Communication Breakdown
Communications from the world of, er, communications. And other stuff.
Friday 2 January 2009, 1:01 PM
Microsoft was denied PAYG computing patent
Those whose reaction to Microsoft's application for a patent on pay-as-you-go computing tended toward the apoplectic can rest easy. The US Patent & Trademark Office said no.
In a letter sent to Redmond a few days before the application's Christmas Day publication, the USPTO questioned Microsoft's occasional use of fuzzy terminology ("polls" was a sticking point). The office also pointed out that all the claims included in the patent application described stuff that was already patented.
So, no need to worry about the described walled-garden PC experience just yet. But remember, the refusal was not final and Microsoft can appeal or reapply.
Comments on this post
Yeah! Hurrah! Yippee. So somebody in the Patent Office wasn't nipping into the eggnog early. Good. Its about time tax dollars paid for something rational to come out of that office.
Now if somebody there would look into the page up/page down scroll patent and reject that claim that would be a nice late Christmas present. That was almost as bad as the prior MS claim to the FAT partition patent.
BTW instead of walled garden I was thinking more like cloistered abbey, since it seems MS thinks Leonardo was thinking of them when he painted the ceiling.
Interesting that the patent office said that they were claiming a patent on an amalgam of already patented stuff. I wonder how many times people have been allowed to do that, and not had it noticed...
It was two patents they were referring to, as yet uncombined. It seems Microsoft tried to combine them, and the USPTO said it was well within anyone's capacity to do so, without actually coming up with a patentable new idea.