From Microsoft's patent application for the "Virtual Page Turn"

Has Microsoft done to Apple and Amazon what Amazon had just done to Barnes & Noble — that is, secretly patent key technology crucial to their competitor’s e-reading device?

Last week, a MobyLives report detailed how Amazon secretly patented technology used by B&N’s Nook E-Reader. Now, a report from the Register says Microsoft had similarly filed an application with the US Patent and Trademark Office for a patent on what it called the “Virtual Page Turn” — “the animation of a page-flip when a user makes the appropriate gesture on an ebook’s touchscreen,” one of the key features of the iPad and the Kindle.

From application number 20100175018:

A page-turning gesture directed to a displayed page is recognized. Responsive to such recognition, a virtual page turn is displayed on the touch display… The virtual page turn curls a lifted portion of the page to progressively reveal a back side of the page while progressively revealing a front side of a subsequent page… A page-flipping gesture quickly flips two or more pages.

Microsoft applied for the patent back in January of 2009, perhaps as part of its development on the Courier foldable tablet, which the company abandoned in April.

Still, no one seems terribly concerned. “Microsoft could stir up some licensing trouble for Apple, Amazon, and others who have page-turning animations in their apps,” says the Register report, but trouble seems “unlikely.”

Another report, from TechCrunch, concurs, saying “the action that is being patented seems fairly obvious, which may prevent the patent from being awarded. After all, it is nothing more than an animation of a page being turned, an ‘invention’ which goes back to the days of Guttenberg.”