From JavaLobby News

I just saw this in the latest newsletter from the javalobby:


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*Microsoft Patents TODO in Software
*This evening after my new routine at the gym, I noticed on News.com 
that Microsoft had been granted another patent. This one apparently 
covers leaving TODO comments in your source code and having them checked 
off a checklist. From News.com, “ 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.”

This seems like an interesting patent, and while I haven’t read over the 
filing, it seems like the TODO features in IDEA, Eclipse, and other IDEs 
may come close if not actually fall under this patent. If Microsoft 
decided to enforce this one, would all our favorite IDEs be forced to 
pay royalty fees or remove these features? I use the TODO feature in 
IDEA all the time and find it invaluable; it’d be a shame to lose it.