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Re: 1-Click, Short-Click, Long-Click, More-Clicks (New Microsoft Patent)
From: |
Barry Margolin |
Subject: |
Re: 1-Click, Short-Click, Long-Click, More-Clicks (New Microsoft Patent) |
Date: |
Tue, 27 Apr 2004 17:10:28 -0400 |
User-agent: |
MT-NewsWatcher/3.4 (PPC Mac OS X) |
In article <e7946e7b.0404271233.1167ee3@posting.google.com>,
theodp@aol.com (theodp) wrote:
> Not to be outdone by Amazon's 1-Click patent, Microsoft snagged a
> patent from the USPTO Tuesday for a 'Time based hardware button for
> application launch', which covers causing different actions to occur
> depending upon whether a button is pressed for a short period of time,
> a long period of time, or multiple times within a short period of
> time. So does pressing car radio buttons for different periods of time
> to change or set stations constitute patent infringement?
>
> See the patent at:
>
> http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?patentnumber=6,727,830
Most of the claims in the patent are very specific about the types of
alternate actions. E.g. press-and-hold to start the application and
restore it to a previously saved state, or press-and-hold to start the
application with a default document.
Whether the car radio buttons would be prior art depends on whether a
car radio is considered a "limited resource computing device" and
whether the actions that take place when you press one of the buttons is
considered to include "opening an application". In my opinion, the
radio is a single application, and the only button that "opens" it is
the on-off button -- the station selectors are controls within the
application.
The interesting thing about this patent is that it *only* covers actions
that take place when using the mouse to open an application. This was
probably necessary to avoid prior art problems; double-clicking has been
used within applications for as long as the mouse has been in use, and
Apple has used click-hold for at least 10 years I think (e.g. the
"spring-loaded folder" feature of the Finder). But I can't recall
seeing any operating systems that implement the alternate styles of
application launching that the patent claims.
--
Barry Margolin, barmar@alum.mit.edu
Arlington, MA
*** PLEASE post questions in newsgroups, not directly to me ***
- Re: 1-Click, Short-Click, Long-Click, More-Clicks (New Microsoft Patent), (continued)
- Re: 1-Click, Short-Click, Long-Click, More-Clicks (New Microsoft Patent), Barry Margolin, 2004/04/28
- Re: 1-Click, Short-Click, Long-Click, More-Clicks (New Microsoft Patent), Rahul Dhesi, 2004/04/28
- Re: 1-Click, Short-Click, Long-Click, More-Clicks (New Microsoft Patent), Barry Margolin, 2004/04/28
- Re: 1-Click, Short-Click, Long-Click, More-Clicks (New Microsoft Patent), Ben Pfaff, 2004/04/29
- Re: 1-Click, Short-Click, Long-Click, More-Clicks (New Microsoft Patent), Barry Margolin, 2004/04/29
- Re: 1-Click, Short-Click, Long-Click, More-Clicks (New Microsoft Patent), Rahul Dhesi, 2004/04/29
- Re: 1-Click, Short-Click, Long-Click, More-Clicks (New Microsoft Patent), Barry Margolin, 2004/04/29
- Re: 1-Click, Short-Click, Long-Click, More-Clicks (New Microsoft Patent), Rahul Dhesi, 2004/04/29
- Re: 1-Click, Short-Click, Long-Click, More-Clicks (New Microsoft Patent), Christopher C. Stacy, 2004/04/29
- Re: 1-Click, Short-Click, Long-Click, More-Clicks (New Microsoft Patent), Barry Margolin, 2004/04/29
Re: 1-Click, Short-Click, Long-Click, More-Clicks (New Microsoft Patent),
Barry Margolin <=
- Re: 1-Click, Short-Click, Long-Click, More-Clicks (New Microsoft Patent), Matt, 2004/04/28
- Re: 1-Click, Short-Click, Long-Click, More-Clicks (New Microsoft Patent), Philip Callan, 2004/04/28
- Re: 1-Click, Short-Click, Long-Click, More-Clicks (New Microsoft Patent), John W. Eaton, 2004/04/28
1-Click, Short-Click, Long-Click, More-Clicks (New Microsoft Patent), derelict, 2004/04/27
- Re: 1-Click, Short-Click, Long-Click, More-Clicks (New Microsoft Patent), Gandalf Parker, 2004/04/27
- Re: 1-Click, Short-Click, Long-Click, More-Clicks (New Microsoft Patent), Barry Margolin, 2004/04/28
1-Click, Short-Click, Long-Click, More-Clicks (New Microsoft Patent), derelict, 2004/04/27
Re: 1-Click, Short-Click, Long-Click, More-Clicks (New Microsoft Patent), Jed Margolin, 2004/04/28
Re: 1-Click, Short-Click, Long-Click, More-Clicks (New Microsoft Patent), thisisme, 2004/04/29
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