Acacia, based in Newport Beach, Calif., said the acquisition would give it patents relating to peer-to-peer communications, spreadsheet software, image enhancement and dozens of other technologies.
The technology could be applied beyond email to include any electronic document, "such as a text document, spreadsheet, presentation, or electronic mail message," according to the patent brief.
What the spreadsheet did for leveraged buyouts, we want to do for patents," says Kevin Rivette, founder and president of SmartPatents, Inc., a Mountain View, Calif.-based software company.
Had Dan Bricklin, the creator of VisiCalc, the spreadsheet that gave people a reason to buy a personal computer, obtained a patent covering the program in 1979, Microsoft would not have been able to bring out Excel until 1999.
If this patent were legitimate you could also patent using this gesture to move between cells in a spreadsheet, or brush sizes in photoshop, or tabs in a browser.
The constant in his life has been incessant work, and you need a few spreadsheets to chart the 50 or so companies that he either owns or co-owns as a patent asserter.
A spreadsheet was creepy.
