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SCO is dead. They'll convert to liquidation any day now. At least one would hope so. Nobody knows how long that zombie has to shamble.

there's no such thing as no lawsuit exposure.

That is true enough but to accept that as a premise is to refuse to do business. There is some middle ground where businesses can still operate in where the risk is acceptible. Limiting your exposure by avoiding licensing agreements that include the right to sue you if you overdeploy seems wise, and licensing agreements that include the right to audit you more so. Especially when there are options available that include terms like "use all you want for free".

(i'd like to see documented example of it)

Meet Ernie Ball. But wait... that wasn't Microsoft... that was their representatives, the Business Software Alliance! Same same. Evil by proxy is still evil.

Eolas is a patent troll, the only business they've ever done was suing Microsoft for patent infringment.

Not quite. http://www.eolas.com/research.html

Dr. Michael Doyle of Eolas is actually a well-respected researcher in bioinformatics, is partnered with the University of California and demonstrated a working plug-in enabled browser at Xerox PARC in 1993. He is, incidentally, the son of a noted inventor, so the urge to create seems to run in the family. The company's other projects include SAGA, Fios, Zmap and ODIN.

In 1994, he offered to license the plug-in technology to Microsoft and was rebuffed. So, he went after them. Incidentally, Eolas' license page specifically states that Dr. Doyle is a supporter of open source and non-commercial uses covered by this so-called "906 patent" are allowed via the issuance of a royalty-free license. http://www.eolas.com/licensing.html

As much as I hate patents, Eolas isn't the patent troll that some folks make then out to be; Doyle's idea was to build a browser-centric platform for the biomedical industry, and the company actively does software research and creates actual technologies. Microsoft's violation of the "906" patent made Eolas' platform project commercially nonviable, at least in Eolas' eyes and Doyle has stated his case that there were no legal alternatives after Microsoft refused to license the technology from them in '94.

And lest anyone weep for Microsoft, this is just an example of "what goes around, comes around," as VirtualDub developer Avery Lee http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VirtualDub#Advanced_Systems_Format_support can tell you.

SCO, on the other hand, bought what they thought at the time was exclusive ownership of somebody else's (Bell Labs/AT&T, University of Ca.) technology, whole cloth, made little if any improvement to it, and attempted to use it as a patent/copyright hammer to flatten other software projects that demonstrably violated none of SCO's IP/licenses/patents. At least, none that SCO could ever prove in court. I would consider SCO much closer to a patent troll that Eolas, as they didn't invent the hammer they were attempting to wield. Eolas, at least, did design and build their own hammer.

Eolas is a patent troll, the only business they've ever done was suing Microsoft for patent infringment.

Not quite. http://www.eolas.com/research.html

Dr. Michael Doyle of Eolas is actually a well-respected researcher in bioinformatics, is partnered with the University of California and demonstrated a working plug-in enabled browser at Xerox PARC in 1993. He is, incidentally, the son of a noted inventor, so the urge to create seems to run in the family. The company's other projects include SAGA, Fios, Zmap and ODIN.

In 1994, he offered to license the plug-in technology to Microsoft and was rebuffed. So, he went after them. Incidentally, Eolas' license page specifically states that Dr. Doyle is a supporter of open source and non-commercial uses covered by this so-called "906 patent" are allowed via the issuance of a royalty-free license. http://www.eolas.com/licensing.html

As much as I hate patents, Eolas isn't the patent troll that some folks make then out to be; Doyle's idea was to build a browser-centric platform for the biomedical industry, and the company actively does software research and creates actual technologies. Microsoft's violation of the "906" patent made Eolas' platform project commercially nonviable, at least in Eolas' eyes and Doyle has stated his case that there were no legal alternatives after Microsoft refused to license the technology from them in '94.

And lest anyone weep for Microsoft, this is just an example of "what goes around, comes around," as VirtualDub developer Avery Lee http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VirtualDub#Advanced_Systems_Format_support can tell you.

SCO, on the other hand, bought what they thought at the time was exclusive ownership of somebody else's (Bell Labs/AT&T, University of Ca.) technology, whole cloth, made little if any improvement to it, and attempted to use it as a patent/copyright hammer to flatten other software projects that demonstrably violated none of SCO's IP/licenses/patents. At least, none that SCO could ever prove in court. I would consider SCO much closer to a patent troll that Eolas, as they didn't invent the hammer they were attempting to wield. Eolas, at least, did design and build their own hammer.

