Slashdot Mirror

RobHornick writes "According to CNET News, Eolas Technologies, a company that's already won a patent infringement judgement against Microsoft regarding Internet Explorer, has filed a motion to stop Microsoft from distributing its IE software until they remove Eolas' patented technology for running plug-ins, or pay up for a license."

aWalrus writes "Microsoft has outlined some of the strategies they may pursue for modifying the way Internet Explorer handles plugins (annoying the user may circumvent the patent) if they lose their legal battle against Eolas Technologies (which claims they invented the seamless procedure for running plugins). There has already been a previous ruling against MS which they continue to appeal. This is likely to have repercussions in the Open Source Community too. If MS is found to be infringing the patent, that ruling could be extended to other browsers like Opera and Mozilla. Usability expert Jeffrey Zeldman provides an in-depth commentary on this issue and its implications."

rustynail writes "The tiny Eolas web company is about to lock horns with Microsoft in a legal battle over a patent that Eolas owns covering all uses of plugins, applets, activeX controls and other similar technology. The difference here is that, according to this article Eolas might not accept a payout: instead they might exclude IE from using these technologies at all.. opening the way for a new browser war." We mentioned this dispute a few years ago, too, but an outcome to the Justice Department's case against Microsoft was far off in 1998.

David Landgren writes "Cringley's latest pulpit has been published on pbs.org. He contends that Microsoft will beat the DOJ.

It all hinges around a patent that a small company named Eolas has managed to acquire that deals with remotely executed content. (Not sure if the above site is really them. All they appear to have to show for themselves is a Java applet that emulates an animated GIF. Now that's progress!)"

H: Hehe-progress indeed. But what's important here is that Eolas has come into possession of the US patent for "a distributed hypermedia method for automatically invoking external application providing interaction and display of embedded objects within a hypermedia document." Their product was shown to the big boys-MS, Sun, and NCSA a couple of years before Java or N2.0. Lawsuits, here we come. Maybe. Thanks to Mister Palomar/Charles Lin below for providing this patent link.