Re: 1-Click, Short-Click, Long-Click, More-Clicks (New Microsoft Patent)

[Matt]

Barry Margolin wrote:
> 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.

I understand that a long time back somebody put an eraser on the end of 
a pencil and tried to patent it.  The patent was denied because the 
supposed invention was not a new invention---only a combination of old 
inventions.