Put this in the category of “you gotta be kidding me.” Microsoft has applied for and received a patent (U.S. Patent #7,415,666) that essentially patents “Page Up/Page Down” functionality. The patent (Timothy D Sellers, Heather L. Grantham, Joshua A. Dersch) that was filed in March 2005 is yet another proof that our patent system is as (if not more) dysfunctional as Britney Spears.
“Method and system for navigating paginated content in page-based increments
“A method and system in a document viewer for scrolling a substantially exact increment in a document, such as one page, regardless of whether the zoom is such that some, all or one page is currently being viewed. In one implementation, pressing a Page Down or Page Up keyboard key/button allows a user to begin at any starting vertical location within a page, and navigate to that same location on the next or previous page.
“For example, if a user is viewing a page starting in a viewing area from the middle of that page and ending at the bottom, a Page Down command will cause the next page to be shown in the viewing area starting at the middle of the next page and ending at the bottom of the next page. Similar behavior occurs when there is more than one column of pages being displayed in a row.”
The Patent Office staff could work part-time as comedy writers for Jon Stewart.
It’s Clippy, my old annoying friend….
Whoever patents the idea of litigation as a business model in the software industry has it made.
I’ve just removed both of those keys from my keyboard.
I’ve renameing mine Scroll Up and Scroll Down
If the page goes down, the text goes up, and vice/versa.
I hereby lay claim to TextUP and TextDN to replace Page Down and Page Up, respectively.
I now release them under GNU open source license.
Why not patent Page Up and Page Down? A few years ago a guy received a patent for the wheel. http://tinyurl.com/5sf3l6
Umm,
Isnt the current design of the KB, based on IBM??
Well, in 5250 parlance, they are called “roll up” and “roll down”, so I guess the prior art doesn’t count in this instance…..
SKL
I’ve just patented Ctrl-Alt-Del…
I have patent pending on flipping the bird. Microsoft will be the recipient.
I’m just wondering if the Primary Examiner identified on the patent used PgUp or PgDn at any time while processing this application and didn’t recognize prior art while the examiner was using some system. Oh wait….keypunch equipment doesn’t have a “PgUp” key!
On another thought, I wondered what we did with the “PgUp” and “PgDn” key for those 25 years before Microsoft figured out what do to with them. I spent many days wondering why some designer though those letters were so important…
#10 TVAddict: I have patent pending on flipping the bird.
Sorry, friend, but George Horther’s 1940 design patent D120,914 will likely pre-empt your application… It all depends on how you wrote your claims.
Ref: http://tinyurl.com/5h3rl5
If the patent says that it’s suppose to do one page at a time regardless of where you start on the page, then MS better fix Word because that ain’t how it’s working.
There is a hard time limit on patents isn’t there? Page up and down has been around since at least the mid 70’s on graphic terminals.
Who needs comedy writers when this sort of thing is happening?
It’s so stupid that it compares to the patent on a government funded strain of oranges developed to make better organe juce being used to make orange juice. Now that was a noval thought.
Heh, so now Apple has to pay royalty or something to Microsoft, or remove the key from their KB and OS? Real genius way to make ever more money. 😛
I guess M$ has patented ALL THE KEYS of the keyboard, and that’s what Ballmer is BRAYING ABOUT when he says OSS violates M$s “Intellectual Property” !!! Trying to prevent OSS from using a keyboard !!!
Tomorrow, i am going to file a patent for the colonization of Mars.
Who you have though that my great grandchildren would become the emperors of the solar system:)
I have now patented the on/off button on computers.
Also, the Submit button below is mine now too. Pony up, people.
HUH??? Wha?? What kind of doppy idea is this?
I think prior art probably exists on this, but I guess their patent hounds have to churn something out to keep their jobs.
Actually… they are kinda right. It is typical, quite possibly due to Microsoft’s sloppy programming of Window’s UI, that pressing Page-Up and Page-Down yields unexpected results.
Hence I agree that developer’s right to make his code perform as intended should be protected.