AKMA’s Random Thoughts

It depends on what you mean by a "patent on double-clicking." If you mean a patent on any use of double-clicking at all, then no, of course not. If you mean a patent on technology that uses double-clicking in a very specific way and performed in a very specific manner as defined in some of the numbered claims, then it appears so.

Yeah, this does appear to be true. Crazy, isn't it?

If you read the description, it sounds like the patent refers specifically to physical application buttons on PDAs. The real problem is, I know for a fact there's prior art. All manner of PalmOS-based PDAs reacted differently to a button press vs. a held button well before Microsoft ever released Windows CE on Palm PCs.

Doesn't the patent office make any effort at all to check for prior art?

Yes. The Patent Office has a duty to search the prior art before they grant a patent, and if you look at the front page of it, you can see exactly what art the Examiner found and cited. One of them, Jones, describes pretty much what you state to be prior art.

However, when the Patent Office examines a patent application, they examine what the applicant claims to be the invention, found in a series of numbered paragraphs called the claims. If you want to know what a patent really covers, you have to start with the claims. Reading the abstract and the summary of the invention might tell you what they hoped to get from the Patent Office when they filed it. Looking at the claims and properly construing them will tell you what they actually got. Since the Examiner seemed to have been specifically aware of the technology you state to be in the prior art, you have to presume that the Examiner is not stupid and that there's more to it than just double-clicking or holding a button longer.

Chris is right. It's a patent for hardware, not software. And its use of the term double-click in the description would belie it being a patent for double-clicking. ;)

Plus, in my experience, a patent's usually only as good as the licenses or successfull litigation you can glean from it.