This link http://www.eolas.com/about_us.html is more informative. Two of the top three guys are lawyers. Patent drones who intend to make profit in court sounds about right.

Looks like they're just bunch of patent drones who have submitted a bunch of shit to the US patent office. They don't actually have any products to buy...

Software patents really do need to die...

Bottom line is Microsoft will use this to "encourage" websites to move away from ActiveX and toward their next annoying proprietary technology.

Ignorance, as they say, is bliss.

Nobody here seems to acknowledge the true nature of this problem, because it has nothing to do with ActiveX being thrown away. This is simply a warm welcome to the exciting new world of software patents.

This ActiveX fiasco is a great example. The company holding the patent in dispute, Eolas, is an utter joke. They don't actually make or produce anything except patents. All they do is sit around all day thinking up stuff to patent. That's it. One of these great "products" is a patent dealing with the way embedded interactive multimedia interacts with the user. Part of the patent talks about how the media starts working and interacting. According to the patent, they own the idea behind having it start automatically or in response to page loads.

The truth is that this patent impacts open source software as well, and even though Microsoft presents a much juicier target than the Mozilla Foundation, they have equally "violated" this patent and OSS will feel the impact soon enough.

And THAT is what this is about.

Read this and tell me this whole thing doesn't stink like the deepest abyss of Hell. With more and more companies filing patents like nuts, this is the future of software development. Company X is going to spend as much as they did to develop the software just to make sure they don't get sued and have to pull it off the shelves 6 months after shipping. Then there's all the frivolous licensing fees to do stuff like make a Flash animation start when the page loads. How exciting!

There's nothing inherently wrong with ActiveX. It's based on the COM and is actually pretty nice for developing on Windows. ActiveX is just am implementation of an open standard and provides a way to more closely work with the host system. Firefox extensions are really no better, they can completely bork a system just as easily as ActiveX. In the end, when a user clicks "Install" they may have just signed their own death certificate and it doesn't matter what color the pen was.

In any case the whole thing boils down to an example of why software patents, in practice, are a terrible thing.

one
three

From the 1995 PDF article: "Eolas stands to become a big company quickly by deriving a licensing fee from any outfit that supplies or uses applets". Really. Check out what they say about themselves on their own web site: http://www.eolas.com/. Nothing here indicating a huge, rapidly growing, influential company. It appears they hold a handful of patents and a clever logo, but not much more. If they haven't been able to markedly influence browsers in a 10 year time span, why should this decision mark some significant change in the landscape? What, really has changed here other than Microsoft essentially avoiding another lawsuit by doing something they probably should have done anyway (in order to avoid the security flaws pointed out by other posters).

Here's an article from 1995 (Yeah, pdf sucks, but it's very telling about what's going on)

It appears no browser will be safe. Safari, Firefox, Opera, KHTML, etc. The 1995 article discusses applets, not ActiveX. This is precedent setting, and could have consequences for all browser plugins.

Did anybody notice that Microsoft's main nemesis Eolas is one of the sponsors of this conference? I wonder if the Microsoft guy even knows that.

So where do we go from here?

It seems the patent office is going to dictate symantics and who gets paid for them. It boggles the mind to belive someone should have a patent for the "single-click" http://www.eolas.com/technology.html use of a hyperlink. Does that also mean that I need to rush out and try to get the patent on the wheel, or the @ symbol in email addresses?

While I don't claim to be an expert in patent law, it seems that things are continuing on the path of certain destruction. Call me a naysayer, or whatever you like, but something needs to change.

MetaMAP: The First Open-Linking Hypermedia System
Method and apparatus for identifying features of an image on a video display
U.S. Patent 4,847,604, Filed in August, 1987, Issued July 11, 1989
Inventor: Michael D. Doyle

The MetaMAP system pioneered the use of clickable image maps in distributed hypermedia systems. It is also believed that the MetaMAP application was the first example of an "open-linking" hypermedia navigator, since it employed link references external to any single database. Previously, hypermedia systems were self-contained, representing all links between objects within a single monolithic database. A single small MetaMAP navigator application, on the other hand, could navigate through a potentially unending series of linked documents, no matter how large the collection of navigable documents might be. Later systems, such as the World Wide Web, similarly employed an open-linking architecture. The efficiencies that allowed the first MetaMAP application to provide instant object identification for tens of thousands of clickable objects in high resolution biomedical images, displayed on a 4.77MHz IBM PC, now enable the latest MetaMAP systems to deliver immensely-large multidimensional navigable image spaces for a variety of vertical applications. The patent also covers image space collision detection technology believed to be currently in widespread use throughout the computer game industry.

