dmcowen674
No Lifer
I can't find my Patent Insanity thread so had to start a new one.
The Republicans in here continue to laugh at my likening the spate of Corporate and Government control of everything including the Internet to the likes of China or 1930's Europe but the evidence gets more clear everyday supporting what I see.
I would use the sad smiley but Microsoft just got a Patent that they now own Emoticons so everyone will have to pay Microsoft to use them:
7-23-2005 Microsoft frowned at for smiley patent
A software patent filed by Microsoft in the US has been described as 'very dangerous'
The patent, which was published by the US patent office on Thursday, covers selecting pixels to create an emoticon image, assigning a character sequence to these pixels and reconstructing the emoticon after transmission.
Mark Taylor, the executive director of the Open Source Consortium, said on Friday said this is such a basic concept that he would not have been surprised to see it posted as a fictional patent on a technology site.
"I would have expected to see something like this suggested by one of our more immature community members as a joke on Slashdot, and probably would have chuckled at the absurdity of the notion. We now appear to be living in a world where even the most laughable paranoid fantasies about commercially controlling simple social concepts are being outdone in the real world by well-funded armies of lawyers on behalf of some of the most powerful companies on the planet," said Taylor.
He said the patent could be particularly problematic as it covers basic human communication. "Emoticons are a form of language, and a precedent allowing patenting of language constructs is very dangerous indeed," said Taylor.
Microsoft was unable to comment in time for this article.
The Microsoft patent that organisations are concerned about is patent number 20050156873, which was filed in January 2004.
The Republicans in here continue to laugh at my likening the spate of Corporate and Government control of everything including the Internet to the likes of China or 1930's Europe but the evidence gets more clear everyday supporting what I see.
I would use the sad smiley but Microsoft just got a Patent that they now own Emoticons so everyone will have to pay Microsoft to use them:
7-23-2005 Microsoft frowned at for smiley patent
A software patent filed by Microsoft in the US has been described as 'very dangerous'
The patent, which was published by the US patent office on Thursday, covers selecting pixels to create an emoticon image, assigning a character sequence to these pixels and reconstructing the emoticon after transmission.
Mark Taylor, the executive director of the Open Source Consortium, said on Friday said this is such a basic concept that he would not have been surprised to see it posted as a fictional patent on a technology site.
"I would have expected to see something like this suggested by one of our more immature community members as a joke on Slashdot, and probably would have chuckled at the absurdity of the notion. We now appear to be living in a world where even the most laughable paranoid fantasies about commercially controlling simple social concepts are being outdone in the real world by well-funded armies of lawyers on behalf of some of the most powerful companies on the planet," said Taylor.
He said the patent could be particularly problematic as it covers basic human communication. "Emoticons are a form of language, and a precedent allowing patenting of language constructs is very dangerous indeed," said Taylor.
Microsoft was unable to comment in time for this article.
The Microsoft patent that organisations are concerned about is patent number 20050156873, which was filed in January 2004.
