "X-Face" NNTP header that is used in Newsgroups by users to include a small graphical image with their messages.
I view these silly patents as an attempt at abusing the system, but the real problem is the fact that Patent Office is approving these basic things. If they don't improve their processes for getting feedback from others in the applicable industries to find out if such technology either already exists (an excellent reason to deny a patent) or is just something that is an obvious solution (a reason for denying a patent after investigating it), then the system will be at risk of losing credibility and people won't respect patent law -- can you say "black market gaining popularity?"
The author of the article made also pointed out that patent systems were created to encourage others to share their ideas with the world; I don't agree with this entirely. The main reason patent systems were created to make it possible for inventors to protect their ideas for an initial period of time so they can get a "head start" in the market place and profit from their works before others do the same.
For this reason, I believe the patent system is a very good thing for society because it aims to be fair, but when I see silly patents being granted for things that have already been in use for very long periods of time (or other reasons that a patent really shouldn't be awarded), then I start to wonder about the credibility of the patent department.
Randolf Richardson - randolf@inter-corporate.com
Inter-Corporate Computer & network Services, Inc.
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
http://www.inter-corporate.com/
If microsolf truly does patent this, I hope that all of their executives are tar-and-feathered by angry mobs.
... for me just another very good reason to definately change my system to LINUX - with no single look back, I won't miss absolutely nothing - rien ne va plus.
Dont the patents office have some form of prosecuting time wasters? if not they should have.
Is it April 1 ?
Huh, say what? If a technique has been used "widely", is it still possible to attain a patent on this? If so, I would like to get some patents on some things/ideas ....
it would be wise to set up a company to attain patents on widely used ideas already, I would want to have shares of such a company anyway, if anybody wants to start, contact me ... ;-)
Hey, I think I'll just patent the alphabet and make a pile!
The US Patent Office is allowing Big Corp to patent genes that have existed for millenia, so why not?
Does anyone have a patent on water yet?
Perhaps Microsoft should apply for copyright protection using the words "for", "and", "the" and any others in common use since the language was invented.
Of course as usual the article writer and anti-M$ nuts are going off about something they didn't even bother reading...
They are patenting the idea of adding a 'real time pull' to emoticons, if you can find that buried in the legaleze... You define an image on your machine and assign it to your OWN emoticon, when you type it in MSN Chat it would pull image remote... This IS something no chat service I know of uses, so if they can be first to market with the idea, more power to them.
They are NOT trying to patent emoticons or their use, they are trying to patent an image pull technology...
{censored} people jumping to unfounded conclusions again.
The primary claim for the patent application (claim number 1 - the remaining claims expand on the detail in this claim) is "A method, comprising: selecting pixels to be used as an emoticon; assigning a character sequence to the pixels; and transmitting the character sequence to a destination to allow for reconstruction of the pixels at the destination."
The way that pixels are "reconstructed at the destination" is either by retrieving the custom emoticon if it has already been received, or by retrieving it in a separate communication with the sender. However this is only part of the claim - Microsoft is also patenting the selection of pixels to make an emoticon, the assignation of a character sequence to the pixels and the transmission of the characters to the destination.
If Microsoft was only patenting the "real-time pull" they would have only included the latter part of the claim. As it is, they are patenting the entire process - creation of custom emoticons, right through to their reconstruction remotely.
The problem is the US patent laws. They are simply ridiculous beyond a joke.
There are US pharmaceutical companies running round the world patenting chemicals found naturally in plants that are known to have beneficial properties.
In some cases they have then tried to prevent native people from being able to sell the natural remedies that they have been using for hundreds if not thousands of years.
I agree with Microsoft !!!! Apple sucks
The first claim must be read as a whole. It requires all those items to enable the invention, that is, the reconstruction of the image at its destination site. There would be no custom emoticon unless a user created one. This MUST be in the first claim.
I hope everyone understands this is only for CUSTOM emoticons and does not effect the selection of standard emoticons, as we all know today. Furthermore, the USPTO examines every patent application and if an invention has been done prior, it will not be allowed and/or the claims will be narrowed to this specific invention.
Also, MS has many IP attorneys on staff, one of which reviewed this amongest all the prior art. Obviously, according to the research, there is nothing similar. Otherwise, MS would not waste its resources to file and prosecute this.
Microsoft can patent smilies? Oh, I forgot. Microsoft can do anything because the only thing anyone cares about in the world is money and Microsoft has it out the ass.
Hn. Next thing you know they'll just stop pretending to respect laws and outright declare themselves overlords. And patent that title.