There's also the risk of one-patent companies with no products (http://www.eolas.com/) suing corporations with enormous patent portfolios and assets.

The only reason I think it is not commonplace is because lawyers cost money.

...although, one might be able to divert some of the ambulance-chasers in the U.S. into such lawsuits for a cut of the take.

# Implements a tclDP compatible portable RPC library atop of the
# Tcl ver. >= 7.5 socket command.
# Originally developed by Steve Wahl for Eolas Technologies Inc.
# Copyright (C) 1995-2003 Eolas Technologies Inc, All Rights Reserved
# Freely distributable/modifiable under the BSD license
# Documentation can be found at http://www.eolas.com/tcl/spynergy/rpc

The only entities that profit from patents are big corporations with big patent portfolios? Is everyone forgetting who that the number one target for software patent attacks is a big corporation? And that the companies bringing those claims aren't necessarily big corporations?

Assertions don't make history go away.

With all her newfound experience with the legal system, when she gets out of the joint she'll be in a perfect position to patent everything she did in her magazine. If you can make $500 million patenting browser plug-ins just think how much you could make patenting do-it-yourself window treatments and floral arrangements.

The main vulnerability to which they leave themselves open is small upstarts like this: companies that aren't really producing anything other than patent infringement lawsuits, and thus don't have any incentive to cross-license. The large company usually has little choice but to either license the patent (if it looks like the cheaper option), or slug it out in court, hoping to drag the proceedings on long enough that the small party runs out of cash and drops it. Take Eolas for example: Microsoft still have a half-billion dollar ruling against them with regards to Eolas, and there's no opportunity for a patent infringement countersuit. Even IBM is vulnerable to this kind of attack, so don't be too sure they're overjoyed with the status quo.

It is nothing *unusual* to support investments as high as 2.5 billion. 20% is more or less moderate.
This is usual economic policy in most states around the globe. Anti-Capitalists and Communists will critzise it though because they prefer state run chip production, haha.

It's better than paying 520m to a patent privateer via a stated granted monopoly system. :-)

But I believe a 600 Million German Free Software Fund would be a better investment.

What the poster said (and what you are missing) is that the gross abusers of the system have been these dippy companies like Eolas, PanIP and others. Of course, there are exceptions (Unisys comes to mind), but noone is denying that.

I can't wait to see someone make a movie out of this fiasco, just like "Pirates of Silicon Valley" . Only it should be called "The Lone Cockblocker Who Almost Destroyed The Web" . No one else could make such outrageous claims like they invented the letter "e" and sold it to IBM.

All I can say is Tim Berners-F'n-Lee is on this now? ... hell yeah baby, lead the charge and while you're at it get that other guy that invented the information super thingy , Al what's-his-beard!

Booyah, Grandma, Booyah!

Has anyone checked out the other patents that Eolas owns?

• zMap: Moving hotspots on video clips; filed 1998, awarded 2003. I remember these from the original Myst, back in what, 1995?. Eolas files suit against Cyan, other gaming companies for violating its patent on hyperlinks embedded in a movie; back-royalties for Myst alone estimated at 165,000,000 pounds, anyone?
• MetaMAP: The First Open-Linking Hypermedia System; filed 1987, awarded 1989. Maybe Eolas will go after MS and other browser makers because they violate Eolas' patent on hyperlinking? Hey, British Telecom tried!
• The ProofMark System; 1998~2001. Maybe it's just me, but the use of multiple cryptographic secrets in order to timestamp a particular piece of data does not seem particularly novel. Fortunately, the technology has been sold to another company, but Eolas retains the patents.

How long until the US legal system forces the users of other programs to suffer at the hands of this rapacious company?

It's a private company, so they can't buy them out if the owners don't want to sell. Eolas wants MS to pay the fine and then sign a license agreement. Typical Microsoft response: license revenue is what other companies give to us, so find a way to weasel out.

It is interesting that the founder wrote a book on tcl/tk and another owner used to be a FBI agent.

Why doesn't any one care or mention that Michael Doyle is
a University Researcher
and does
Tcl programming
and that Microsoft had been in talks with him for years concerning embeding applications into IE before they dissed him.

This guy is a typical Slashdot geek - shafted by Microsoft.

