Slashdot Mirror
BT To Enforce Patent On Hyperlinking?
Bazzargh writes: "This article
at nothingventured (annoying but free registration required) says that British Telecom have hired Scipher to enforce (in the US) an old patent -- predating the WWW -- that they hold on the concept of hyperlinking! Apparently they'll be seeking compensation from all ISPs. I've had a look on the IBM Patents Database but I can't see the patent referred to."
Well, they now have an account registered to:
:)
Elwood Blues
1060 W. Addison
Chicago, IL 60613
with meaningless AC (773) phone numbers...
Those who've seen the Blues Brothers will get this one.
He should be the first and last witness called. OK, add Doug Englebart. Get a tape of his Mother of All Demos, and then Computer Lib / Dream should be required reading for these party crashers. "BT are the prior art." Right. Between Scottish devolution and the truce in Eire, there's some pretty bored Brits with too much time on their hands. AAAARRRRGGGGHHHH!!!
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
This was not the purpose of patents, at least not originally. They were there to promote disclosure.
Interesting. I do not have my copy of the constitution handy (it's at home), but I vaguely recall verbiage about "promoting" progress. In any event, pro-patent arguments almost always revolve around the mistaken notion that without patents there would be no progress, ie we need patents to promote progress. The argument usually goes something like this:
1. No one will invent anything or share their ideas with others unless there is a financial reward. (This is demonstrably wrong, as many "inventors" on the internet have demonstrated, only to have their "inventions" hijacked and patented by others. Such hijackings would be impossible without the US patent office).
2. There can be no financial reward for an invention without the patenting system (this is obviously wrong, inventing and selling a better product will result in financial gain, whether or not you have competition).
3. The patenting system defends the little guy from having his idea "stolen" by a bigger company. (There are two errors in this assumption: one, that ideas are natural property like physical objects and can be "owned", and two, that the system favors the little guy over the large corporate interest. This is demonstrably false: there are numerous historical incidents in which the patent system was used by corporations to "steal" ideas from the inventor -- many of Thomas Edison's patents were thus obtained, as are most corporate patents today. In addition, it can be trivially shown that, when an individual must face off against a corporation in a patent dispute, the corporation has much deeper pockets with which to persue litigation. In a system of justice like that of the US, where justice is basically cash flow, the individual is at a severe disadvantage and will, on average, lose their claim.)
Conclusion: Without the patenting system we would have no progress, and the small inventor whould be at the mercy of the big corporate interest.
The first conclusion is demonstrably false, as can be shown by the rapid progress in computer science which predated software patents, not to mention the numerous inventions which predated the patent system altogether.
The second conclusion is misdirection at its worst: the sad fact is, the individual is as much, if not more, at the mercy of large corporate interests under the existing patent system than they would be without it.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Roosevelt supported Britain during that period in spite of great opposition from the Senate and the populace.
Granted. There were two problems:
(a) traditional US isolationism (which you can
see cropping up again recently, btw);
(b) a large German expat community which still supported the fatherland --- and did until Pearl Harbor, when everything changed.
The bombing of Pearl Harbor has to be one of the biggest military blunders of all time --- there wasn't sufficient support in the States for involvement in the war, and wouldn't have been, if we hadn't been attacked.
Having a non-elected section of government is a fantastic idea; it means there is some other influence than petty short-term vote grabbing by politicians. Sure, it's not perfect, and hereditary power isn't particularly fair, but it's a solution that works well and is proven.
This is remarkable. I've never heard of anyone actually calling for royalty and a ruling class.
What I don't understand is why you think this is "proven". The only thing proven about ruling classes is that they get corrupt and are eventually overthrown (usually violently). The only form of government that's ever been stable is democracy. As someone once said, "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others."
And just to be accurate, the US does not have a democracy, it's a representative republic.
I will agree with you in one respect; the most efficient form of government is a benevolent dictatorship. The only problem is that they don't tend to stay benevolent.
--
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Hm.. I just checked back and saw this marked as redundant.
It was the 12th comment. After filtering all the first post (typically 1-7) there were 5 comments.
How can that be redundant? They need to have a flag for "Bad Joke".. then it would work.
nerdfarm.org
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
"public telephone network"?? - Not since privatisation matey - who do they think they are kidding?
-- Trinity in high heels carrying a whip: The donimatrix - there is no spoonerism
In fact, rereading his post I don't know where he pulled this bit about Africa. It's not related in any way to the original post.
Dyolf Knip
--
Dyolf Knip
At the very least, all of you need to send mail to (e-mail, snail mail, etc) or phone your representatives Washington about this. There obviously need to be serious changes to our patent office if these kinds of patents are being issued.
Liberty in Our Lifetime - http://www.freeme.org/
here on /. to get the federal government to abolish the patent system. A free society is one where you don't have to pay royalties for using other people's ideas and making something even bigger and better.
19/06/2000 13:26:41 RPT: BT to seek to exercise hyperlink patent in U.S. through Scipher LONDON (AFX) - British Telecommunications PLC has employed Scipher PLC to exercise a historic patent on hyperlinks, the technology whereby internet sites cross-link to each other, to U.S. internet service providers, Scipher said today. Dr Ken Gray, chairman of Scipher, said that BT claims to have patented the hyperlink technology in doing their work on information retieval systems, which is used extensively throughout the navigation of the World Wide Web. He said the patent predates the HTML standard that currently exists. "On behalf of BT we are attempting to licence (hyperlink technology), and inviting licences to be taken out by ISPs in the States," Gray said. "We will be inviting ISP's in the U.S. to licence that technology from us." bge/mjh
In the US, it's 17 years from the date it's awarded. This one was filed for in 1980, but not awarded until 1989. So they've got until 2006.
G. Sumner Hayes
-- rage, rage against the dying of the light
Yep. But the ridiculousness of the patent and the influence of the licensees does not lead to this conclusion:
Large companies would not fight the patent system, only the patent itself. Changing the patent system removes their own revenue stream - kind of like throwing out the baby with the bathwater (to coin a phrase (not)). It will be much easier, cheaper, and ultimately more profitable to simply defeat this individual patent. As, I think, CRT terminals were frequently in use well before 1980, if the specifics of what they describe wasn't in common use, it would certainly fall in the "obvious to a competent practitioner" category. Anyone got a date on the vt100 terminal? Indeed, it might not even get that far - BT could settle with everyone, even for one-time payments. In "lawyerese", this is the answer to the question "How much will it cost to make this problem go away?"
