[jawns]

You'll notice that in the site's Acknowledgements section, the first to be credited is "Spritz Inc, the company whose patents are pending" [1].

Also in the acknowledgements is a link[2] titled "The problem with software patents."

Essentially, Squirt's creator, Cameron Boehmer, is letting everyone know that he has appropriated patent-pending technology because he rejects the idea that the method should be patentable. (Whether a court will disagree with him and impose a fine is, apparently, a chance he's willing to take.)

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[1] http://www.spritzinc.com

[2] http://lmgtfy.com/?q=the+problem+with+software+patents

[joshcanhelp]

They even have their own bookmarklet:

http://www.spritzinc.com/where-can-i-experience-spritz/

Squirt is prettier but the functionality looks identical.

[AndrewKemendo]

I remember looking for this when spritz first came out and thinking - oh great I have to wait for all of these different platforms to integrate the spritz API to use it. Glad to see there is a way to use it.

[scrrr]

Well, should it? It's a neat idea. But what exactly is the big deal being patented here? It's pretty trivial.

To me it seems that it's a bit like patenting flappy bird.

[jawns]

The patent acknowledges that Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP) methods have been around since the 1970s. Spritz's particular method of RSVP applies research into the optimal positioning of words to reduce or eliminate saccades (rapid movement of the eye). This is called ORP-RSVP (the ORP stands for Optimal Recognition Position).

I would think that if you are opposed to the idea of software patents in general, you would no doubt be opposed to this particular software patent.

But if you are not necessarily opposed to all software patents, but only the ones that try to patent something trivial, or try to add the words "on a computer" to an established real-world practice, then the question arises: Is Spritz's method, which positions words according to an algorithm that is meant to reduce saccades, trivial? One could argue that because it's an actively researched problem, it's not.

But even if you think that Spritz has a chance of getting its patent accepted, a further question arises: Does Squirt's implementation of ORP-RSVP use the method that Spritz is trying to patent, or some other similar method? I imagine there are probably a bunch of different ORP-RSVP methods, and it's not immediately clear whether Squirt's method is a true clone. It could very well end up that even though Squirt is heavily implying that it's using the patent-pending technology, it's actually using a different method.