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CBC wrote:Scroll keys belong to Microsoft, in part

Last Updated: Monday, September 1, 2008 | 3:54 PM ET
CBC News

They've been a feature of keyboards since at least 1981, but late last month, the "Page Up" and "Page Down" keys became partly the intellectual property of Microsoft Corp.

A patent issued Aug. 19 by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office gives the Redmond, Wash.-based company proprietary rights to "a method and system in a document viewer for scrolling a substantially exact increment in a document."

The patent, filed for on March 4, 2005, covers the technique by which "pressing a Page Down or Page Up keyboard key/button allows a user to begin at any starting vertical location within a page, and navigate to that same location on the next or previous page."

Microsoft's patent claim says that prior to its invention, a computer user couldn't easily punch the Page Up or Page Down keys to scroll exactly one page down or up; instead, those buttons would move up or down a variable amount within a document, depending on how magnified the document's text was.

The patent dossier lists Timothy Sellers, Heather Graham and Joshua Dersch, all of Washington state, as the inventors, and Microsoft as the patent owner.

It is not clear whether Microsoft's patent will be enforceable. Another company could implement the same scrolling method if it can show that the technology was generally available and widely known before Microsoft filed a patent application.

Microsoft will not be able to assert ownership over the scrolling method in Canada because it has not yet filed an application for the same invention with the Canadian Intellectual Property Office.

In 2001, an Australian man was granted a patent for the wheel, which he filed for under a new, streamlined assessment process in that country.

The Australian government patent bureau said the man's wheel patent would never stand up in court.

Microsoft has nearly 10,000 patents for various inventions. Some of those, it has been argued, were commonly known beforehand — such as a scrolling mouse wheel and double-clicking computer buttons — and thus are of dubious enforceability.

Invictus ChiKen wrote:So how long until they try to patent the mouse, the internet and so on?

In 2001, an Australian man was granted a patent for the wheel, which he filed for under a new, streamlined assessment process in that country.

LMSx wrote:

In 2001, an Australian man was granted a patent for the wheel, which he filed for under a new, streamlined assessment process in that country.

I see this "patent" absurdity already hit its nadir.

Sarevok wrote:Is there a patent on the idea of patents ?

Lord MJ wrote:Even without reforming the patent system, crap like this can easily be prevented by simple changes to judicial doctrine. Currently a patent is presumed valid in court. If courts stop giving patents the presumption of validity, a large amount of the crap we experience with patents will disappear.

Sarevok wrote:Is there a patent on the idea of patents ?

Tolya wrote:Actually, what is the consequence of that absurd patent? That only Micro$oft will be able to make keyboards with PgUp/PgDown keys and will be extracting heavy amounts of cash from peripheral manufacturers?

phongn wrote:

Sarevok wrote:Is there a patent on the idea of patents ?

Presumably government holds ultimate authority over patenting.

Tolya wrote:Actually, what is the consequence of that absurd patent? That only Micro$oft will be able to make keyboards with PgUp/PgDown keys and will be extracting heavy amounts of cash from peripheral manufacturers?

No. Did you bother reading the article?

phongn wrote:

Lord MJ wrote:Even without reforming the patent system, crap like this can easily be prevented by simple changes to judicial doctrine. Currently a patent is presumed valid in court. If courts stop giving patents the presumption of validity, a large amount of the crap we experience with patents will disappear.

Given a professional patent office (of which the US has one, if overworked and having problems with rapidly-advancing technology) why shouldn't it be considered valid?

Lancer wrote:For those of you who failed to read the article before jumping in headfirst, Microsoft's patent isn't on the PgUp and PgDn buttons themselves, but the code that lets you go from line 23 on page 42 to line 23 on page 43 in a document with a single keypress.

Still somewhat ridiculous, but it's not the monopoly on stupid that the title implies.

petesampras wrote:

Lancer wrote:For those of you who failed to read the article before jumping in headfirst, Microsoft's patent isn't on the PgUp and PgDn buttons themselves, but the code that lets you go from line 23 on page 42 to line 23 on page 43 in a document with a single keypress.

Still somewhat ridiculous, but it's not the monopoly on stupid that the title implies.

Unless I am missing something, surely this is code that any competent programmer could come up with in an afternoon? It's not some sophisticated compression algorithm which required months of R&D.

Edi wrote:

phongn wrote:

Lord MJ wrote:Even without reforming the patent system, crap like this can easily be prevented by simple changes to judicial doctrine. Currently a patent is presumed valid in court. If courts stop giving patents the presumption of validity, a large amount of the crap we experience with patents will disappear.

Given a professional patent office (of which the US has one, if overworked and having problems with rapidly-advancing technology) why shouldn't it be considered valid?

The professionalism of the US Patent Office has been up for debate for years. Or perhaps it would be a more proper characterization that either US patent legislation or the quality standard applied at the Patent Office (or both) are a complete crock of shit and consequently so is the quality of work we're seeing. There is a lot of shit simply rubberstamped by the US Patent Office that would be summarily rejected in Europe.

So Lord MJ does have a point of sorts. The US needs patent reform or a thorough shakeup of the Patent Office along with a far more severe enforcement of rules than is current practice before US patents should be assumed to be valid at face value in controversial cases.