Re: Microsoft patents emoticons!

From: Wayne C. Morris (wayne.morris_at_this.is.invalid)
Date: 07/25/05 

Date: Mon, 25 Jul 2005 20:24:55 GMT

In article <pan.2005.07.24.19.31.30.451775@yahoo.com>,
 Last2Know <grokkalot@yahoo.com> wrote:

> On Sun, 24 Jul 2005 18:24:43 +0000, Wayne C. Morris wrote:
>
> > I didn't read the whole thing, but according to the abstract at the top,
> > they're not patenting text emoticons; they're patenting a way to create &
> > send custom *graphical* emoticons.
>
> There are already lots of web based discussion boards with that
> feature. What is the new technique Microsoft proposes?

Microsoft proposes letting the *writer* control how the emoticons in his
message will be displayed graphically on everyone else's screens. When you
read a message from Tom, you'll see Tom's personal emoticons; when you read
a message from ***, you'll see ***'s emoticons; when you send messages to
Tom & ***, they'll see your emoticons. I haven't heard of any web forums
that let you do that.

On web forums, it's the admin who chooses how the emoticon graphics will
look, maybe even a different set for each display theme. But when you read
messages posted by Tom, ***, and Harry, they'll all be displayed on your
screen using the same set of site- or theme-specific emoticons; Tom cannot
control how the emoticons appear when you read his message.

Many web forums also allow users to have avatars and sigs, but those are
nothing like emoticons. You can only have one avatar and one sig in a
message, and they're always displayed in the same relative position
beside/above/below your message. You can't use them to express anger in
one sentence and humor in the next.

Even if it were already possible for people to create & use personalized
emoticon graphics in messages that they write, it would still be possible
for Microsoft to invent & patent a different technique that accomplishes
the same task. To the user it might look exactly the same, but internally
it could work in a completely different way. For example, take the piston
engine and the Wankel rotary engine: both are internal combustion engines
which ignite a gas-air mixture inside a sealed chamber, and convert the
explosive expansion into a rotary motion; but internally they use
completely different techniques for doing that, and so could be patented
independently of each other.