That being said, I still think the patent system needs to be reconsidered (if not abolished). Some truly ridiculous patents have managed to be upheld in court. The most egregious one I can think of is Gemstar's patents on TV program guides - essentially anything with a grid with channels on one side and times along the other is patented. That's right. TV Guide is patented (at least, on a TV screen it is). Your VCR, your cable box, even your digital TV, all pay licenses of several dollars per unit to Gemstar/TV Guide. Gemstar can pay for a lot of lawyers.
Several dollars may seem like peanuts, but this is consumer electronics, not computers - engineers in CE argue about whether to add a $0.05 piece because it is too expensive. Even in $10k digital TVs, these arguments happen. If you wanted to hook up a Sony HD DTV to a Sony HD DirecTV satellite dish, you'd think it would be one connection - they both have 1394 ports (Firewire to Apple, iLink to Sony). Nope. The people making the DTV wanted to reduce costs by not including the extra logic gates that would be required to decode control signals on 1394! So you have to hook up an analog Control-A1 line (what Sony devices speak to each other) to have the satellite dish communicate with the DTV.
Bleah.
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Klactovedestene!
Congratulations England! You have now reached the pinnacle of stupidity previously occupied solely by the US law system. You may now stop flaming us ignorant Americans and join our ranks in trolling, and in making the presumption that we invented everything, and are better than everybody.
Now that just leaves Canada...
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
The reason I posted this story is that I hope - as other people have said - that this is the patent that finally gets the US to wake up to how stupid their patent law is (I know youse guys know this).
However - I have my suspicions that the leader in this fiasco was Scipher. They are a company whose sole raison d'etre is to get money from patents, and probably take a fat cut. It would be in their interests to find too-broad patents and approach the owning company with an offer to enforce them. Take a look at their website (http://www.scipher.com/).
BTW several people have suggested in this thread that the lifetime of a patent is 7 or 10 years. In the UK its 14 years, and it doesnt expire if you don't sue - it expires if you don't pay the upkeep. You don't have to defend it every time either, unlike trademarks, but you do have to make an effort to develop the technology. I assume the rules are somewhat similar in the US.
Bottom line is that this patent has at least 3 years left to run.
Just slightly offtopic... does the patent office pay royalties for the GIF images on their site?
First off I hope this article is wrong or that somebody with enough legal knowledge can roll up that so-called patent and make BT eat it. Thats why jokes like this one are so amusing... BUT..
BT aint England. They aint even a national monopoly no more. Anything anyone pays to BT aint paying a UK tax any more than writing a check to USWerst is paying a tax to Uncle Sam. This is a shame because otherwise I'd have been laughing my limey ass off at your post....
# human firmware exploit
# Word will insert into your optic buffer
# without bounds checking
I had a
Now the question is since it was just described and not built does it count as prior art?
When has not having a working prototype ever stopped a patent filer?
Ah... but even if not, then we only need to look to the Stanford Research Institute from the 60's when Englebart et al. showed off their system that included the mouse, and the "gui" with features that were very hypertext like. Now if I could only find the damn link to a description of it. Anyone?
Searching google, I came up with this...
Your Working Boy,
Lawyers representing BT have issued a cease and desist letter to the United States Patent and Trademark Office citing "hyper-links" available via the "World Wide Web" to the USPTO "Full Text and Image Patent Database"
- My password is slashdot
...because I'm outraged for the wrong reason.
/. to be pissed that someone's not getting sued for patent infringement.
It really is a stupid patent, and it's not fashionable on
I figured there would be at least 30 "this is an outrage!" messages with nothing worthwhile to say.
This specifically deals with documents stored on servers, sent through a PSTN to a terminal. It would seem to me, that if you asked six random people (i.e. the jury in the civil lawsuit) to equate a web server and a browser to a server and a client, they wouldn't do it.
Why wouldn't they? A webserver is a server, a browser is a way to display stuff on the client.
I just read the patent three times and cannot believe it. It's a real patent filed for in 1980 long before Tim-Berners-Lee proposed the world wide web. To put it simply British Telecom came up with the idea of hyperlinks first, simply not in the context of HTML, but this does not change the fact that they did. To all those claiming this is a sign that patent reform is forthcoming are probably right but for the wrong reasons, in 1980 this was probably an original idea.
Are you by any chance friends with Smoove B? ;-)
That'll be $0.03 for the link, please.
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
Um, no it isn't. At least, not as I write this. I put in that l/p and a page comes up saying:
"Your details have been securely processed."
Err, what? What do you know of my details, nothing-ventured???!
And then it takes me back to the login page. I'm thinking of finding a way to anonymously mirror these stories that require "free registration and a lifetime of spam" just to view a dinky article. Any thoughts?
Looking through BT's site and at Scipher, too, I can find no mention of such a suit going forward. You would think that BT would make something of it, or at least scipher would. I also note that the patent holder is the GB Post Office if I read the information in the link correctly. I can't find the AFX news source either. Wierd. Ominoor - the Inhuman (aka LurkerAbove)
I studied Icthyphrenology in school, but can't find a real job that I can use it in.
I've never seen such a fascistic registration form; it requires your address, phone numberS, SMS email, and what else? It's ridiculous. So i you dont want to go through the hassle, use mine, login:noneofyourbusiness, password:whatever.
Anyway, that being said, this just shows how ridiculous software patents are. Too bad there isn't more references; I wonder if their patent predates HyperCard. Seems to me there was hyperlink in there, and it dates back from 1985. Is theirs older? If it is, it might just be too old enough anyway.
I hope you paid a licensing fee for that link.
___
__
Do ya feel happy-go-lucky, punk?
Dyolf Knip
--
Dyolf Knip
>royalty and a ruling class
:-)
Not *exactly* what I was trying to say; I'm not advocating total rule by aristocracy, merely a section of the government... a compromise between the two approaches, since each cancels out the problems with the other.
