Controversy erupted last week when Microsoft was granted a patent on the use of short, long or double clicks to launch different applications on “limited resource computing devices”, otherwise known as PDAs and mobile phones (US 6727830). The patent does not apply to computers, despite internet hysteria to the contrary.
The patent means any US company using a variety of clicks to launch different gadget functions from the same button may have to change the product or pay fees to Microsoft.
The UK company Symbian, which used double clicking on its operating systems for mobile phones, could be affected because it has offices in the US, as could PalmOne in California, which supplies PDA software. Observers say that Microsoft’s patent is not a “sensible use” of the patenting system because the idea “is neither novel or non-obvious”. “It is almost beyond parody that Microsoft has been able to do this,” says Ian Brown of the Foundation for Information Policy Research in London.
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Greg Aharonian, a patent analyst in San Francisco, is confident the patent will be invalidated: “There is so much prior-art literature in the ergonomics of user interfaces,” he says.
