Comments on: Microsoft checks off patent win

The software giant's latest chunk of intellectual property is a glorifed version of the to-do list.

Patent violation

grep TODO *.c > ~/tasks

Sorry, but, har har, I do that for years - isn't that prior art?

Patents, pfff! Thats all getting too stupid to be real, ha? F***ing idiots.

Andre

[ruibo]

Absurd.

I totally agree with Andre. I've been doing the TODO: grep thing for over 20 years. This process is obvious, it certainly wasn't ?invented? at Microsoft, and it's an absurd abuse of our legal system.

How is it possible?

I don't know much about US laws, but how is it
possible to patent well known and well used
things?

I notice that this happends all the time. What
happend if MS decide to put power behind this
"patents"?

Who have to prove that they is right if this
happends?

Jostein

[Shel D.]

any takers

I've got a patent I'd like to sell them...
http://164.195.100.11/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/netahtml/srchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1='5,953,504'.WKU.&OS=PN/5,953,504&RS=PN/5,953,504

[Fray9]

Irrelevent

Just as a patent or copyright is only valid if you have the money to enforce it, anyone with enough money can "take" a patent or copyright regardless of prior art if they have enough money to pay off the patent office and run any challengers into the ground through extending court cases past the challengers ability to finance.

Wonderful country.. land of the 2nd class citizens and home of the fearful of companies that can do whatever they want.

Eclipse has this

Eclipse has had this feature for some time now, though I don't believe that it changes the comment in response to the user completing the task. Its a trivial extension though, and I wonder if the patent as stated would allow Microsoft to go after Eclipse.

That said, they patented a package management system identical to Debian's a good few years after Debian invented it, and have not tried enforcing that one as yet.

Its a strange world where you can patent such trivial and generic ideas - and patenting an apple tree - how odd! I thought patenting the use of XML, a standard _document_ storage format, to store a document was bad enough.

we pay the bill...

Well, either way, if patents get enforced through all instances or if companies pay license fees, at the end, all of us will pay the bill... It does not add any value to economy and society!