OT: Microsoft patents "timed button presses"

[Silas Martinez]

Fairlight wrote:

>Is it just me, or did John Esak say:
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>>This sounds like the system used on the new Treo phone we just got... (and
>>other cell phones... which means it is just about eveywhere already... does
>>Microsoft say it invented it???)  Anyway, you hold the number buttons down
>>to get B, and C from the ABC key... E and F from the DEF key and so forth.
>>Most everyone is used to this already, no?
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>It's been around far longer than Treo's.  Many, many consumer electronics
>devices have had buttons where if you held them down a sufficient length of
>time, a menu would pop up either on-screen or in an LCD, so you could
>configure them.  Hell, my CPAP machine is like that, except you hold both
>buttons while plugging it in...cute safeguard.
>
>Can't patents be overturned?
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Of course patents can be overturned. And in a case like this, I'd have 
to say its almost a given that it will be. Of course, I can't really say 
that, because the stupidity^H^H^H^H^H^H^H flaws in the current patent 
system, its hard to say for sure. But a case like this, where there is a 
lot of prior art, one would assume that the patent in question would be 
overturned fairly easily.

>mark->
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