>What I don't understand is why you think this is "proven"
I cite Britain as a good example, for a good few centuries now
>The only form of government that's ever been stable is democracy
Well, first of all, is "stable" the same as "better", necessarily? And also, from a slightly different point-of-view it's the *least* stable; power generally changes hands a couple of times a decade...
Fun reading the patent though, filed by 'The Post Office' this was back in the days of Buzby, went on a tour of their main switching office round about that time (my dad worked there) and they had just installed a load of this new stuff called Fybre Opptycal Cable, meant to be the way of the future so it was, hmm and the reams and reams of continuos paper with text based adventures...
~ppppppppö
"The judge ruled against Microsoft today. Ironically the economy and technology stocks are up" - From CNN
Should have said "Obviously" instead of "Ironically". Everyone everywhere thought for one brief moment 'I will someday have a computer that works without ever crashing.' Thus giving them hope and encouraging them to spend money.
No, it's dead on! Do you think the US would be nosing around in other counties' business all around the world if the British hadn't redrawn the world's borders, putting groups who hate each other in the same country and telling them they must all abide by the same laws?
Let it not be forgotten the English were reds long before the communists were.
Not that I blame you personally, Anonymous British Coward, just stating the situation. I hold myself to the same responsibility as you for crimes committed by my government and my ancestors.
It really pisses me off that every time the US gets knocked by a Pom
Gets knocked? Some moron can't do math and you feel it's a profound statement that puts an 'American idiot' in his place? I have said before that Britain stood no chance of actually losing either of the wars, but there was no way in hell they could have won them, either. How about next time you feel like attributing nonexistent remarks to me, you actually read what it is I've said.
And what is this 'dragged kicking and screaming into the wars' bullshit? Since fucking when are we expected to jump right into them for your benefit? Oh my, the Commonwealth sent troops right from the beginning! All Americans should bow down before them and anyone else who like to fight wars right from the get-go.
Dyolf Knip
--
Dyolf Knip
Re: French involvment in the Revolutionary War, I recall reading about how when US troops marched through Paris towards the front in WW1, they saluted the tomb of the French king who assisted us (brain fart, can't remember his name or what they said). I always thought it a very moving and ironic piece of history.
The Afrika Corps was under-supplied and under-manned because British bombers were so effective at bombing their supply ships, thanks to the codebreaking work done at Bletchley Park
Exquisitely effective work, but the point remains that you weren't dealing with a significant portion of the Wermacht. The majority was, as you said, freezing their asses off at Stalingrad.
I agree with your point about the Soviets. They would definitely have won the war. I wish they had. They might have shut the hell up about it.
Thank you. Although I doubt the majority of Western Europe would appreciate your last sentiment. Check out the soc.history.what-if newsgroup, you might like it.
Dyolf Knip
--
Dyolf Knip
especialy since patents only last 30 years.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
When I put a little tag around an address on my home page, I'm just saying that this would be a neat site for you to visit (or not). Heck, I don't care what you do with it, I certainly don't expect everyone to visit that site! It's really the browser that turns a simple reference into a "hyperlink". I don't send you halfway across the Internet and back - your browser does.
If anyone here is horrifically guilty of doing anything with hyperlinks, is the people who make browsers. What the hell did the ISP's ever do?
Next they'll try to sue encyclopedia publishers for stealing the "print" version of the hyperlink.
Donny
P.S. I wasted way too much time trying to register with whatever that site was to read the article and the damned thing turned out to be two paragraphs. Really, I think we should have a "useless link" warning there so people don't waste time registering.
and
are seeking the protection of US law, they should follow it to its logical
conclusion:
so-called "DARPAnet".
the Rover 75s that are in storage on airfields in England, and
See? Problem solved.
Carefree highway, let me slip away on you.
yes. they can. look at who they hired : http://www.monox.com/scimain.html ...its a company full of lawyers and nothing else.
How is it possible for this to apply to something that didn't exist yet?
I think an inventor is allowed to patent something that doesn't yet exist.
If I'm not mistaken, "Velcro" was was patented before it was possible to produce the nylon hooks.
Unfortunately, Velcro was invented in 1941, and the USPTO database only seems to go back to 1976, so I can't look it up myself.
well, I've also tried slashdot/slashdot and it works.
Um, since I wasn't using the net in 1989 I could be wrong, but RFC 1436 (1993) states:
"This
document is adapted from the basic Internet Gopher protocol document
first issued by the Microcomputer Center at the University of
Minnesota in 1991.
"
Which suggests to me that gopher is more recent than 1989.
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> The government has sold a monopoly, errr.. patent to a company
How about "Letter of Marque". That's the traditional name for a government-issued predator's license.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
You're sort of right, and sort of wrong. Patents are on ways of implementing ideas. Specific implementations are covered by copyright.
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Zardoz has spoken!
Oper on the Nightstar
BWAAAAAHAHAHAHAHA!
Good one, BT. Unfortunately, April Fool's Day was a few months ago.
Fighting the War on the War on Drugs.
http://smokedot.org/
Don't the shortcuts that M$ use in Windows fit the requirements of the patent?
science is a religion
What in the hell? People today have no scruples. Don't they realize that the only thing that this could possibly do is kill the web? Imagine if you had to pay royalties to put in a hyperlink?
On that note, though, why are they targetting only ISPs? Couldn't they target every company with a web site?
--
It should be clear by now that patents like this do more harm than good.
Why? What harm has come from this? Save the embarasment to BT when this thing is thrown out of court.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
The technology he developed is called "hypertext", and has been implemented in everything from the old Xerox Star to the Apple's Hypercard. Hypercard has been around since '87, and does pretty much what the BT patent describes.
Prior art, bay-bee!
The BT patent filing was in 1980 (15 August), more than 7 years before your "prior art". There's plenty of prior art that ought to make this patent meaningless (e.g. Xanadu), but this isn't a good example of it.
G. Sumner Hayes
-- rage, rage against the dying of the light
How much are you USians gonna take until the revolution comes?
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
Ok. As most hypermedia people will know the notion of hyperlinks (Ted Nelsons term from the 60's?) has been around since 1945 when Vannevar Bush described the memex. See:
http://www.theatlantic.c om/unbound/flashbks/computer/bushf.htm
Now the question is since it was just described and not built does it count as prior art?
