Microsoft PageUp patent
By Techgirl

Even as the Free Software Users Group rallies to stop large IT companies patenting software in India, comes news which will raise the hackles of the open source movement in our country.

On August 19, 2008, software giant Microsoft was granted a patent for ‘Page Up’ and ‘Page Down’ keystrokes.  US patent number 7,415,666 describes it as “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”.

Zdnet, which broke the story, reports on how Microsoft is approaching a target of 10 thousand patents.

As reported earlier in techgoss, the warriors of the Free Software Users Group had held a popular candlelight vigil in Bangalore late August to protest patents.  Our fear is that anyone who starts patenting common, simple ideas like Page Up keys, may force demonstrators to hold a hunger strike or even more forceful demonstrations. By forceful I mean a Linux evangelist (few of them jokingly known as Linux loonies) cornering every Microsoft user to explain how good they are.  And their pure passion can be intimidating to anyone who is not a believer in open source.  The Open Source has many sane sensible followers, but a few hardliners.  Not dissimilar to the evangelists at  Microsoft.

Capitalism and free markets are great systems and Bill Gates has won many admirers for giving billions to charity.  But such patents are just silly.  They do Microsoft more harm than good.

Techgoss note:  Techgirl is a senior Tech journalist who reports on the IT, KPO and KPO Sectors for a leading media house.  In her spare time, she dabbles in satire in her blog http://techgirltalk.blogspot.com/