This sounds like a load of shit to me.

How many nanoseconds do you think it will take before someone releases a patch to get rid of this stupid irritating behaviour? Hopefully Microsoft themselves will 'leak' an alternate DLL that allows us to have a current IE, but without this stupid warning poping up every single time someone's got a bit of Flash on their page.

What was the patent anyway? "Allowing embedded content to load without telling the user with a yellow pop-up"? I can't think of anything sensible they could have patented, which would result in MS having to implement this behaviour.

So, in the meantime, can everyone go here and hit reload until it don't-reload-no-more, cos if there was ever a case for a company to deserve a slashdotting, now is it... :)

Rather than representing a "blow to interactivity on the Internet," the University of California patent will be used to encourage the acceptance of a standard API for Web-based interactive applications, preventing the development of a VHS/ Beta-style "API war" between Microsoft, Netscape, Sun, and the like. We are not asking browser companies to pay royalties for developing browsers that can run applets. Rather, we are only requiring that they adhere to a standard "Web-API" that will be defined by a consortium of Eolas licensees...
[your] comments go on to imply that since I went to graduate school at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and since Mosaic was developed there, that I must have "lucked" into some special knowledge of Web technologies through an alleged "tangential association" with NCSA. This is untrue and misleading. Although I did receive my PhD from UIUC, I had no connection with NCSA at the time. My attendance on campus was from 1984-1989, long before the NCSA folks began work on a Web browser. Furthermore, my degree was from the department of Cell and Structural Biology, for studying the effects of aging on the microvascular system of the heart.

The patent says it was filed in Oct of 1994. The articles on the Eolas web site say their browser was developed and demoed in 1993.

...The [Cringley] article points out some interesting possibilities, though, such as Eolas giving license to the patent free to everyone except Microsoft. It could restart the web browser wars again.

Saddened at another innovation being stifled by a greedy company.

Elated because I am sick and tired of lame web designers relying so much on bloated flash/shockwave/etc - how many sites have you been to that 'require' some plugin just to get into the site?

If you think this is a lame creation, take a look at their site. They claim to have invented the 'stylized "e" logo' - what a bunch of buffoons!

A final note: Eolas also 'invented' (designed, actually) the now-ubiquitous stylized "e" logo. IBM purchased rights to use it from us in 1997.

If you look at claim 1 of the patent (5838906) , the key seems to be a combination of 4 things: a browser, hypermedia (text with "clickable" links), a client-server architecture over a network, and dowloadable program code, executed on the client, that communicates both with the browser and bi-directionally with the server. The Eolas technology page claims the first public demonstration in 1993. Was there anyone else who had all 4 components in one thing in 1993?

"A final note: Eolas also 'invented' (designed, actually) the now-ubiquitous stylized "e" logo. IBM purchased rights to use it from us in 1997."

This is all making me want to "e"-throw up.

If you look at the Eolas website, you'll see that it was founded as a spinoff of the U. of California, and in fact UC was a plantiff in the suit. The founder of Eolas was the guy in the patent. Looks like he is/was involved in medical imaging applications.

one of the answers is interesting.

Q. What is the patented technology that was at issue in the case?
A. The patented technology is a key component of the interactivity available on the Internet today. It allows web page developers to embed interactive programs in Web pages. A browser, equipped with the University of California's patented technology, is able to deliver that interactivity to the user. For example, the technology is used often with stock information, video players, games, virtual real estate tours and other interactive content on the Web. The patent allows the Web to be a platform for fully interactive embedded applications.

Sounds like this has broader implications for the Internet at large which the web community may regret. It is not patenting hyperlinks, but I think it gets close.

Michael D. Doyle was the guy who initiated this apparently for the purposes of remote medical imaging applications which is his field. Yes, there was a prototype, and yes the patent holder is indeed selling systems. He appears to be capitalizing on HIPAA right now as well by selling systems based on a patented trivial extension to public key cryptography. He also seems to be offering quite a few other services based on his website. Overall, he seems like a jackass to me.

The Guy invents nothing he patents ideas. You really should look here and check out wht this guy has patented image mapping, cryptography over the web. But one thing you shoudl really notice is that lack of ANY products He makes nothign but patents Scum like this should be shot and dragged through the streets. I mean please if this guy had even had a product and had some source code to support his claims I could maybe understand his position. but the comapny has nothing.

