Reader John Hamilton contacted Sneak following the recent item about Microsoft's controversial double-click patent, which seems to have secured rights to a most basic method of input. "I am most confused over the patent on using a 'pattern' of mouse/screen clicks to control functions," he writes. "Can I please put a patent on using Morse-code taps on a PDA screen as a data input method?" Well, almost certainly you can, John, as the US Patent & Trademark Office seems to hand out patents like toffees, after all. "Recognising patterns of input to identify requests was well established even long before Morse's useful code on telegraph lines," Hamilton adds. "I know folks arriving at my door simply by their knock." And oddly enough, the same principle works with the doorbell, too.

12 Jul 2004