The Invention of Medium Highlighting

Behind the scenes

I think it’s cool. Highlighting allows you to “select text and associate a colored highlight with the text. Highlighting is nothing new. It’s just that before you had to buy a highlighter from a store before you could highlight anything. I used a lot of highlighting in law school. I read the highlights other people highlighted in used books and re-highlighted them.

Highlighting allows for more focused reading. Sometimes I find myself reading online and feel the urge to highlight. Maybe Medium is programming us to highlight.

I started to think about Patents. Because highlighting is a process

I’m sure Medium didn’t invent highlighting. Because highlighting online was here before Medium. I wonder who owns or owned the software patent to this feature.

I always have to know something. I need to know who, what, when, and why? Most people are not thinking about the behind behind the scenes of this highlighting feature. They just talking about what it does and how you get to highlight something that resonates with the reader. I want to know who filed the patent on online highlighting.

I think this is pretty unique because anyone can highlight offline. I wonder if there is a patent for the yellow highlighter and moving it across an article in a newspaper. I am such a nerd. But I love it. People my age have no clue. They don’t read, research, write, or read…