That is, of course, after they have patented "Multi-Participant Interface Relay Chat" tech-no-logy and set fire to the AIM, mIRC, digichat, Yahoo, etc. HQs. Then they'll pull a Yahoo and charge $12.95 for the service, and make telephones obsolete. Then they will patent email, burn down the remaining email services' HQs, and make letter writing obsolete. Under Microsoft, our children will not know what to do with their hands aside from type. A deaf child will type what she wants to say rather than sign it or write it. A blind child...well, there won't be any blind children. In order to cope with the technology, our eyes and hands at least will be replaced with very advanced robotic parts that never wear out. People will only leave their houses to go on vacation, and even then the popularity of that will decline, as there will be nothing to do that they couldn't do at home.
There is a name given to the year in which this will happen, and that name is...Two Thousand and Fifteen at the earliest.
I think it's crazy, trying to own everything. Internet culture is free by definition. Maybe someone should take the company Heads to the court and make them go through psycho therapy course or something like that. The guys from Microsoft are obsessed. One more thing, Microsoft should change their name to Macrosoft and it I won't be surprised if they turn their company into Titanic of Digital Ocean.
A couple of points regarding the article posted 22 Jul 2005 regarding
Microsoft patent application 20050156873 for "Custom Emoticons."
1. The phrase "The US Patent Office has not yet made a decision on whether
to accept the patent application" is misleading. The USPTO has "accepted"
the patent application into the patent process. The USPTO normally does
not decide whether to "accept" an application. The USPTO DOES decide
whether the application will be allowed to issue as a patent, and this
application is currently in that process.
2. 37 CFR 1.99 (CFR = Code of Federal Regulations) provides a third party
the opportunity to submit patents and publications pertinent to a published
patent applications if the submission is made within two months of
publication of the patent application. The submission must be in English,
submission of a $180 fee (subject to change), a copy of the patent or
publication, notification to the applicant, and no explanation of the
submitted materials.
Another commentor stated that pharmaceutical companies are trying to patent naturally occurring chemicals. That statement is inaccurate. Pharmaceutical companies can patent techniques for extracting a chemical, and for processing the chemical. However, extraction techniques previously existing qualify as prior art, regardless of whether there exists any publication, and a technique that already exists and was invented by another is not patentable, which is the law.
A problem can arise if the company applying for the patent does not disclose the prior art, in which case there may be inequitable conduct, which in a court case would make the patent unenforceable, which is also the law.
It is easy to poke fun at patent examiners when the allow something to be patented that knowledgeable people know has existed for some time, but examiners' knowledge is relatively limited and they only know what is published or what is disclosed to them. Once they know, there are a host of laws that protect the public and previous inventors.
so patent for using FONTS will be next...
after all, we all use MS Sans Serif...
Wtf, those guys are gonna make us change the names of our houses' windows, meh!
This has been up for consideration for a year and a half, which is pretty ridiculous. Europe definitely made the right decision.
<A HREF="http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/struct/objects.html#h-13.2"><IMG
src="http://www.squidguard.org/icons/smiley/hmm.gif" alt="click me"></A>
Gee. I can include whatever image in whatever message just by pointing to a pre-defined storage location in a certain way. I could even opt to include the image within the message by means of other commands.
hahahahahahahhahahahahaahahaha omg...
this will increase the Anti-Microsoft movement!
let them patent it.. will make it funnier to rip :P
One of my forefathers invented the kiss and fart. As the idea of a good fart and a sloppy kiss has been passed down for generations, I must hold the copyright for both. Therefore, every person that has had a sloppy kiss or wet fart owes me 10p for each one. Please forward your dues and include any future future farts and kisses that you may possibly have, if not, I will sue all those that fart and sloppy kiss without my permission ;-)
SH**! I just realised that Microsoft may be able to sue me for smiling as I could possibly be impersonating their patent..... or maybe they may sue me for frowning as it could be a deliberate attempt to discredit their smiley
Can't blame them for doing something that the government endorses.
Why doesn't the Patent Office disallow these applications? What are they doing in the patent office that they would think this validly patentable?
It seems that people are continuing to miss the point. The USPTO does not disallow patent applications. An application is exactly what it is, an application. The important thing is whether the application becomes a patent, for which the USPTO has a system. Admittedly, the system is not perfect, but it works most of the time. The USPTO is also attempting to make the system better. Until then, please do not pick fault with the USPTO until it happens.
Microsoft,
please please don't ty this.
Yahoo uses the same technology.
Your not going to win. :'( sorry to say it.
:^| <microsoft exect.
Well back in 1968 I did create a 'Smiley Face' badge, (I think my wife still has hers, carbon dating etc.) to signify membership of a very small but passionate group called. 'Live Life to the Full'.
Chris Dunne