Ancient video games

Was speaking with a chap at a networking meet-up just the other night who had applied for, and was reasonably confident that he would get, a design patent on what is colloquially known as a hamburger menu.

When I pointed out that these have been quite popular for a year or two, he chastised me by pointing out his design patent was filed for some four years prior to today’s date.

I thought for a moment and then mentioned that hamburger menus were also in Turbo Debugger, for DOS, somewhere around the early 1990’s but went back as early as the 1980’s on the Xerox Star.

The entrepreneur dismissed this out of hand, pointing out that his design patent was unique because, and I quote “It’s on a mobile phone.”