Ah... but even if not, then we only need to look to the Stanford Research Institute from the 60's when Englebart et al. showed off their system that included the mouse, and the "gui" with features that were very hypertext like. Now if I could only find the damn link to a description of it. Anyone?
dave
Better solution than nuking Britain would be to distribute some crack with a serious toxin in it, and eliminate anyone who's been to more than one WWF event or been on Jerry Springer, then reassess.
I think this method is actually being applied in Britain, in Glasgow actually, albeit with Heroin. I guess they have patented it, too? But is there prior art?
Hey, if they land on that data haven and use it as a base, we could have the UK's Prime Minister back changing nappies at Number 10 Downing in no time.
... guess BT owes Al Gore a sizeable campaign contribution ...
Besides, I patented the idea of ASCII when I was a toddler. I sold the patent to Al Gore, though
Will in Seattle
What's next? A patent claim on bi-pedal transportation? Erections? Heterosexual reproduction? Reading the patent--it seems to me that only a lawyer could construe their idea to include the entire, linked Internet. Gee, I wonder if anyone has ever paid them one, red cent on the patent in the past. Especially since it is so obvious. Next: someone will come forth claiming to have a patent on the storaging of instructions for a computer on magnetic read/write media.
A mouse is a keyboard, with only 1-3 keys and a motion-detecting mechanism attached.
So stability has not so much to do with the type of government but with the extremes the would-be rulers are willing to go through to get ahold of it. So you can have (Republics)/(Monarchies) which are stable until (their first elections)/(the current hereditary ruler dies), at which point some general takes an army into the capital. It's happened for both types. Those countries I would describe as unstable.
I've long ago decided that just about any type of government *could* work well and be quite stable, it just depends entirely on the temperament of its citizens and the effectiveness of the rulers (ignore the last for Anarchies).
Dyolf Knip
--
Dyolf Knip
As signaling is done in analog domain, all communications are done throught modems (unmodulated digital signal can only travel a few meters). So, ISDN, DSL, cable, fiber, all use modems.
Dyolf Knip
--
Dyolf Knip
You know, before computers were really around, someone tried to patent binary code but the US Patent Office lost the forms. Imagine where we'd be today if he actually got that patent.
While it's true that the patent predates the work of the great Tim (shades of Monty Python), it certainly does NOT predate the work of Ted Nelson, the generally acknowledged "inventor" of the hyperlink concept. (Although Nelson himself gives a great deal of credit to Vannevar Bush's pioneering 1930's article "As We May Think", which is likely the first reasonably complete description of these concepts.)
Nelson's original concept and the coining of the terms "hyperlink" and "hypermedia" are all contained in a paper presented at an ACM conference in 1965! (I tried to read it at the time, but I had a hard time following it since I was only three... [grin])
Nelson had implementations of the Xanadu hypertext concept running in FORTRAN in the early '70s IIRC.
Regardless of anyone's claims, it looks quite easy to show prior art should anyone attempt to press any patent claim on hyperlinks.
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
It may be a reaction to US efforts to impose this stupid software patents sistem on EU. Right now, in EU software methods aren't patentable, being only protected by copyright (as it should be in a sane society). But US, WTO and EPO are pushing to change this (more on http://petition.eurolinux.org/). If BT put "modest" charges on hyperlinks (ex. 5 USD per hyperlink, plus a 0.35 USD royalty per every hyperlink usage), the perspective of distroying the US Internet as is today may wake up US legislators to stop backing a stupid concept. The Internet will survive anyway in the rest of the world, which doesn't honour US patents (yet). Nota Bene: This may not be the last such case. If the sistem remains in place, we'll be allways at the mercy of such claims.
Actually, Douglas Engelbart invented the hyperlink (and the mouse, btw.) with NLS. That's what Nelson himself says (see, e.g., the "1987 dedication" in Literary Machines 93.1).
IMO, the most effective course of action is to contact BT and ask about licensing options. If BT are swamped with requests and comments, they may realise what a poor idea this is. I've popped up contact details for BT, along with my thoughts on the silliness.
Allow me to reiterate: the best thing to do is write them a letter not email them. Dealing with letters is a lot harder than junking email.
Maybe now the Yanks will stop thinking they invented everything. Living over here I have seen first hand how blinkered the Yanks are, and how they think everything ever invented was invented by a Yank in the US. Now, if I only can get Hollywood to stop re-inventing history in everyone of their films, I will be all set.
Last one out turn off the blink tags!
Yeah you should feel cheated... It trashes your Windows vFat VxD. Really fun stuff! Should we mod it up? I mean finding windoze bugs has become entirely way too trendy and over rated. :P
---------------- F0 0F C7 C8
And this won't make it fly either? (I'm no lawyer)
Although the invention has been described with reference to a specific embodiment it will be appreciated that modifications can be made to the system described without departing from the invention.
---
Tip: Sick and tired of these tips? Type "set tips 0" any time.
> set tips 0
Error: Unknown option name "tips."
Ner lbh sebz gur HFN? Gura lbh'ir whfg ivbyngrq gur QZPN!
If they sue the isp's, can't we just discontinue their service?
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ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
Actually, couldn't we hold Al Gore to patent infringement? Since he obviously knew at the time that he invented the internet that it was comprised of patented technology? Maybe that would get him to shut up.....
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
Perhaps it's because the US has signed (and even spearheaded) so many international intellectual property agreements? Big duh there, guy.
The co. I currently work for has gotten in the midst of a similar bulls*it "patent infringment", along with quite a few large PCMCIA peripheral manufacturers. Some wonderful nimrod managed to create a patent loosely describing a PCMCIA that accepts data from one end of the card, and modulates/modifies/whatever between the ends, and spits out a new signal. In a nutshell, every modem, LAN Adapter, serial card, etc., technically applies to this patent. Just think how broad this patent really is. 3Com, Xircom, Lucent, a very large number of PCMCIA mfr's make such things. Basically they (and I beleive us as well) in our most profund lawyerspeak, told them to blow us. Which is what I beleive will happen here as well.
Might not apply if you use a mouse. :)
Edith Keeler Must Die
Glad to correct you.
