Methods and devices for creating and transferring custom emoticons allow a user to adopt an arbitrary image as an emoticon, which can then be represented by a character sequence in real-time communication. In one implementation, custom emoticons can be included in a message and transmitted to a receiver in the message. In another implementation, character sequences representing the custom emoticons can be transmitted in the message instead of the custom emoticons in order to preserve performance of text messaging. At the receiving end, the character sequences are replaced by their corresponding custom emoticons, which can be retrieved locally if they have been previously received, or can be retrieved from the sender in a separate communication from the text message if they have not been previously received.
But if they word it just right, it’ll cover all emoticons. Patent lawyers generally try to word the applications so that they’ll cover every conceivable variation of the “invention”, and it’s all written in legalese so that even the inventors will have trouble understanding it. (I’ve experienced this first hand, having been a co-inventor on a few patent applications. By the time the lawyers were finished, I couldn’t understand my own inventions.)
As I read it, the patent is about the transport of emoticons, and only of specific size, and a mechanism whereby you reduce the mail size by re-using local emoticons. This is easily gotten around by using emoticons of a different size, and using simple HTML to embed graphics into the email.
Just giving a few million dollars to charity and making a few trite statements about providing drugs to those who really need them doesn’t stop him being an obscene, greedy, megalomaniac w*nker.
Anyone who has that much money exhausts my capacity for disgust.
Apart from all that, however, he’s probably a nice guy…
I think that patent would more appropriately be applied to software than copyright, as it has a shorter life, much as software does. At the time copyright was first applied to software it made some sense, but as it has evolved it’s hardly what copyright was originally intended for. This is irrelevant. Just thought I’d say it.
Walden: Not sure why I’m even asking this, but I assume you did know that I was joking, correct? I figure your response is a light-hearted one to my post?
The 17 years (or what ever it is) are an eternety for software. The bigger issue is that copyrights capture the right to copy, while patents capture ideas.
:roll: 