Microsoft checks off another patent win
C|Net | at | by Mike
Better not get too fancy with your grocery list, now that Microsoft has patented a glorified form of the to-do list. U.S. Patent No. 6,748,582, granted and assigned Tuesday to Microsoft, covers the use of a "task list" in a software development environment.
The patented technology essentially integrates certain comments left in the source code of an application under development with an accompanying checklist. Leave a "TODO" comment in the source code, and an authoring application automatically creates an item in the task list. Check an item off on the task list, and the corresponding source code comment is changed.