Microsoft gets $20.75 million from Sony

[MikeB]

@ Burgles

For a stupidly simple example.

Some simple examples of why the US patent system is flawed.

For example Microsoft was recently awarded a Page Up and Page down patent.

"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."

link

That's IMO ridiculous, it has been in use for ages all across the world and is not remotely invented by Microsoft. Just stupid Microsoft has the opportunity to demand royalties from other companies and sue them.

Also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_trolls (a good read)

Other stupid Microsoft patents, Using custom in-game soundtracks (implemented in many games well before Microsoft supported this), "treating electronic mail addresses as objects" (good old ancient drag & drop), double clicking for mobile devices, "Organizing and displaying photographs based on time", "the invention may automatically add a 'www.' and a '.com' to the text the user is entering and display this combined text'", etc, etc. The list of stupid patents goes on and on, feel free to browse through them and find your own little gems:

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=0&f=S&l=50&TERM1=Microsoft&FIELD1=ASNM&co1=AND&TERM2=&FIELD2=&d=ptxt

Some more quotes:

"After blatantly copying BlueJ (without reference or attribution), Microsoft have now filed for patent for the functionality they knowingly copied from us.

Why? To sue us out of the market?"

"Microsoft has a penchant for patenting the obvious, but I blame the bureaucrats at the USPTO just as much as I blame the Redmond giant. While Microsoft fills out the forms, the Patent Office actually grants the patents!"

The US patent system is seriously flawed.