Who says the US patent system isn't broken?

If granting patents on spurious "business processes" wasn't enough, it looks like it's out of control judging by the content of this piece in MacCentral (obvious spin here): Microsoft granted patent on button click timing. Here's the second graf:

U.S. patent 6,727,830, granted April 27, is described as a "time-based hardware button for application launch." The patent abstract goes on to explain that the patent relates to how different functions can be invoked depending on whether a button is clicked once, clicked and held down for a period of time, or double-clicked within a short period of time.

Why stop there, why not patent the choice of finger clicking the button?

Posted by Grayson at June 3, 2004 08:28 AM