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Too Much Free Time

by Mike Masnick

Tue, Jun 29th 2004 8:58am





Microsoft Patents Group Taskbar Buttons

from the patent-everything dept

theodp writes "What do you call it when three IE buttons on the Windows Taskbar disappear and are replaced with a single 'group' IE button when you open a fourth IE window? Annoying? Nope. The correct answer is U.S. patent no. 6,756,999, granted to Microsoft Tuesday for a Method and system for clustering and grouping taskbar buttons." Indeed, this is one of the very first things that I make sure to turn off on any Windows box that I end up using.

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  1.  
    identicon
    Lee, Jun 29th, 2004 @ 9:50am

    does gnome infringe?

    I don't know enough about patents to tell if something like the gnome tasklist infringes, but I did notice that the gnome taskbar grouping was added to the documentation a couple of days before MS filed this application: CVS entry

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  2.  
    identicon
    Anonymous Coward, Jun 29th, 2004 @ 10:58am

    Prior art detected!

    Yay! I love the USPTO

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  3.  
    identicon
    Chris, Jun 29th, 2004 @ 3:16pm

    prior art

    KDE has had this function for a while now.

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  4.  
    identicon
    brian, Jun 29th, 2004 @ 9:46pm

    No Subject Given

    BeOS had it at least 5 or 6 years ago.

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  5.  
    identicon
    Galley, Jun 30th, 2004 @ 7:43am

    Re: No Subject Given

    Yeah, leave it to Microsoft to patent something innovated by a competitor years earlier.

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]


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