- Related Stories
-
Apple patented by Microsoft
May 4, 2004 -
Microsoft snags XML-related patent
February 12, 2004 -
Microsoft opens technology to more licensing
December 3, 2003
U.S. Patent No. 6,748,582, granted and assigned Tuesday to Microsoft, covers the use of a "task list" in a software development environment.
The patented technology essentially integrates certain comments left in the source code of an application under development with an accompanying checklist. Leave a "TODO" comment in the source code, and an authoring application automatically creates an item in the task list. Check an item off on the task list, and the corresponding source code comment is changed.
A Microsoft representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
While the new patent is specific enough to software development that vacationers penning "what to pack" lists don't have to worry, it fits with Microsoft's ongoing efforts to enlarge its patent portfolio.
The company embarked on a campaign last year to generate more revenue from its intellectual-property portfolio and has since applied for hundreds of patents. The company has received patents covering everything from seemingly elementary aspects of computing technology, such as double-clicking, to arcana such as XML-scripting methods.
The software giant's patent push seemed to reach comical proportions earlier this year, when the company was accidentally granted a plant patent for a variety of apple tree.
- More from News.com on this story's topics
Authoring
Programming
Microsoft Windows
Patents
Microsoft
See more CNET content tagged:
patent,
software development,
source code,
intellectual property,
Microsoft Corp.
- 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
- Reply to this comment
- 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.
- Reply to this comment
- 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
- Reply to this comment
- 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
- Reply to this comment
- 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.
- Reply to this comment
- 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.
- Reply to this comment
- 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!
- Reply to this comment
Start Doing More with Windows Mobile