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."

ICQ

[i.r.id10t]

ICQ had/has this as well, in the direct chat (not im) mode.

Are you sure?

[autopr0n]

Are you sure this patent grants them the rights to any implementation, or only their implementation?

Btw, would you need to sue MS in order to get this patent overturned, or could you do something like sue the patent office?

Prior Art may be the key

[matchlight]

Check out this site [tms.org] for complete details but to lift a few important parts:

a person is not entitled to a patent if the invention was "known or used by others in this country, or was patented or described in a printed publication in this or a foreign country" before the date of invention by the applicant for the patent

But later there is a brief comment:

Naturally, if an inventor abandons the invention, he or she cannot obtain a patent.

And finally in support of M$'s patent, and likely the way they got it:

In a fast-changing world, finding a single piece of prior art which discloses the same invention as that claimed in a patent is not the most likely scenario. What is far more likely to occur is that the prior art will be something similar but not identical to the patented invention. The patent statutes also provide for this situation--in a negative manner. Specifically, section 103 of the code provides that a patent may not be obtained "though the invention is not identically disclosed or described [in the prior art] if the differences between the subject matter sought to be patented and the prior art are such that the subject matter as a whole would have been obvious at the time the invention was made to a person having ordinary skill in the art." The test which is posed by this section is whether a worker of ordinary skill, knowing the prior art, would have found the patented invention obvious.

Microsoft screwed itself (reference to US code)

[yerricde]

If an inventor distributes embodiments of an invention to the public in the United States, the inventor must either have already applied for a U.S. patent, or he loses the patent (35 USC 102(a) [cornell.edu]). This patent was applied for in December 2002. I remember using a version of MSN Messenger with this feature in 2000.

Re:Even older prior art

[dattaway]

Don't forget the unix "write" command. And "wall" for everyone on the system.

I remember the "phone" command for VMS. A bunch of people over a network could talk at once. Your could reach out and touch someone with the finger command and dial them up.

public comment

[Anonymous Coward]

Why the hell doesn't the Patent Office
publish pending patents and allow a 90-day
public comment period? They would issue a
lot fewer embarassing patents that way.

So?

[Sir Haxalot]

'an instant messaging feature that notifies users when the person they are communicating with is typing a message.'
I really couldn't care less. This has to be one of the most annoying features put in an IM program, ever. The reasons for this are as follows:

• Sometimes I might spend a while thinking out something I'm typing, if I do this it'll say '* is typing a messege', sometimes making the other user wait for me to finish what I'm typing, which I don't like.

• Alot of humour in instant messeging is to do with timing, which is ruined if this is put into place.

• It's pointless. I've yet to think of one reason to have it in any IM program, all it does is (slightly) bloat it.
• 
  Anyone on Slashdot actually like it?

Criminal at this point

[kenp2002]

It is obvious that the patent office is ignoring the prior art clause. Why not just file a criminal charge against the staff of the patent office and use the law to stop this kind of behavior. If the office is failing to perform it's job why not confront it in a court of law? Hell you could push as far as treason if need be (only takes two witnesses last I checked) as a conscious act to undermine the Constitution, federal law, and confront it as an act of economic sabotage. There are plenty of ways to confront the problem. I find it odd that the EFF and ACLU have not touched the Patent Office in earnest. What is protecting the Patent Office such that even basic avenues are not used? At the point that the Patent Office has ignored it's purpose I would most likely pursue legal action first based on ignoring the law and establishment of the "Prior Art" rules and if there is still no change after that, move to the treason avenue. Sad to say that treason is becoming more and more reasonable when looking at the larger picture of the Patent Office problems.

Re:Unix talk

[silicon not in the v]

ICQ has this feature, and I don't know about others, but it will show "Away" when the person has switched programs, so it's not the active app. When my wife chats with her sister, it drives her crazy because she sees her sister going into away mode like every 10 seconds, and then has to sit there waiting for her to answer while she can see that her sister isn't even looking at the chat window.

Re:Criminal at this point

[kenp2002]

Good point but couldn't you circumvent the organization and directly address the staff? Law states that regardless of wether it is policy or not an employee is not "protected" from criminal liability if they commit criminal activities as part of their job. The only group I know that has some level of protection from that is the military and intelligence community. Not even the president is protected from that (Nixion as an example.)

Re:History of "talk"

[Anonymous Coward]

Though isn't that not what the law says? I'm pretty sure that the law DOESN'T require prior art to have been patented. Right?

Re:It's the application date that matters

[Locutus]

what amazes me is that they filed this in Dec 2002 and in less than 10 months they were awarded the patent. AND there appears to be alot of prior art.

Mabye the USPTO needs to start getting emails, from us, pointing out the prior art.....

LoB

Re:Another obvious patent

[the bluebrain]

• "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?"

I agree, in principle. But I would formulate the question more broadly in this case:
"When I'm using IM it find it annoying that I always get interrupted when I'm typing a long post and the other guy puts stuff in between. It makes the conversation disjointed. Same if the other guys writing a long post: I can't tell if he's typing or just gone to the toilet.
Any ideas? "

Now *that* makes the solution obvious. Any /.er could probably come up with half a dozen on the spot, and this "innovation" would feature among them in 90% of the cases.

Feh! I say, feh!

One Way to Have a Positive Attitude About This

[serutan]

Is to look at it as a necessary evolutionary step. The patent system is broken, in fact the whole IP system is broken. It isn't going to be fixed smoothly and painlessly. It's going to be ripped out by the roots and replaced. But to make that process happen the system has to reach a breaking point in the public's tolerance.

The public is historically slow to act, and is never good at acting on obscure issues, as is the IP world for the most part. Some good things the file-sharing debacle has done are to educate a lot of ordinary people about intellectual property, to demonstrate their willingness to ignore IP laws they don't agree with, and to give people some actual experience breaking those laws and getting away with it. This is surprising and encouraging behavior for an American public that has successfully been dumbed down and convenience-addicted to the point of virtual sheephood.

But it's going to take a lot more pain to get people's butts off their comfy couches in the IP arena, to the point where politicians find their constituents threatening enough to start representing them again. That point is years away, and I want to live through it and into the next Golden Age. So for me, anything that pushes this process along is a good thing, in its own way.