Microsoft trying to patent emoticons

[scuzzman]

Various organisations have criticised Microsoft for attempting to patent the creation of custom emoticons.

The patent application, 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.

...

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.

Jonas Maebe, a spokesman for the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII), said that such a patent could be used by Microsoft to prevent competitors from developing applications that compete with its MSN Messenger application.

...

The Microsoft patent that organisations are concerned about is patent number 20050156873, which was filed in January 2004. The US Patent Office has not yet made a decision on whether to accept the patent application.

Patent #20050156873

Full story on ZDnet

[-pops-]

It's an awfully long journey between Application and Full Grant.

It's also not possible to patent anything which is in the public domain - which emoticons are. Unless microsoft have something new associated with the creation of an emoticon, it is not patentable. Even if they do have something, it is perfectly in order for a user to ignore it and carry on as before with the established system.

It is, of course, possible that Microsoft are creating a method which is exclusive to their Windows operating system such that established emoticons will not function. In that instance, it would be classed as a restriction in use and not acceptable

The more of these restrictions that Microsoft try to place in new versions of Windows, the more they will alienate the us, the user, and encourage transfer to open source systems.

I'll have a read later and perhaps pass a further comment.

I should perhaps add that the US Patent and Trade Mark Office probably wastes more time on fatuous, untenable Patent Applications from Microsoft than from any other organisation

[r4may]

Another case of Microsoft attempting to Patent Public Domain procedures etc.

They never give up.