Openmoko keyboard mockup

[leonardo]

Rui Miguel Silva Seabra ha scritto:

>> it's cool, you should really patent it!
>> :-)))
> 
> Please die a slow and painful death for suggesting that. [1]
> 
> Rui
> 
> [1] unless you were really just making a very bad taste joke :)

Of course it was [1]...
T9 is quite emblematic for software patents and patents in general:
someone patents something which is really nothing revolutionary, the
effort to produce such an invention is really low, but nobody can
come-up with something similar for the fear of being sued.
If you look at the patent itself (wikipedia says:
http://www.google.com/patents?id=PmgCAAAAEBAJ) you see it's 27 pages of
pointless diagrams and 7 pages of a very vague description of how a
"reduced keyboard disambiguating computer".
At a very fast lecture, the patent might not even apply to our case,
since it says:
"The keyboard has twelve keys, nine of them labeled with numerous
letters and other symbols, and those nine plus one more are labeled each
with one of the ten digits". It seems if your keyboard doesn't have 12
keys you're safe. I wouldn't be surprised if T2-T26 would be patented too..

leonardo.

[1] don't agree on the "very bad" part anyway.. :-)

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