[tanzam75]

Right, any patents from 1983 and 1991 have expired. Besides which, I don't think Microsoft had any patents in 1983.

P.S. Google Patents is useless for answering this question. "Referenced by" is included in the search, so any patent from 1983 that is ever referenced by a Microsoft patent (from any year) shows up in the results.

[reeses]

The USPTO has a patent search for the US Patent and Trademark Office at http://patft.uspto.gov/.

As for MSFT not having any patents in 1983, this is largely the result of the policy of not patenting "abstract ideas" that was argued in the courts at the time. The United States Court of Customs and Patent Appeals and the PTO were in opposing positions regarding the patentability of inventions that were essentially algorithmic.

The key log that stopped discouraging patent applications for software was Diamond v. Diehr in 1981, which involved applying a mathematical formula to a database of information for operating rubber curing machines under computer control.[1]

The United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has largely followed this method since this decision. Between the early 70s[2] and Diehr, SCOTUS settled disputes when Customs and Patent Appeals attempted to overrule the PTO and its Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences/Patent Trial and Appeal Board.

[0] I'm lazy, you get wikipedia. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond_v._Diehr [2] Gottschalk v. Benson, 409 U.S. 63 (1972), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottschalk_v._Benson

[dalke]

Nope, none in 1983.

I did an advanced search at USPTO for "AN/microsoft and ISD/19750101->19890101" (patents assigned to Microsoft and issued between 1975 and 1989). All it found were:

4,779,187 - Method and operating system for executing programs in a multi-mode microprocessor (filed April 10, 1985, issued October 18, 1988)

4,588,074 - Holder for storing and supporting articles (filed March 21, 1985, issued May 13, 1986)

Yes, if I understand it correctly, Microsoft's first patent was "relates to article holders, and more particularly to a dual purpose holder for both storing, and supporting in open position, books, magazines, pamphlets, and similar items."

I can't figure out why 5,848,246 (Sun Microsystems, Inc.: Object-oriented system, method and article of manufacture for a client-server session manager in an interprise [sic] computing framework system) references this patent.

[tanzam75]

Thanks for doing the search.

As for:

> 4,588,074 - Holder for storing and supporting articles ... Yes, if I understand it correctly, Microsoft's first patent

At one point, Microsoft Press was a big player in the publishing market. For example, Peter Norton's book on the IBM PC was published by Microsoft Press.

I imagine they needed a way to store multi-volume sets together.

[quasque]

You can use the "inassignee" and "ininventor" operators to restrict the search, e.g. inassignee:microsoft.

[tanzam75]

Thanks for the tip.

I finally found the link to Advanced Search. It's off the Settings menu. I could swear it used to be right there next to the Search button ...

I guess I've just been using memorized operators on Google, and haven't actually looked for the Advanced Search link in quite a while.

It's like what Microsoft does with configuration dialogs. They design a new UI, but it doesn't do 100% of the what old UI did. So they keep the old UI, and shove it one level down. Then in another few years, they'll design yet another new UI, and I'll have to click two levels down ...