It used to be that patents lasted 17 years after they were issued. Some time ago, the U.S. changed the law so that patents lasted for 20 years after filing (the change so that filers were discouraged from slowing down the process and thereby financially benefiting from the maturation of the technology by others).
For those patents "in process" when the law changed, it was the later of the 2 terms. Elsewhere, someone noted that this patent falls in that transition zone, so that its expiration is 17 years after issuance - 1989 +17 = 2006.
However, it's still not a patent on web-style hyperlinking.
If memory serves...
The old (v2.01) Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet system had what was for it's time a pretty good help system that used hyperlinks to related subjects.
I'm pretty sure that's prior to this patent.
Hey! I've been to a WWF event!
In an ideal world, the USPTO would laugh this proposal all the way back across the pond. Trouble is, some equally harebrained schemes have already been granted patents, so I don't hold out much hope
73 de N5VB (ex-KD5BIV) AR SK
Do they also have a patent on footnotes and indexes? How about a patent on giving someone directions?
I certainly hope someone can dig up this patent. Unless it predates Gopher, I don't think they have much of a case.
Douglas Englebart demo'd hyperlinks to a wide audience back in '68. Hell, Vannevar Bush had the concept of a hyperlink with the "memex" concept back in about 1945.
I think these predate the BT patent by a few years at least.
"Tomorrow's forecast: a few sprinkles of genius with a chance of doom!" - Stewie Griffin
To point out the very obvious, in a nice way, Northern Telecom is not the company mentioned in the article. British Telecom would be that magic patent holder.
Northern Telecom has morphed from the telephone manufacturer of yesteryear, into a major telecommunication manufacturer, mostly known nowadays as Nortel or Nortel Networks, etc.
I've never understood the 'if it wasn't for us, you limeys would all be speaking German' school of though.
Let's see:
So the idea that if the USA hadn't entered the war, the UK would have been invaded is crap. Sure, the US and Canada helped economically - but many Americans seem to think that Hitler was still trying to invade in July 1941 - he wasn't - he was fucked on three fronts (North Africa, Russia and the middle East) and he knew it.
Nick
-- "It's a sad day for American capitalism when a man can't fly a midget on a kite over Central Park" - Jim Moran
The patent was filed in 1980. It was granted, after additions and such, in 1989..
It's supposed to reduce the complexity of communication protocols, as well as reduce the document overhead transferred across the dialup..
Fortunatly, I believe Ted Nelson (of Xanadu) demonstrated a very similar system three years earlier. He'd been working on it since 1960, and was a prolific writer, so there is surely some hypothetical discussion of systems covered by this patent somewhere in recent antiquity..
Minitel may also predate the patent, with its linked MGS. They were rolled out in 82-83, but development was probably three to five years earlier (Telecom companies are notoriously slow!)
Besides, ISPs have no interest in licensing this; They provide text content, which is only intrepreted by the terminal (AIEE, Nutscrape, Opera). This patent covers hyperlinking and the terminal. The ISP does not infringe, therefore licensing is moot..
.sig: Now legally binding!
--
BZZT! Wrong. BT spends NOTHING. Scipher are a company that enforces patents. They've taken this one on from BT because they think they can milk the cash cow. If Scipher (a company of IP Lawyers) didn't think there was money to be made out of this one I don't think we'd ever have heard about it.
This is actually one of the best things that could happen. Think - BT gets the right to the patent - but everyone just IGNORES them... regardless of how they attempt to enforce it.
Then it becomes a known fact that BT has the un-profitable patent on hyperlinks - but know-one really cares.
Then we realize that we can do the EXACT SAME THING with un-reasonable local (meaning US) taxes.
Why the hell do I have to give the goverment 48% of what I earn?!!! I DON"T!
HTTP://www.taxgate.com
Drinking is the act of God pouring God into God
There are diffrences between copyrights, patents, and trademarks. If you can't be bothered to understand them, then why do you bother do open your mouth?
I do understand them, so your question does not apply to this situation. I'm sorry if I gave anyone the impression that one has to enforce one's patent to keep it.
Please excuse me if I confused you, delmoi.
-Adam
"The truly great sysadmins could have BFGs."
Dennis Chao on the new machine process management utility, "Doom"
The earliest reference I can find to a videotex system is 1977-78 so far. The BT patent appears to be an similar technology. Videotex was capable of two-way transmission and thus interaction with touchscreens.
l evision.htm
http://www.well.com/user/mmcadams/videotex.html
This site mentions an interactive vote via videotex called QUBE.
http://www.high-techproductions.com/historyofte
A link dating QUBE to 1977.
http://www.pioneerusa.com/timeln.html
How close was videotex to the BT patent implementation?
(cave paintings are essentially URLs to the animals being hunted),
That's stretching it a bit. Actualy, thats streching it a lot.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
--
The dog ate my
First of all, the patent covers a custom terminal, with multiple ROM and RAM areas, and keypads hardwired to signal generators for modems. We have details about what type of information goes into what memory segment, what the ROM contains, and even the timing between the display and the memory.
For instance, the patent clearly states that the display text will be in the first transmission block, and will be loaded into one memory area, while the 'hidden information' will be in second block and will be loaded into another memory area. To the contrary, we all know that HTML is embedded, and all information is loaded into the same memory area. Once it is loaded, the appropriate text and graphics is generated for the displayed.
To Quote: "In the operation of the system shown, when a block of which is to be displayed is transmitted by the computer 1 to the terminal and routed to the memory A. The second part of the selected block is transferred to special memory B included in the computer 1 and associated with the input channel of the computer to which the terminal is connected"
The issue of the keyboard is also a problem. Not only is the keyboard used to communicate, but also it appears that they keyboard would be hardwired, though some signal generators, to memory and to the modem, or at least the acoustic coupler. Certainly T1 lines are not modems.
To quote: "Inputs from an operator to the terminal apparatus are entered by means of a key pad 12 which is connected to a signal generator 13 producing signals which after modulation in the modem 6 are transmitted via the isolation and protection circuits 5 and the switch 3 to the line 2, and through that line to the computer 1."
About the only problem I see is that they do talk about an index, which is probably the paragraph that all their lawyers will cite. Again, it only uses a keyboard, and again explicitly states the area of memory(the control area rather than the text area) that the address will be retrieved form. This statement is a bit fuzzy, but the intent is there.
