Hi. In a recently closed topic regarding pie menus, LiquidApe said that marking menus are a patent of Autodesk, a patent that would expire shortly. The question is: When ? When could marking menus be usable in Blender ? I couldn’t find any info on internet, mabie some of you know.
http://www.autodeskresearch.com/people/gord/patents
Not sure which one exactly relates to marking menus as they exist in Maya but most were filed around '99. How long does a US patent last ?
Utility patent - 20 years
Design Patent - 14 years
Not sure in which category the marking menus enter.
what exactly is a marking menu?
Marking menu is this: just well in Autodesk all normal menu entries packaged into a pop menu under your mouse courser:
Alias
Maya
Modo
i have used maya in the past and know the maya menus.
but it’s still not clear to me what the definition of a marking menu is.
a pie menu with normal list menus thrown in? 
or what’s the difference between a pie menu and a marking menu?
Currently as it looks pie menu is well a radial menu
while marking has nested structures and gestures
regarding gestures Pie menu also has this included so you do not need to click on the button just swipe to the direction
That’s not much of a gesture. The strength of marking menus as compared to pie-menus lies in the nested menus. Being able to draw a shape and select an entry several menus deep without ever seeing anything pop up, and without the program needing you to draw very precisely. This is a power user feature, but the Maya users I know use it extensively!
impressive feature. Simple pie menu like are now in blender and even in modo appear pretty basic compared to this. In any cases, I’m not sure blender need ( or can have any benefit) something like this, but for sure is pretty cool!