Should Yahoo! be able to patent "smart drag and drop"? How you can help the US Patent Office reject a bogus patent claim

The Peer-To-Patent Project is a new initiative by New York Law School's Do Tank in cooperation with the U.S. Patent Office to use open source and open knowledge techniques to help stop the deluge of bad software patents in America.  The project works by posting new software patent applications that have been voluntarily submitted by their inventors and asking the public to comment on them. It has been endorsed by such open source and Internet luminaries as Tim O'Reilly and PJ from Groklaw.

Participants can point out prior art, explain technological concepts, or even opine on whether a certain technique is obvious (and thus non-patentable) or not. After two months of commenting, the top submissions are sent off to the Patent Office to help them decide whether or not to grant the patent.

So what does this have to do with you? Well, there have been a series of new applications hitting the PtP site lately, some of which are pretty broad and outrageous.  For example, check out this one from Yahoo! claiming to have patented "smart" drag-and-drop technology.  Here's claim one:

A computer-implemented method for manipulating objects in a user interface, comprising:

• providing the user interface including a first interface object operable to be selected and moved within the user interface; and

• in response to selection and movement of the first interface object in the user interface, presenting at least one additional interface object in the user interface in proximity of the first interface object, each additional interface object representing a drop target with which the first interface object may be associated.

That's it.  You drag, you drop, you infringe.  Crazy, eh?  Well time to do something about it.  If you have examples of drag and drop interfaces that can invalidate this claim, go to the PtP site and submit them here (heads up: some registration required).  Your submissions could mean the difference between Yahoo! getting a bogus patent or not. So if you hate overbroad software patents, now is the time to act. There are only 36 DAYS LEFT to submit prior art to the PTO on this patent.

p.s .If you want to participate in PtP more broadly, there's a tutorial on how to do it here.

Comments

[Gabe Wachob]

Wouldn't it be cool if *every* software patent was subject to this sort of review? That is, required by statute...

[zoobab]

Fighting for good quality software patents is silly.

Subject matter exclusion is the solution.

PtP does not have the right incentives.

[Jason Schultz]

@zoobab - I disagree. While there are certainly good reasons to fight to exclude software as patentable subject matter, we can't ignore the reality that these patents are being granted every day and affecting innovators all across the technology spectrum. Plus, it doesn't take much effort (if you know of prior art) to post it on PtP, so the investment is pretty low and the outcome real and significant. In other words, there's no reason we can't fight the war on both fronts, IMO.