To quote: "The complete reference (i.e. address) of the index items could be displayed on the screen and the operator could be required to press a number of keys on the pad 12 to select a particular item. However, it would be simpler for the operator if the items of the index displayed were simply numbered, say, from 1 to 9 so that all the operator had to do was to press a single key on the pad 12 to select a particular item"
Overall, this sounds more like a custom terminal hooked up to text retrieval service through an X25 line or something like that rather than a GPC connected to the Internet. Even then Kermit would probably do a better job than what they describe.
Let's see how many different variations one can play on the original concepts (e.g. Apple's Hypercard) by altering the location of various information, the definition of "device", the nuances of protocols/caching, and the language for formatting. Frankly there are so many combinations that the concept of a patent for owning this part of the road gives you a claim on the whole highway system is getting a little out of hand. What has made the WWW succeed? One early "free" software package that enforced the concept of a URL (which alas has not progressed to persistent URI/URNs), a text markup people could remember without overloading the ol' brain cells, and a protocol which recursively fetched and automated the old ftp by an order of magnitude. Any one of these ideas had been around in various forms, but it was the combination and the fact that reduced network costs made it available to the mass consumer market that made the whole kit-and-kaboddle take off. Trying to claim afterwards that one particular primitive variant was the sole originating invention smells to me of patenting the concept of a toll road then laying claim to the whole highway. If the company can claim their ideas were instrumental, then I think a lot of people would be *very* interested to discover where in the digital DNA (aka source code for browsers/servers) their ideas have taken root. How many of the real innovators go ahead and puruse the patent database anyway? If it can be implemented by a college student from first principles (and god knows how many httpd servers are coded as classroom exercises nowadays) then pushing the claim of outside prior art seems a little disingeneous. It might have been novel 10 years ago but economists call this sunk costs, it might as well be written off as far as trying to capture future revenue or positive externalities.
BTW, can anyone recall a telecom company being particularly "innovative" in starting/surviving a complete industry sector/shakeout like mechanical design (AutoCAD), destop publishing (Adobe), relational databases (Oracle) or movie production (SGI)? Perhaps Nokia in phone as fashion accessory. Curious minds want to know.
In life, sometimes the market just doesn't react until the circumstances demand a particular technology. It helps if you're big enough that there's some warm body with related skills that you can catch the latest fad but nowadays coming up with a new idea is not enough, you have to persuade everyone else that its a good idea worth taking on board (the ol' information assymetry problem). Of course getting them to pay for it is another problem. The various basic layers/APIs seem to have evolved (TCP/IP, POSIX, HTTP/MIME, etc) and the rest is engineering compromises.
LL
Well, I'll put it down as a sick joke since the login scripting isn't working so I think their a bunch of hacks.
Here's what I get...
"Microsoft OLE DB Provider for SQL Server error '80040e21'
Invalid character value for cast specification.
/register/register.asp, line 53
"
If they can't keep their scripting together, I seriously doubt they can be believed.
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
Don't forget the US navy single-handedly winning the atlantic war for us all.
/. about daft patents, we get flooded with anti-USPTO, anti-Amazon, anti-whoever filed the patent posts, but this time, as it happens to be a patent from a british company, a most of the posts seem to be an attack on the UK in general. How sad. Next we'll get posts comparing BT to british 'soccer' hooligans, somehow.
Isn't it funny that usually whenever there's an article on
Both "cypherpunk" variations appear to have been disabled. We need a mirror of the story, not more accounts that they're going to shut down. See my above post on the same issue.
Providing they created them with PhotoShop or something else which DID pay the licensing fees, why would they have to? As I understand it UNISYS can't touch anyone as long as they used a licensed implementation of a graphics program.
The revolution will NOT be televised.
Ok, I've read the patent. What it describes is a dialup dumb terminal retreiveing packet information from central information database on a computer.
The patent specifies a dumb terminal, and that the conection be done over a phone line. It claims rights to the dumb terminal, the CRT or "other obviously similar device* ( my paraphrase), the packet system of sending the information and the interface to make it easy to use for non computer users.
This isn't a patent for hyperlinks, it's a patent for WebTV!
Seriously, that's all it describes.
The CRT is obviosly prior art. So they arn't going to try to go for that. The packet system was already in use on the internet in 1989 and has its genesis in Hedy Lamar's spread spectrum broadcasting patent, which expired ages ago, so they can't go over that. Bell had the phone lines tied up a century ago, so they can't go after that. Dumb terminals have been around nearly as long as computers, so they can't go after THAT.
So, they're left with the interface and try to stretch that into hyperlinks, which noone really understands anyway, so maybe they'll get away with it?
Come on guys. You're pushing it here. Go after WebTV.
As for me, I'm using a computer, not a dumb terminal, and I'm accessing information over digital cable. Not even covered by your patent which specifically states the use of phone lines. Not even in your vague references to "other obviously similar" catchall.
Go away. You're bothering us.
According to this history of hypertext doc, Doug Engelbart's system was developed by 1968. Ted Nelson apparently coined the term in '65.
Also CERL had a system called PLATO Notes (forerunner to Lotus Notes, my own shameful little habit) in development from 1973, released in '76.
I think they implemented hyperlinks too.
Information wants to be beer.
"I just read the patent three times and cannot believe it. It's a real patent filed for in 1980 long before Tim-Berners-Lee proposed the world wide web. To put it simply British Telecom came up with the idea of hyperlinks first, simply not in the context of HTML, but this does not change the fact that they did. To all those claiming this is a sign that patent reform is forthcoming are probably right but for the wrong reasons, in 1980 this was probably an original idea. "
But does it predate Xanadu? (re: "Computer Lib/Dream machines" (or whatever the hell it was called>?)
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
I think they are going to end up with a PR nightmare .... they are going to find out that they've targetted the BLIND.
Remember the Norton Guides? They had the same thing as a TSR.
Fight Spammers!
- Prior art is easy to find
- The patent doesn't apply very closely to the web, actually
- ISPs are not the right people to license the technology; browser companies are
In fact it's so far off I wonder somewhat if it isn't just some legal harassment as payback for a deal that some ISPs backed out of with BT...Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
Does anyone remember gopher & how it worked? I seem to remember hearing it used hypertext to navigate but I can't remember & haven't used it.