Eolas is not a patent profolio company by a long shot, they are a pure R&D company.
You can see some of the things thay have patented here.
I seem to recall a article where the founder of Eolas was talking about a patent war against Microsoft, not because they wanted royalties but because they objected to the I.E.ization of the web.
Notice that Eolas is going after Microsoft, not Sun or Mozilla.
Standard practice for patent profolio companies is to prey on the weaker first. Eolas went after the main standard breaker with their lawsuit. I think this should give us some hope about Eolas's intentions.

Eolas is not a patent profolio company by a long shot, they are a pure R&D company.
You can see some of the things thay have patented here.
I seem to recall a article where the founder of Eolas was talking about a patent war against Microsoft, not because they wanted royalties but because they objected to the I.E.ization of the web.
Notice that Eolas is going after Microsoft, not Sun or Mozilla.
Standard practice for patent profolio companies is to prey on the weaker first. Eolas went after the main standard breaker with their lawsuit. I think this should give us some hope about Eolas's intentions.

Eolas is not a patent profolio company by a long shot, they are a pure R&D company.
You can see some of the things thay have patented here.
I seem to recall a article where the founder of Eolas was talking about a patent war against Microsoft, not because they wanted royalties but because they objected to the I.E.ization of the web.
Notice that Eolas is going after Microsoft, not Sun or Mozilla.
Standard practice for patent profolio companies is to prey on the weaker first. Eolas went after the main standard breaker with their lawsuit. I think this should give us some hope about Eolas's intentions.

Some karma whoring links others might find interesting.

EOLAS SUES MICROSOFT FOR INFRINGEMENT OF PATENT...

The patent

What crap. You are talking about a company that got it's start from dumpster diving someone else's BASIC. Their whole business model is raping what they call "loss leaders" and publically state they will never enter a "market" untill it's "mature", in other words, they stay out of a technology until someone else has done all the work. Then they come in with the famous $500,000 check to aquire, shutdown or destroy ala Netscape, DRDOS and others. They also advocate "Extreem Programming" in which source code is not touched for the most part, only modified slightly. I imagine that most M$ developer time is put in trying to "integrate" the vast Byzantine raft of other people's code that they have aquired, one way or another. Yeah, and they steal code too, that's why they keep losing lawsuits.

1. Stac
2. Quicktime
3. Eolas
4. and many others collected right here

Either you are deluded enough to think M$ cares about anyone or you are an Astroturfer. What version is the Steve Barkto program up to?

Unfortunately the prior art inventor Eolas has their own patents we should be afraid of.

According to this, they say they patented the use of plugins in browsers. Imagine the effect on projects like Mozilla if they were to press their claim.

Also, they claim that another patent "covers image space collision detection technology believed to be currently in widespread use throughout the computer game industry."

Unfortunately the prior art inventor Eolas has their own patents we should be afraid of.

According to this, they say they patented the use of plugins in browsers. Imagine the effect on projects like Mozilla if they were to press their claim.

Also, they claim that another patent "covers image space collision detection technology believed to be currently in widespread use throughout the computer game industry."

From the patent office's link to the patent the assignee is "The Regents of the University of California (Oakland, CA)".

Hmmm... They say in their about page that they were spun off of the university, but it doesn't look like they officially changed ownership of the patent.

I can't see the University of California turning down a $1 billion dollar donation any more than Sun would.

Assuming this research outfit has unrestricted ownership of the patent, I think they would have a hard time turning down a number that had as many zeros in it as a billion. Then where would we be? Microsoft would have a more difficult time exploiting a purchase of this patent because of their obvious monopoly problems, but there are a couple of things they could probably do to attack open source software.

Lets say that Microsoft purchases this patent and agrees to license this "fairly" to all comers as long as all users respect their digital rights management initiatives or place some other speed bump to open source browsers or browsers on open source platforms.

Eolas's thought exercise of not allowing IE to use their "technology" is probably just posturing for a better settlement and the judgment will come down to money in the end... Something that Microsoft has plenty of.

The best case could be that the patent is overturned and drops into the public domain. Then there will not be a private interest that would control what is becoming an important part of the browser experience.

From the patent office's link to the patent the assignee is "The Regents of the University of California (Oakland, CA)".

Hmmm... They say in their about page that they were spun off of the university, but it doesn't look like they officially changed ownership of the patent.

I can't see the University of California turning down a $1 billion dollar donation any more than Sun would.

