After reading this article about one of Microsoft's last advertising (which by the way must be one of the worst ever), I was wondering what was the intention behind the © after "Sparklines". Does it mean "term copyrighted by E. Tufte" and therefore Microsoft HAS TO mention the © symbol or "newly re-copyrighted by Microsoft (in case nobody pays attention)" and in this case, Microsoft would be playing a very insidious disinformation game here.
What do you think ?
12 comments:
I belive the MS marketing department pushed a little too far this time ...
It's unbeliavable...will someone take them to the court?
@ Alessandro.
Who, as an individual, would be ready to assume to cost of taking MSFT to court ? Nobody !
MSFT knows it, and this is their strategy... kind of intimidation.
has done such a good job they want to sign you
What about Edward Tufte, is he dead?
It seems MS was granted a US patent on "sparklines in the grid" (US2009/0282325 A1; http://www.freepatentsonline.com/20090282325.pdf) in November 2009. Don't ask how this is possible, but the USPTO granted the patent...
Thank u so much Dude!
Thank u so much dude!
Microsoft seems to know that Tuft invented Sparklines:
"For Excel 2010 we’ve implemented sparklines, “intense, simple, word-sized graphics”, as their inventor Edward Tufte describes them in his book Beautiful Evidence."
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/excel/archive/2009/07/17/sparklines-in-excel.aspx
Apparently Tufte was pissed. This is pretty lowbrow of Microsoft -- patenting something that isn't their invention and is already in the public domain.
it just means that it is copyrighted, not necessarily that microsoft holds the copyright...
as for dave p owen, copyright != patent. If you make something you have copyright, end of story. The hard part is proving it, so people employ copyrighting services to make official archives of the date they first thought of the idea in order to have proof in court later.
So yeah take them to court for acknowledging that someone has copyright.
poplines (c)
viewrides (c)
whatever (c)
How can an idea be patented ? Who's gonna patent 9 (or any other idea).
Ideas get "discovered".
You can't "patent" imagination territories no more than you can patent physical landscape.
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