WinPhone's Halo hottie Cortana to hit desktop in next Windows – report Microsoft may be planning to graduate Windows Phone 8.1's Halo-inspired Cortana digital assistant from the small screen to a full-fledged desktop utility in the next version of Windows, if the Redmond rumor mill is to be believed. The snoops over at Neowin.com first noticed Cortana running on prerelease builds of Windows " …
Sorry but any patents based on anything I have already seen on TV (StarTrek/DrWho/Blakes7/Babylon5/FireFly/...) or read in a SciFi book should be considered to have prior art. To be patented, shouldn't it be a novel idea; not an idea plucked from a novel?
Also couldn't Cortana be seen as the next evolution of the much 'luved' Clippy...
It's not just the vague idea, it is actually the method for making the thing work that is patentable.
Sure we have holographic transporter portals in scifi novels, but if you actually made one that worked then you'd be able to patent that.
Voice recognition has been around as bot an idea and as algorithms for a while now, however you could still come up with a new improved way to do VR and that could be patentable.
Even Siri is a relative newcomer and is one of many spin-offs of a Darpa project called CALO going back over a decade. Another implementation that is Siri's senior is SILVIA so it really has to be dependent on the implementation.
And this would stop lawyer unleashing because ? Do not consider Patent Law as having anything to do with justice, let alone logic. Aside from this minor quibble, given M$ history, will Cortana be the next iteration of Bob and Clippy ?
I think a usable voice interface is the next Big Thing in UI, but throat mikes and decent noise cancelling ear buds are needed first. Voice control could be a decent argument for work at home offices though.
In sane countries it is the method for making things work that gets patented. From what I can tell in the US you do just patent an idea, a thought or something you dreamed about and then you can go sue-crazy on anyone who actually implements something remotely like it even though the patent contains no detailed design information at all.
Sorry but any patents based on anything I have already seen on TV (StarTrek/DrWho/Blakes7/Babylon5/FireFly/...) or read in a SciFi book should be considered to have prior art. To be patented, shouldn't it be a novel idea; not an idea plucked from a novel?
Does that mean that Douglas Adams owns the Internet.... *cough*... The Terrestrial Hitchhikers Guide... The standard Depository of all Earthly knowledge, and wisdom?
"The standard Depository of all Earthly knowledge, and wisdom?"
Sorry that's just a sub-set. The guide entries were likely a homage to Asimov's Encyclopedia Galactica from the Foundation Trilogy ( that ended up as ~6 books too).
I think somewhere in HHGG it even mentions Encyclopedia Galactica - something like " ... in parts of the galaxy the HHGG has even replaced the Encyclopedia Galactica as the main source of knowledge"
Then they deliver a massive kick in the teeth to the global users that might actually use the service and MS put some shitty nobody as the voice "for your region", because "that's the accent you have", and changing the speech settings just breaks Cortana until restored. While the US users (and those willing to use US settings for everything), get the proper experience. If the WP release is anything to go by.
The product is called Cortana. Which infers that the voice will be the same as Cortana from Halo, as that's where the idea came from. Any other voice would just be misrepresentation of goods, which in the EU (and the UK especially), has the potential to open many cans of worms. The UK voice over on WP is some (so far) anonymous posh totty, because that's the accent America deems as "British". Ergo, it's not Cortana, so should be called "MS Digital Assistant".
Compare: If they called the product Jarvis, which is more well known due to Ironman, you would expect the correct voice, and not some random person they pulled in off the street, or some celebrity nobody has heard of. The above argument would still apply.
True, the service can be turned off, but why bother in the first place if 80% of the population will turn it off?
>Who keeps reading it as Cortina?
No - and I suspect it's be as reliable as my old, much hacked-around(*) Cortina Mk 3.
(*) 2 litre-block fitted but still using the 1.6 carbs/manifolds. Nuts replaced at random with metric or Whitworth almost-fits. Split pins replaced by nails hammered through and then bent round. Fuel tank 'fixed' with bathroom sealant. Floor with some additional ventilation holes that made driving in the wet a soggy experience (and contributed to the interesting aroma inside). A coolant pump that regularly fell off, even when using araldite or locktite on the bolt threads. Finally sold for scrap for more money than I paid for it. Icon because that's mostly what it did - except when my Dad was towing me and had to brake sharply when a moron pulled out in front of him. His disk-brakes worked superbly. My (non-vacuum-assisted-because-no-engine-power) brakes didn't. Opps.
Apple and Microsoft have a fairly extensive patent cross licensing deal which would probably cover this, even if Apple wanted to try to enforce this.
Besides, Microsoft has prior art in the form of Microsoft Bob, though if they were sued they might prefer to pay up rather than admit to it!
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
