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To: TLindt who wrote (2230)	2/2/1999 8:36:00 PM
From: Tom Klempay	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 20297

The patent filing, involving online banking, also describes software programs asking the operating system to retrieve data from a particular Internet address - a technique Microsoft says is consistent with its notion of an Internet-savvy Windows. Anybody know anything about this? Being a software developer, I'll take a stab. Retrieving data from a particular Internet address is a routine bit of programming that has been around for many years, long before MS every gave a rat's a** about the Internet. Whether a software program "asks" the operating system for this bit of information or through some other manner (like a 3rd party software module) doesn't really matter. In fact, several years ago, there were a number of other vendors (Wollongong and Chameleon come to mind) that provided this capability, that is, until MS decided to embed it into the operating system. The market for the 3rd party software dried up in a few short years. The funny thing is, this is one instance where it seemed to make sense to put this functionality in the operating system. However, don't get me started on the browser issue though, because that is a whole different ballgame. Back to the patent issue. MS is well-known for trying to patent everything and anything they can (in fairness, most larger tech companies do the same). Several years ago, I read an MS petition for a patent for how their C++ compiler handled a particular feature of the C++ language. To those in the industry, this was a joke that MS would have the gall to try to patent that. But they tried then which means that they'll probably try again. I would not put it past MS to attempt to patent something just to thwart a competitor, especially a smaller one who may not have the $$$$ and lawyers (or is it lawyers and $$$$) at their disposal. -tk