Microsoft Patents ‘Page Up’ and ‘Page Down’

Absurdity, thy name is Microsoft. I have heard of some dumbass patents over the years but, this one is an example that the US Patent Office really needs to undergo an extensive review.

From ZDNet:

The software giant applied for the patent in 2005, and was granted it on August 19, 2008. US patent number 7,415,666 describes “a method and system in a document viewer for scrolling a substantially exact increment in a document, such as one page, regardless of whether the zoom is such that some, all or one page is currently being viewed”.

The patent’s listed ‘inventors’ are Timothy Sellers, Heather Grantham and Joshua Dersch. However, Page Up and Page Down keyboard buttons have been in existence for at least quarter of a century, as evidenced by this image of a 1981 IBM PC keyboard.

Yes folks, that would be “previous art”. Hell, I still have one of those keyboards in my closet.

I’m going to bed. That’s where I get to be a Viking.

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Posted by Dave Lewis on August 31, 2008. Filed under Dumbass,Legal Aspects. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.