> -----Original Message----- > From: S. Isaac Dealey [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Sunday, July 24, 2005 7:58 PM > To: CF-Community > Subject: Re: When will the patent madness stop? MS patents SMileys! > > > Actually, the patent isn't for emoticons themselves. > > It's for substituting emoticons with images when > > emoticons are seen in text. > > > There may not be so much prior art on that, which > > would suck. Frankly, this is proof that the patent > > system is being used to stifle innovation. > > I beg to differ... every instant messenger client has done this for a > long time. Kinda hard for them to claim it's new and unique when > there's a quick, easy and obvious example of a major company that's > implemented it for a looong time now.
Actually the patent is more specific: it's not just substituting emoticons it's substituting "custom" emoticons and defining the methods of transfer. Here's the abstract: "Methods and devices for creating and transferring custom emoticons allow a user to adopt an arbitrary image as an emoticon, which can then be represented by a character sequence in real-time communication. In one implementation, custom emoticons can be included in a message and transmitted to a receiver in the message. In another implementation, character sequences representing the custom emoticons can be transmitted in the message instead of the custom emoticons in order to preserve performance of text messaging. At the receiving end, the character sequences are replaced by their corresponding custom emoticons, which can be retrieved locally if they have been previously received, or can be retrieved from the sender in a separate communication from the text message if they have not been previously received." And here's the patent application: http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PG01&p= 1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=%2220050156873%22.PGNR. &OS=DN/20050156873&RS=DN/20050156873 What got me was claim number one: "A method, comprising: selecting pixels to be used as an emoticon; assigning a character sequence to the pixels; and transmitting the character sequence to a destination to allow for reconstruction of the pixels at the destination." You can't really send a "pixel", can you? It sounds like what their patenting (I only scanned it) is the method for transferring and storing the custom emoticons. Take a look at some of the diagrams and you'll see it's rather specific. This isn't too dissimilar to patents they own related to the "Comic Chat" application (something I really wish would have taken off). In that application plain text messaging has added meta information (emotional state, positional information, etc) added to allow the application to produce a very nifty comic strip of the conversation. Damn I did love that little app. Anyway it looks like this patent covers a similar idea: sending custom emoticons via a chat interface. I'm not giving my opinion as to whether they should have applied for this patent. However I do take issue with those that obviously never read the application and blanketly claim that "MS patents smilies". Jim Davis ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Find out how CFTicket can increase your company's customer support efficiency by 100% http://www.houseoffusion.com/banners/view.cfm?bannerid=49 Message: http://www.houseoffusion.com/lists.cfm/link=i:5:166115 Archives: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/threads.cfm/5 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/lists.cfm/link=s:5 Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=11502.10531.5 Donations & Support: http://www.houseoffusion.com/tiny.cfm/54
