WTF? Microsoft Granted Patent on the Double-Click

Phaedrus · Jun 3, 2004

Microsoft Granted Patent for Double-Click

by Sam Varghese
The Sydney Morning Herald

Microsoft has been granted a patent on the double-click by the US Patents and Trademark Office. The patent, number 6,727,830, was granted on April 27.

An abstract of the application says: "A method and system are provided for extending the functionality of application buttons on a limited resource computing device. Alternative application functions are launched based on the length of time an application button is pressed. A default function for an application is launched if the button is pressed for a short, i.e., normal, period of time.

"An alternative function of the application is launched if the button is pressed for a long, (e.g., at least one second), period of time. Still another function can be launched if the application button is pressed multiple times within a short period of time, e.g., double click."

The inventors have been cited as Charlton E. Lui and Jeffrey R. Blum and the assignee is Microsoft Corporation.

The field of the invention "relates generally to computer systems, and more particularly to increasing the functionality of application buttons on a limited resource computing device", the patent application says.

Microsoft said last year that it would be seeking to improve earnings from technology which it claims it invented and would be using its patent portfolio to do so.

Last year, the company said it would be charging for use of the FAT filesystem.

The New York-based Public Patent Foundation has filed a formal request with the US Patent and Trademark Office, asking that Microsoft's patent on this filesystem be revoked.

TheFunkMonkey · Jun 3, 2004

How can you patent the double-click? What next, is somebody going to patent the space-bar?

Some interesting trademarks:

Food manufacturing company Mrs. Smith's fires off cease and desist letters to bakeries that dare to infringe on its trademark, "homestyle".

University of Massachusetts ex-basketball coach John Calipari trademarked "Refuse to Lose" and charges the school royalties to publicly use his slogan.

Ohio University and Ohio State engaged in a lengthy, expensive battle over the word "Ohio".

xpanda · Jun 3, 2004

Did MicroSoft invent the mouse? If so, then maybe they do have grounds for this ... either way, this is just one more reason to use a Mac.

TheFunkMonkey · Jun 3, 2004

Inventor of computer 'mouse' finally cashes a big check
April 9, 1997
Web posted at: 11:08 p.m. EDT (0308 GMT)

NEW YORK (CNN) -- He can't recall which member of his team first nicknamed the hand-held device with a cord a "mouse," but it was Doug Engelbart who invented and patented what he called the "x-y position indicator."

Hundreds of millions of computer "mice" have been made since then, but Engelbart got only one check for his invention -- for $10,000.

Now, as the recent winner of the third annual Lemelson-Mit Prize for American Innovation, he's picking up $500,000.

"Sometimes I reflect on how naive somebody has to be in order to get visions -- and plug away at them -- that ultimately proceed, and how many other people with visions that are as naive just fall off the cliff," Engelbart says.

A radar technician during World War II, Engelbart worked at the Stanford Research Institute during the 1960s. It was there that a vision of people sitting in front of a video screen, interacting with a computer, came to him.

"I knew enough engineering and had enough experience as a radar person to know that if a computer can punch cards or print paper, it can draw anything you want on a screen," he says.

At a 1968 computer conference in San Francisco, Engelbart spelled out his vision.

"If, in your office, you, as an intellectual worker, were supplied with a computer display backed up by a computer that was alive for you all day and was instantly ... responsive to every action you have, how much value could you derive from that?"

The answer, apparently, was, "Not much." None of the makers of mainframe computers listening to his presentation responded or showed any interest in his ideas.

"I'd be treated like a leper," he recalls.

But Engelbart persisted. He came up with concepts that led to windows on the computer screen as well as online publishing, video-conferencing, e-mail and software that allows several people in different locations to work on one document at the same time.

And when the first personal computers came out in the early 1980s, Engelbart's response was "a funny feeling of 'Why did it take so long?'"

It took another decade for the PC industry to embrace the Internet. Engelbart recalls the reason one computer company executive gave for ignoring the power of networking.

"He said, 'Nope, I don't want to get tied with other people, because they'll usurp resources and it'll get complicated.'"

"I said, 'I know, but that's like having this very fancy office, but no doors.'"

Now, Engelbart and his daughters run the Bootstrap Institute, helping companies and organizations build doorways to others in their fields.

His $500,000 prize, he says, will help him keep bringing people together via computer into the new millennium.