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[ipr-ict] [Fwd: [Wsis-pct] Microsoft & smiley patent]
FYI (see below)
Pour les francophones : Voir ci-dessous un article datant du 22 dernier,
indiquant que Microsoft aurait deposé aux USA un brevet sur des smileys
(les émoticones, ces signes permettant d'exprimer les émotions sur les
réseaux électroniques). Ce brevet est jugé dangeureux par des experts.
KL
-------- Message original --------
Sujet: [Wsis-pct] Microsoft & smiley patent
Date: Sun, 24 Jul 2005 17:11:53 +0200
De: Dr. Francis MUGUET <muguet@mdpi.net>
Organisation: MDPI
Pour: wsis-pct@fsfeurope.org
FYI :-( or ;-) ?
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/business/0,39020645,39210396,00.htm
Microsoft frowned at for smiley patent
Ingrid Marson
ZDNet UK
July 22, 2005, 17:15 BST
A software patent filed by Microsoft in the US has been described as
'very dangerous'
Various organisations have criticised Microsoft for attempting to patent
the creation of custom emoticons.
The patent, which was published by the US patent office on Thursday,
covers selecting pixels to create an emoticon image, assigning a
character sequence to these pixels and reconstructing the emoticon after
transmission.
Mark Taylor, the executive director of the Open Source Consortium, said
on Friday said this is such a basic concept that he would not have been
surprised to see it posted as a fictional patent on a technology site.
"I would have expected to see something like this suggested by one of
our more immature community members as a joke on Slashdot, and probably
would have chuckled at the absurdity of the notion. We now appear to be
living in a world where even the most laughable paranoid fantasies about
commercially controlling simple social concepts are being outdone in the
real world by well-funded armies of lawyers on behalf of some of the
most powerful companies on the planet," said Taylor.
He said the patent could be particularly problematic as it covers basic
human communication. "Emoticons are a form of language, and a precedent
allowing patenting of language constructs is very dangerous indeed,"
said Taylor.
Jonas Maebe, a spokesman for the Foundation for a Free Information
Infrastructure (FFII), said that such a patent could be used by
Microsoft to prevent competitors from developing applications that
compete with its MSN Messenger application.
"It is unfortunately quite clear such patents have nothing to do with
protecting investments nor R&D, and only with obtaining exclusion rights
which can help them [Microsoft] maintain their dominant position in the
market," said Maebe.
Such patents are in contradiction to the original purpose of the patent
system, according to Maebe's colleague at the FFII, Felipe Wersen.
"Patents were ultimately designed to benefit society — to have companies
disclose things that benefit society which they wouldn't otherwise
disclose. Who does this patent benefit?" said Wersen.
Although Microsoft does not appear to have filed this patent in Europe,
it has filed a number of patents around natural language. These include
a patent for segmenting text strings into tokens to allow further
language processing.
Microsoft was unable to comment in time for this article.
The Microsoft patent that organisations are concerned about is patent
number 20050156873, which was filed in January 2004.
--
------------------------------------------------------
Francis F. MUGUET Ph.D
MDPI Foundation Open Access Journals
Associate Publisher
http://www.mdpi.org http://www.mdpi.net
muguet@mdpi.org muguet@mdpi.net
ENSTA Paris, France
KNIS lab. Director
"Knowledge Networks & Information Society" (KNIS)
muguet@ensta.fr http://www.ensta.fr/~muguet
World Summit On the Information Society (WSIS)
Civil Society Working Groups
Scientific Information : http://www.wsis-si.org chair
Patents & Copyrights : http://www.wsis-pct.org co-chair
Financing Mechanismns : http://www.wsis-finance.org web
UNMSP project : http://www.unmsp.org
WTIS initiative: http://www.wtis.org
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