SAN FRANCISCO - You might not know that Microsoft was recently awarded a patent for "the time-based hardware button for application loss." In plain English, that is the mouse double-click. And some consider it to be one of a number of frivolous patents that might well endanger technological innovation and free expression alike.

Filed in July 2002 and granted in late April, the Microsoft double-click patent is described thus by the U.S. Patent Office: "A method and system are provided for extending the functionality of application buttons on a limited resource computing device."

Even Microsoft isn't really sure what that means or what the patent actually covers, according to TechWorld.com. Citing an unnamed company spokesperson, TechWorld said it was developed by Microsoft Pocket PC group workers – but nobody knows whether it applies to desktop applications, or even how the software giant plans to enforce the patent, if at all.

And that kind of thing is what brings the Electronic Frontier Foundation to a boil. The group recently launched what they call a Patent Busting Project, saying that frivolous patents are already doing far more harm than good.

"I think its kind of just as devious as Amazon's one-click," EFF staff attorney Jason Schultz told AVNOnline.com. "The kind of technology it's trying to own has been around for decades. The patent specifically tries to claim that if you hold the button down or click it in a sequence, Microsoft invented that. And I think the patent's pretty ridiculous."

Interestingly, Schultz said, Microsoft has never actually sued anyone for patent infringement, a stark contrast to other companies holding what the EFF might deem similarly frivolous patents.

And it's the frivolous patents that are now the target of the EFF's Patent Busting Contest, the kind Schultz said become fodder for their holders to use "intimidation and extortion tactics" that concern most people with interests in cyberspace and elsewhere.

Among the patents they consider frivolous: one-click online shopping, online shopping carts, the hyperlink, video streaming, internationalizing domain names, popup windows, targeted banner ads, paying with credit cards online, framed browsing, and affiliate linking.

Schultz said the EFF launched the Patent Busting Contest June 10. "The first phase of it is opening a contest for people to submit bad patents they want us to bust," he said. "We're leaving it up to the public. You can say why you think it's bad, and who's being threatened."

The contest will run for two weeks, and the EFF will post a kind of Top Ten Most Wanted List involving such patents, most likely on June 30. "And," Schultz said, "if they're in the top ten list, we're certainly going to take them on."

That means the EFF will call for help researching prior art for each of the top ten frivolous patents as determined by the contest, and take a challenge right to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in a bid to get genuinely bad or frivolous patents off the books.

http://www.avnonline.com/index.php?P...tent_ID=106445

Just think.. every time you double click something you owe Micro$oft some $$$ now

Regards,

Lee