Thanks for the heads-up about this one. Looks indeed like a promising one :D
Maybe move or duplicate it to Business and Legal?
As an aside… Having checked the relevant dates of the US patents at hand, what is interesting to note is that, at around the time they were filed, Microsoft hadn’t yet changed its stance about software patents (which it was then deeming evil, abject, ill-suited to the field of software, etc, etc.).
Possibly why Hochstein et al beat them to the post with theirs :twisted:
M$ has been trying to outpace IBM’s rate of application filings since their about-face!