This post was written as a follow up to a comment I made on the Ars Technica forums. One contributor made some (fairly predictable) comments about the validity of a set of Microsoft patents on the basis of the patent abstracts. I pointed out that abstracts weren't the best way of doing this and that to properly judge a patent you need to read the claims. I then commented that it is quite common for overly broad and silly claims to get whittled down into something sensible during examination.
Naturally I got curious at this point. Certainly, these particular patents didn't look especially earth shaking from their abstracts but did the claimed inventions bear any resemblance to those abstracts. Unfortunately for me, they did in this case, although with a bit more thought, my initial knee-jerk dismissal of them was a little unfair.
This post also turned out to be rather lengthy, so I'll split it into two and post the second half tomorrow. With that said - lets have a look at those patents.
US 6,957,233.
Granted patent published 18 October 2005, filed 7 December 1999.
Claim 1.
A computer-implemented method for annotating a system having a display for displaying a page having user selectable objects being intermixed with markup tags, said user selectable objects and said markup tags being stored in a non-modifiable portion of a file, said mark-up tags bounding said user selectable objects in said file, comprising the steps of:
receiving user input for a selection of an object of said user selectable objects on the displayed page;
receiving user input for providing an annotation associated with said selected object; said annotation being modifiable;
determining a position of the selected object in the non-modifiable portion of the file regardless of said markup tags bounding said selected object;
storing the position and the annotation separately from the non-modifiable portion of the file; and
providing a portion of said display configured for navigating to the previously selected object based on said position, when said annotation is subsequently selected.
OK this is a little bit opaque, so a bit of context from the patent description would probably help. This patent was all to do with electronic documents and making them more akin to actual paper documents by providing a way of annotating them. I admit to being slightly bemused by this because the last thing I do with a nice shiny book is scribble notes in it but each to their own. Anyway, it turns out that the current method of doing this at the time was to edit the document file to include said annotations. Apparently this presented a problem in that some copyright holders weren't too happy about electronic editing of copies of their work. Hence there was a need for a way of annotating electronic documents without editing the actual document file.
In a nutshell that's what this patent claim is all about. Find out where the user wants to place an annotation, analyse the document file to find the location of that annotation and then store the annotation and its associated position in a separate file.
Back of the envelope commentary
The key part of the claim is that location finding step. Even with a cautionary mental note that most things are obvious in hindsight, if you want to annotate a file without editing it to include the annotation, then it seems to me that the obvious solution is to store that annotation in a separate file. However, I can well imagine that there could be an invention in finding a suitable way of mapping the annotation file onto the document file. Without knowing anything about the prior art, I'll give this claim the benefit of the doubt as regards novelty and inventive step.
However, the description only discloses a limited number of ways of achieving the mapping step and appears to be primarily limited to text files. Under US patent law, a patent description must be enabling and should be commensurate in scope with the claims. In other words, as per the Federal Circuit “the specification must teach those skilled in the art how to make and use the full scope of the claimed invention without 'undue experimentation'.” On that basis, I would argue that this claim is too broad.
US 5,778,372.
Granted patent published 07 July 1998. Filed 18 April 1996.
Claim 1.
1. A method of remotely browsing an electronic document residing at a remote site on a computer network and specifying a background image which is to be displayed with the electronic document superimposed thereon comprising in response to a user's request to browse to the electronic document:
requesting the electronic document from the remote site on the computer network;
receiving the electronic document from the remote site;
requesting the background image specified in the electronic document from the remote site on the computer network;
receiving the background image from the remote site;
drawing an initial display of the electronic document without the background image prior to receiving the background image from the remote site; and
redrawing the electronic document superimposed over the background image after receiving the background image from the remote site;
whereby the initial display of the electronic document is not delayed until the background image is received from the remote site.
A very condensed summary of the patent description. Web pages with images can be slow to load. Slowly loading webpages
Seriously? I appreciate that this was all pretty new stuff back in 1996 and so there most likely wasn't much prior art around but honestly. Prioritising bits of a webpage to download, so that quick to load, important stuff is downloaded before long to load, not so important stuff seems like a very obvious solution to the described problem.
I really feel for the examiner who got this one. This is an application that cries out to be rejected 'just because' but as I've mentioned previously that doesn't tend to work very well.
US 5,889,522.
Granted patent published 30 March 1999. Filed 13 December 1994.
Claim 1
1. In a computer system having a display, an input device, and a processor running an operating system (OS) and an application program, the application program running in an application window having a client area, the client area for displaying and manipulating application data, a method comprising:
(a) outputting a control window to the display, the control window being associated with the application program;
(b) predefining, by the OS, a tab control class for providing information to the application program, wherein:
(i) the tab control class includes a plurality of tab control images, each tab control image defining a page having a tab; and
(ii) each page displays application parameters from the application program;
(c) instantiating, by the application program, the tab control class; and
(d) outputting, to the display, a first tab control image superimposed on top of other tab control images within the window, such that the first tab control image, any application parameters thereof, and the tabs of the other tab control images are viewable in the control window.
OK, to me this looks like a claim to a tabbed preference panel, familiar to any Windows (or Mac OS X for that matter) user. Single window with all the preferences for a particular program, organised in groups, each group on its own tab, click the tab to bring up a given group.
I have to confess that I have no idea about this one. The patent was filed in 1994, so this is pre Windows 95 we're talking about. Nope, I'm simply not familiar enough with the art to make a sensible comment on the likely novelty or inventiveness of this one.
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