Heck, even Windows Explorer uses this type of technology. I use the KB to get to "C:\WINNT\SYSTEM32", find an important looking ".DLL" file with the arrow keys and then hit "DEL" and I am returned with the blue screen of death ;)
Actually, it would seem this patent covers any sort of GUI manipulation with they keyboard.
Regardless of that, DON'T USE YOUR KEYBOARD. Only click on links with your mouse and you are fine. Heh...Include a disclaimer such as "These links are mouse compatible only. Any cracking of this URL with a keyboard is done soley (sp?) at your discretion"
--Clay
If you think about it, in the Christian Bible, references like Kings 5:10 (not sure if that one's valid) are a lot like URLs. But the division of Biblical books into smaller sections actually happened kind of late. The Old Testament books specifically did not have that organization at first, and it is sort of arbitrarily applied to the Epistles, too.
---
Zardoz has spoken!
Oper on the Nightstar
Actually, in the US, if prior art exists, the patent is not supposed to be issued. With an overworked(I hope thats the reason) patent office, things slip through. And the patent people being non-technical people, things dealing with computers and such can slip by more easily. If this actually goes to court, BT will lose and their patent will be pulled due to prior art.
Of course, it would have been better that the patent never got issued, but it did, and the US court system will fix that mistake.
Why are they wasting money on stupid cases like this when they still haven't managed to get DSL out to anyone in Britain yet, despite saying last year that it will be available in March 2000?
Off course, Africa is still full of, and ruled by, indigenous people. Not the same in america, is it?
Plus, we are under no impression that this was anything but opressive colonialism.
Americans, OTOH, seem to think that 'democracy' and 'freedom' was born in the US, long before you'd finished rounding up native people.
When was the (mainly african) slave trade banned in the US?
OTOH, I can see MSFT and/or AOL cheerfully supporting this patent and entering into a cross-licensing agreement with BT. Nice way to kill off that pesky free and open Internet.
Remember the Halloween Documents (oohh...hyperlink! That's gonna cost!) and the running themes of de-commodotizing protocols and using IP to squash the competition from OpenSource.
Gordon.
He that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom.
-- J.R.R. Tolkien
That's a good point.
After all, it was Americans that captured the enigma machine, wasn't it, saving our bacon...
Better yet, I believe that Slashdot should plan to form some sort of agreement with Merriam Webster and Oxford Dictionaries to claim that the English language is defined by such books and therefore is something that is patented. Hmmm, me thinks that this will be dealt with every single human being... More at eleven...
Fruit flies like bananas... Time flies like the wind...
I wonder how quickly britishtelecom.com would disappear from the dns's of the various ISPs should this actually go anywhere?
You're sort of wrong. The cotton gin was not and could not be covered by copyright. It is not a published work. Further, the patent on the cotton gin meant that no one could make competing cotton gins (though this wasn't enforced all that well, and Whitney wasn't amused IIRC). Thus it was not merely the idea that was covered by the patent, but the implementation as well.
DFL
Never send a human to do a machine's job.
The Register disagrees. It claims that the patent was filed (presumably in the UK) in 1976, which puts it before Xanadu went public. However, note that the BT patent covers hyperlinks which 'would be selected by the operation of a selected key of the keyboard.'. So by my understanding you're OK if you use a mouse.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
Looking at the Oct 1989 date on the patent I wonder just when mosaic came out... Im also not really sure how the related patent relates to todays web... Sounds to me more like a stand alone system that... reads files. wooooooo "The invention also includes the terminal apparatus itself. " maybe these guys need to sue webtv so people stop using that chit.
In teletext, in band characters are used to display formatting, such as change colour, switch character set, and presumably add links.
An example, if you wished to put the sentence "the red bird" on the screen, with the word red in red, then you'd send the(codeForRed)red(CodeForWhite)bird. The two control codes would be displayed as spaces, and you'd get what you wanted. It was a way to minimize the memory required to store screens back in the days when memory was very expensive.
These control codes were refered to as blocks, because that's what they became on the screen, blocks of space.
If you read the beginning of the abstract, it would appear that BT doesn't have a patent on information, they have a patent on Informaton. I guess we have no choice; a legal document is a legal document. All of us who have hyperlinks that link to various pieces of Informaton have to pay up...I'm just glad all MY links link to information.
Be careful. There are advantages to being able to sue without playing the lawyers costs. Right now If I sue O.J. Simpson he will get the best lawyers money can buy, and odds are win the case no matter the merits of it. Then I would have to pay his lawyers fees, even though if he had hired normal (not the best) lawyers I would have won. We don't want to be in the situation where those with money cannot be sued because they will get the best lawyers without having to pay.
At the same time I agree we need reform. We need to get those sue friviously to pay. If my lawsuit against Mr. Simpson was because he thought about killing my cat, of course I should pay for this lawyers, no matter what the cost. If I sue because he put his SUV in 4 low, and drove all over my flower beds, even though I lose the case due to his expensive lawyers, the judge should determin that I had a chance of winning and decide that I don't owe lawyers fees, adding insult to injury.
The patent actually does a pretty good job of describing a Web server passing out pages to a client considering that the Web was still a number of years in the future when it was written. The server is the central computer referred to, the screen in front of you is the terminal apparatus, and a lot of us connect to the Web through a modem and the PSTN. Certainly an HTML page contains blocks of data to display and blocks of data that contain addresses.
this sounds a lot like television text services, not the web. it's clear the user is expected to key in a number on a keypad to access a relevant page of information. oh and it has to be across phone lines. So I guess we can leave number-accessed teletext services over phone lines for them to make a fortune from (ha) . Of course BT's claim would be stronger if they'd ever gotten off their fat corporate behind and developed the damned thing, but this ridiculous case fits their MO as the simply biggest impediment to technological advancement in Europe in this or the last century.
I was particularly impressed that a password reminder was a required field.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
cypherpunks/cypherpunks worked for me about 15 minutes after you posted that....
* And remember, it's spelled N-e-t-s-c-a-p-e, but it's pronounced "Mozilla."