Assuming this research outfit has unrestricted ownership of the patent, I think they would have a hard time turning down a number that had as many zeros in it as a billion. Then where would we be? Microsoft would have a more difficult time exploiting a purchase of this patent because of their obvious monopoly problems, but there are a couple of things they could probably do to attack open source software.

Lets say that Microsoft purchases this patent and agrees to license this "fairly" to all comers as long as all users respect their digital rights management initiatives or place some other speed bump to open source browsers or browsers on open source platforms.

Eolas's thought exercise of not allowing IE to use their "technology" is probably just posturing for a better settlement and the judgment will come down to money in the end... Something that Microsoft has plenty of.

The best case could be that the patent is overturned and drops into the public domain. Then there will not be a private interest that would control what is becoming an important part of the browser experience.

Although Eolas Technologies inc. is privately funded at present, from time to time there may be opportunities for certain qualified investors to invest in the company. If you would like more information on investment opportunities in Eolas, please send an email to invest@eolas.com. Please make sure to include your personal contact and background information, as well as your investment history.

Investment Opportunities

Although Eolas Technologies inc. is privately funded at present, from time to time there may be opportunities for certain qualified investors to invest in the company. If you would like more information on investment opportunities in Eolas, please send an email to invest@eolas.com. Please make sure to include your personal contact and background information, as well as your investment history.

A patent which, if you check was first demonstrated in 1993 (when WWW traffic was 1% of the whole backbone) and filed in '94. And what was the big Netscape breakthrough in 1995? SERVER PUSH.

Having everything integrated under one hood is only an obvious solution in hindsight.

Actually, IBM wasn't the first to trademark the circle e symbol. They purchased the rights from eolas a small start-up in Chicago. eolas continues to use the symbol, and I'm guessing that the royalties from IBM are what keeps the company going. You may recall eolas is the company that claims patent rights on any executable started from a web page.

Looking at Eolas, on the one hand, it's kind of funny to see the degree to which Eolas is beating Microsoft in Court, and the ridiculous hoops that Microsoft has jumped though in the process (Microsoft attempt to claim inventorship of Eolas invention-pdf). But on the other hand Eolas patent is sort of the worst kind of patent-squatting - thinking of something, patenting it, and then hoping others will pay you to license it, because you don't plan on developing it.

If you look at Eolas's website you don't get the impression that they're generating too many "algorithms that implement dynamic, bi-directional communications between Web browsers and external applications," to quote Cringely. Granted they developed the first plugin - in 1993! - for Mosaic! but they don't seem to be doing much else these days, in the hey day of the interactive internet. In fact, as near as I can figure they don't generate anything except law suits (right now only against MS, but what's to stop them from going after Netscape, Mozilla, Sun, etc. should they decide to do so.)

You really have to wonder about how far this sort of thing will be taken in the future - that is how many people will patent ideas and not act on them until that fundamental idea has made many companies tremendously successful. After all what if Turing had pattened the idea of "stored information, which can be utilized to control an electronic machine in the preformance of actions determined by the information" - the stored program executable. Morris and Eckert would have had to pay him to write the code for the ENIAC and we'd be paying his heirs everytime we wrote an executable (assuming his heirs renewed the patent).

Looking at Eolas, on the one hand, it's kind of funny to see the degree to which Eolas is beating Microsoft in Court, and the ridiculous hoops that Microsoft has jumped though in the process (Microsoft attempt to claim inventorship of Eolas invention-pdf). But on the other hand Eolas patent is sort of the worst kind of patent-squatting - thinking of something, patenting it, and then hoping others will pay you to license it, because you don't plan on developing it.

If you look at Eolas's website you don't get the impression that they're generating too many "algorithms that implement dynamic, bi-directional communications between Web browsers and external applications," to quote Cringely. Granted they developed the first plugin - in 1993! - for Mosaic! but they don't seem to be doing much else these days, in the hey day of the interactive internet. In fact, as near as I can figure they don't generate anything except law suits (right now only against MS, but what's to stop them from going after Netscape, Mozilla, Sun, etc. should they decide to do so.)

You really have to wonder about how far this sort of thing will be taken in the future - that is how many people will patent ideas and not act on them until that fundamental idea has made many companies tremendously successful. After all what if Turing had pattened the idea of "stored information, which can be utilized to control an electronic machine in the preformance of actions determined by the information" - the stored program executable. Morris and Eckert would have had to pay him to write the code for the ENIAC and we'd be paying his heirs everytime we wrote an executable (assuming his heirs renewed the patent).