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by JamieEi 5456 days ago
It appears to be multiple patents, virtually all obvious and with significant prior art:

• 5,579,517: Common name space for long and short filenames

• 5,758,352: Common name space for long and short filenames

• 6,621,746: Monitoring entropic conditions of a flash memory device as an indicator for invoking erasure operations

• 6,826,762: Radio interface layer in a cell phone with a set of APIs having a hardware-independent proxy layer and a hardware-specific driver layer

• 6,909,910: Method and system for managing changes to a contact database

• 7,644,376: Flexible architecture for notifying applications of state changes

• 5,664,133: Context sensitive menu system/menu behavior

• 6,578,054: Method and system for supporting off-line mode of operation and synchronization using resource state information

• 6,370,566: Generating meeting requests and group scheduling from a mobile device

• Give people easy ways to navigate through information provided by their device apps via a separate control window with tabs;

• Enable display of a webpage’s content before the background image is received, allowing users to interact with the page faster;

• Allow apps to superimpose download status on top of the downloading content;

• Permit users to easily select text in a document and adjust that selection; and

• Provide users the ability to annotate text without changing the underlying document.

http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2010/10/microsoft-sues...

http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoft_on_the_issues/archive/2...

I really hate software patents and the trolls that abuse them.

2 comments

Unfortunately the obviousness test at this point is moot. Once the PTO signs off on it, overturning obviousness is very difficult. The prior art is a better way to go, especially if it is obvious the same technology as the patent.

BTW, what is the prior art on the two clearest ones (from the title -- which obviously doesn't mean the claims line up, but I suspect they do):

Meeting requets and group scheduling on a mobile device prior to 1997?

Common namespace for long and short filenames prior to 1993?

i hate that these bullet points are patent-able. i dont think the system was ever intended for this sort of granularity. we should protect big ideas, not functions necessary to run any modern mobile operating system.
I understood that patents are for the opposite: not to patent ideas, but a particular invention.