CRANKY GENIUS

If anything Microsoft or the US Patent Offiece have done lately deserves a WTF, this is it!  Consider the following. You access page-based paginated content in a computing environment using the PageUp and PageDown commands (as we might do while prepping text for CrankyGenius.com or you might do in any desktop publishing endevour). You know what? This method is probably patented by Microsoft.

Yes, you read correctly!

According to ITWire, US Patent 7,415,666 called: “Method and system for navigating paginated content in page-based increments” is the latest feature to gain patent protection granted to Microsoft. (Images included with the patent application can be found here.)

The following quote is an excerpt from the abstract.

…”if a user is viewing a page starting in a viewing area from the middle of that page and ending at the bottom, a Page Down command will cause the next page to be shown in the viewing area starting at the middle of the next page and ending at the bottom of the next page. Similar behavior occurs when there is more than one column of pages being displayed in a row.”

DISCLAIMER TIME! The Cranky Genius is not a legal expert, so regard our comments with a bucketful of brine shrimp. End of disclaimer.

The text of the patent seems to say that jumping from the middle of one page to the middle of the next using PageDown is one of the methods covered by this patent. If that is the case, is it also possible this patent covers the ability to view quasi-linear content using the otherwise linear PageUp and PageDown command? For example, what if you navigate down a column of photos using arrow keys and when you reach the bottom-most photo, when you press PageDown and are magically transported to the last photo in the next column,  is this also covered? Seems like it should be.

(On a side note, we also wonder if this patent is also intended to protect  some functionality found in Vista Aero 3D Flip – functionality available to non-Vista users through open-source freeware. But we digress. If you find the missing link, send us the results.)

But back on track… According to the patent, a “computing environment” includes:

…”personal computers, server computers, hand-held or laptop devices, multiprocessor systems, microcontroller-based (sic) systems, set top boxes, programmable consumer electronics, network PCs, minicomputers, mainframe computers, distributed computing environments that include any of the above systems or devices, and the like.”

So “computing environments” include your PS3 or Wii, your iPhone, your Dish Network PVR, your Google Docs account and anything else that might possibly be accessible from a keyboard – and not just any keyboard, but one that also happens to include PgUp and PgDn keys – the keys that have been on computers and computer terminals since -I don’t know – forever!

Dear director of the US Patent Office – ARE YOU SERIOUS? If so, you put the DUMB in dumbfounded!

Can we seriously expect our nations’s patent office to be anything but a bunch of postal-clerk rejects mired in a three-stooges-nin-com-poop-ed-get-on-with-life-mania?

Hey USPO, I have a new patent submission, it’s called breathing oxygen. Prior art? No problem, I breath oxygen at a different rate and pattern – that’s patenable, right?  BTW, Since this patent’s seemingly obvious method was granted patent protection, we cannot  wait to see what was rejected.

Back to the topic at hand. Microsoft probably gets sued on a daily basis, sometimes from a legitimately aggrieved party, but often by parasitic patent squatters. So this may be one of those defensive patents we’ve heard about – you know, the kind of thing where you’re already doing something in a piece of software but haven’t patented it yet and then one of your lawyers says “hey this may be patentable” so you patent it to prevent someone else from doing so and then turning around and sueing your pants off.

But patenting the obvious (rather than patening the innovative) is exactly the reason congress has been considering patent reform since 2003. HR 1908 (its Senate counterpart S 1145) for example would bring US patent law more in line with the rest of the world by (among other things) updating the concept of “prior art” and clarifying who has the right to patent a particular invention especially when it is a derivative of another invention. Opposition against reforming patent law is pretty broad, so Congress has an uphill battle.

In the meantime, it looks like we’ll have to put up with boneheaded patents like this one that do nothing for innovation but do evertyhing to keep lawyers busy.

And isn’t that just what the world needs? Busy lawyers?