Saturday, June 5, 2004
Microsoft Patents Double HW Button Clicks on PDAs
Posted by Jonathon Watkins in "NEWS" @ 11:00 AM
Following on from the tale of 'Patent Trolls', comes this story from the Inquirer:
"The US Patent and Trademark Office has granted patent number 6,727,830 for a "time based hardware button for application launch" to Microsoft. It is a process which is familiar to anyone who uses the Redmond giant's Windows or set the time on a wrist based sun dial...the move has sparked a bit of a ruckus in the US technology industry where the Patent and Trademark Office has been accused of giving patents for things that are too obvious or been on the market for a long time."
No, really? :) The background to this patent application here, reads as follows:
"There is thus an increased demand for substantially smaller palm-type computers that are able to run business applications of less complexity than those designed to run on a desktop computer and enable a user to quickly access all types of personal and business related data, such as addresses, telephone numbers, scheduled appointment times, etc. One such palm-type computer is Microsoft's Palm-size PC."
You heard it here first. We need to rename the site to "Palm-size PC Thoughts" – fast! :wink: So – thoughts on this patent?
"The US Patent and Trademark Office has granted patent number 6,727,830 for a "time based hardware button for application launch" to Microsoft. It is a process which is familiar to anyone who uses the Redmond giant's Windows or set the time on a wrist based sun dial...the move has sparked a bit of a ruckus in the US technology industry where the Patent and Trademark Office has been accused of giving patents for things that are too obvious or been on the market for a long time."
No, really? :) The background to this patent application here, reads as follows:
"There is thus an increased demand for substantially smaller palm-type computers that are able to run business applications of less complexity than those designed to run on a desktop computer and enable a user to quickly access all types of personal and business related data, such as addresses, telephone numbers, scheduled appointment times, etc. One such palm-type computer is Microsoft's Palm-size PC."
You heard it here first. We need to rename the site to "Palm-size PC Thoughts" – fast! :wink: So – thoughts on this patent?
