[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.