MS Patents IM Feature Used Since At Least 1996

splorp! writes "Once again, a company is patenting a feature that another company implemented years before. C|Net's News.com reports that patent no. 6,631,412 grants Microsoft the rights to 'an instant messaging feature that notifies users when the person they are communicating with is typing a message.' Excuse me? Does anyone remember Powwow (now defunct)? I remember using that one back in '96 and it alerted the other people to whom you were chatting that you were typing. Or, alternately, it allowed you to SEE the other people typing in real time. Yeah, Powwow is gone, now, but that doesn't mean those features never existed."

Re:Don't forget

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever think they are patenting it so they won't get sued like the stupid plugin lawsuit for IE. MS has shitloads of patents, most of which they never enforce.

It's the application date that matters

[Quarters]

Just because Microsoft was granted the patent now doesn't really mean anything. It takes years for a patent application to wind its way through the Patent Office. Because of that they are retroactive to the time of application.

The question shouldn't be, "How can they do this if had it in '96?" It should be, "When did Microsoft apply for this patent?"

No doubt the MS press release will say.....

[mormop]

This is another example of Microsoft's long history of "innovation".

Errrr, couldn't agree more personally.

Re:Are you sure?

[gowen]

would you need to sue MS in order to get this patent overturned

No, you could just breach it, and wait for MS to sue you. If the court found for you, for reasons related to the validity of the patent, that would pretty much kill it stone dead.

Patent dates back to at least 1999...

[Xentax]

As shown in the PTO hyperlink in the article, "This is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/359,337, entitled "System and Method for Activity Monitoring and Reporting in a Computer Network," filed on Jul. 21, 1999 now, U.S. Pat. No. 6,519,639."

On a personal note, there is CLEARLY prior art --as others have said talk/ytalk had this. Heck, a direct modem connection with a friend and seeing each other type exhibits this behavior even though that's hard to lump under the context of "An IM session".

This really feels like a defensive patent, not something they could turn around and sue AOL or Yahoo (or even Trillian or Jabber) over.

Xentax

Re:Unix talk

[ivan256]

Read the patent.

Patents cover implementations. The only thing microsoft has a right to here is the implementation described in the patent. The patent specifically describes a signal or packet being sent telling the remote host that a user has stopped typing. Unix talk didn't do that. In fact I don't know that anybody has ever done that because it's a dumb idea. This patent is irrelevant, and a waste of Microsoft's money.

Re:Even older prior art

[Dirtside]

As far as I can see from a quick reading, the idea is not that you see what people are typing, but that you have an indicator which lets you know that they are typing.

Being able to see what people are typing is an indicator that they are typing.

Re:ICQ

[Snodgrass]

Heck, even Unreal Tournament made your character look like he was chatting into the radio while you were typing a message.

Another obvious patent

[GreenCrackBaby]

I'm not so much bothered by the prior art issue -- I have a much bigger issue with this patent. I'm willing to bet that if you were to take an average programmer and ask them "how can I modify this IM program so that the person you are talking to knows that you are currently typing without actually sending each character as you type it?", they'd come up with the exact same solution as described by this patent.

Unlike many on slashdot, I actually believe there are some scenarios where software/algorithm patents are applicable. However, the standard questions still need to be asked: does this do something useful, and is the implementation non-obvious? Why (aside from purely financial reasons) are patents like this being granted?

Re:Don't forget

[los furtive]

The block was put in place to force other IM companies to pay for a license. Companies like Trillian were making money their product used the Messange networks (true, other products weren't making money but were still using the Messanger networks). I'd prefer it if Microsoft didn't go this way, but I certainly think it is within their right. And if you don't like it? Use a different client/protocol like Jabber. As for new IM wars, I don't think the old war was ever settled.

Re:ICQ

[cloudmaster]

And Quake used the "talking bubble" before that...

All aimed at Linux

[SQLz]

This big flurry of patents by MS is aimed totally at Linux. Just wait and see. They are going to pull a SCO on us big time and claim Linux contains their IP and start demending fees from companies who use Linux.

What is "prior art"?

[Arjuna Theban]

IANAL, but I thought "prior art" meant publicly explained methodology to do something prior to the filing of the patent at hand. It doesn't matter if ICQ or whatever else program had this capability, the fact that they didn't make their methodology public (which is usually done through an RFC-like document or by filing a patent) makes them unfit to be prior art.

But then again, I may be pulling this out of my ass.

-bm

Please E-Mail the UPTO

[Anonymous Coward]

If you feel that the US Patent Office should stop honoring bogus patents like these, do something about it!

Write to:

[e-mail]?subject=Patents Patent Number 6,631,412 [mailto]

You may also want to refer to this slashdot article in your post:

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/10/08/ 13 5237&mode=thread&tid=109&tid=155&tid=187&tid=189&t id=99

Thank you.

MIT Zephyr project

[Anonymous Coward]

Many people have mentioned the similarity between Unix talk and this patent, but I think there are enough differences (i.e. character-by-character real-time transmission versus IM-style, message-at-a-time stuff) that one might reasonably argue the two things are fundamentally different.

But the MIT [mit.edu] Zephyr [mit.edu] project [jabber.org], which has been around at least since I was an undergrad there, has been providing precisely this kind of advance notification (i.e. you get a popup saying "so-and-so is about to send you a message" when so-and-so types "zwrite your_username" on the screen) since at least 1990.

-FP

Re:Even older prior art

[NickFitz]

I'm sure there's plenty of prior art (including your link and the link in the article), I just don't think talk is a good example, given that it is specifically cited in the patent as not being what they claim their doobrie to be.

Re:Even older prior art

[Locutus]

The problem here seems to be that Microsoft is planning on using patents, simple ones, to attack OSS and the USPTO is helping. Just like SCO is banging its drum about IP when there's no proof of validity and is devised only as a stock price enhancer, Microsoft will use its patents to thwart OSS projects. Who can afford the court costs to fight these obvious patents? The USPTO is a major threat to OSS IMHO.

Anyways, to get around THIS patent, any IM application can device a single button which stays green when it receives the characters from a users input and turns red when a CR or LF character is recieved. Sure each character is still sent over the network but if it's buffered on every users machine, it can just be moved to the TALK window when the termination character is sent and thereby eliminating the whole message being sent out again when the sender has finished with the message.

This uses existing techniques and provides the notification mechanisms without seeing the senders thoughts as they are generated.

The OSS community needs a forum for debunking these patent applications. One where the USPTO trusts it for prior art inspections. Otherwise, Microsoft will litigate the OSS community into stagnation by killing OSS projects and improvements in the courts with bogus patents such as this one.

LoB

Re:So?

[autechre]

I like it for some of the reasons listed above, but if you're using a client such as GAIM, you can always disable it (so people can't see when you're typing and vice-versa). I also type/respond more quickly than most people with whom I converse, and this helps me know whether they're composing a reply to something I just said (so I don't waste time trying to clarify, only to have my answer be half complete when their reply happens, or worse, appear right after their reply. Race conditions suck :)