I don't really care that they obtained the patent legitimately. I don't even care whether it leads to patent reform. Survival of the fittest - they didn't enforce it 10 years ago, and now they don't get to cry foul. The other jungle denizens took their stuff, but screw it - if you left your car unlocked in the bad part of town for TWENTY YEARS would anyone shed a tear if it wasn't still there when you got back? Hell, if they had even been HALFWAY on the ball they could have said something 2-3 years ago when all this stuff was starting to make money.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
If you file a patent, you should start charging royalties immediately, not after it has become popular. I hate it when people do it - e.g. Unisys.
It should be the patent filer's responsibility to inform everyone that a patent is in place. I bet GIF wouldn't be as popular as it is now if Unisys told people that it had the patent in the first place.
Waiting for the patented application to become popular then use it as a cashcow is just grossly hypocritical and unethical.
They had a patent on a closed videotext system or some such thing, and they went after Microsoft with the patent. MS then partenered up with them as part of a settlement, and they went after Netscape. Netscape asked for help, and the case was summarily dismissed.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
Besides, Xanadu is certainly prior art, so why don't these people just go and get lost?
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
Al Gore didn't invent this?
Yep. Hold the presses!!!
Jeff
stty erase ^H
Hyperlinking started at least as early as Hypercard, maybe earlier. As someone pointed out, analog versions of linking go back thousands of years.
- Andy R.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
May the God(s) have mercy on your (im?)mortal soul if you're a Jerry Springer fan.
For royalties and service fees for patent violation. Early in the year 1775, I filed for a patent in the USPTO. This patent guaranteed me the monopolistic freedom to sue anyone pursuing royalties for a stupid patent.
nerdfarm.org
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
It seems to me, that this patent covers anything, where you use an input mechanism on a kind of "index" at a client to make a server come up with changing your display according to what that index refers to. (If they already extend this patent to cover WWW-links they have to extend "keyboard" to "input mechanism" to include mose, "terminal" has to be extended to any form of client, "phone line" has to be extended to any means of connection).
So surely this patent covers any client-server information access using any form of index like electronic library catalogues or any other form of electronically indexed database if only it has some form of visible index (this actually matches the description in the patent much closer).
It would also cover configuring the server side of a terminalconnection or any aplication running on a server the terminal is connected to via an option menu. This too is a much better match to the patents wording, small wonder, since the patent was thought of with a "one server, many dumb terminals" structure in mind.
Now it is very strange indeed, that the patent holders never tried for lincense fees from all those libraries, or anyone with a server-terminals structure setup for that matter. Maybe it was too easy then to dig up prior art. Or maybe they just got inspired by the Rambus Toshiba deal and just wait for someone who's paying before thinking.
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
Oh. Whew. Thank God I can't read. :)
This is like the memex posited by Vannevar Bush. It was a system to organize all of your notes based upon a pre-hyperlink concept. It would be a series of documents on supermicrofische accessable by record numbers like the hyperlinks of today. Very cool, but I don't know if it is invalidating.
Lowmag.net
Nurture ideas and creativity
Entertain concepts
Develop and challenge theories
Reward genuine effort
Celebrate delivery
and learn from mistakes
You should have to prove delivery before reaping rewards from patents. Where the benefit to society can be measured and is deemed to exceed the benefits to the invididual (read company), the reward should be distributed to society rather than to the individual.
Note, I do not use the words protect, restrict, punish, blame, profit or bureacracy.
--Rob.
This patent seems to cover pretty much the entire Internet. Remember gopher? It could be navigated by entering a key for the information that you want and brought pages of information to be displayed on your CRT.
I use a laptop with a LCD screen... So BT can suck it!
That person or entity might, however, need to purchase a license for future use if he makes new use of the infringing technology. I'll let a real patent lawyer tackle that ball of wax.
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
Since when did it become possible to patent an idea? I've always thought patents were supposed to be for specific inventions. That why the patent office used to collect all the old models of the inventions.
That's also how companies get around patents of physical inventions. They find another way to do the same thing .
Seem like most of the contentious patent stories that show up on slashdot have to do with the patenting of ideas. I mean if Alexander Graham Bell had patented the idea of communicating remotely, rather than the telephone, it would have covered two way radio, possible television, email, ect. The only way around it would have been if someone had patented letter writing or the telegraph.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't patents only apply for 17 years after they are granted? 2000-1980 = 20 > 17.
:)
Karma Police, arrest this man, he talks in maths
He buzzes like a fridge, he's like a detuned radio
[an error occurred while processing this directive]
The implication I was getting from reading this is that it would cover more of the internet on cell phones and potentially Net Appliances.
Do you honestly think the patent system will be changed in a fair manner if the driving force behind it is Corporate Lobbying? Face it, if Time Warner, Micro$loth and AOhelL get their hands on the lawmakers and have a genuine reason to change patent law they'll do it with so many loopholes and catchphrases that they'll end up with even more dominance over the areas they have patents in.
I'm not sure this is the lesser of two evils.
I'm not even sure we can do anything about it, the vast majority of the public wouldn't even begin to understand, or even care about, the changes proposed by lobbyists. The Corporations would promote the changes with propaganda about "Don't let British Telecom pick your pockets. Vote YES on proposition 69."
But they won't mention article 17, subsection 42 which gives them the right to sue people like mad if they are even in appearance of violating "recognized" trademarks.
Steven
--
I would never, ever, be a Lawyer, take my advice with a grain or two of sand.
-- I have marked myself unwilling to moderate-- I don't have other accounts to artificially inflate the karma of
Very easy to take the piss about the war, but the US were on the OTHER side of the atlantic at the time.
The US has never had to go through a modern war on it's own territory.
Think Perl Harbour, with bigger, heavier bombers (thus heavier payload) EVERY night raining bombs down on UK cities.
No precision bombs then. It was indescriminate bombing. Civilian targets etc.
It's understandable that we needed outside help for supplies, afterall, we are an isolated island without the massive natural resourses of the US.
The patent was filed in 1980 so it should expired as I understand it.
To bring up a specific example, IIRC, the Microsoft help system had linking going pretty far back.
Oh well, another registration-required site that I won't be visiting. How about including that info in the story summary, so that we don't have to waste our time clicking on the link?
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
"We will be inviting ISP's in the U.S. to licence that technology from us."
Wow, I wonder how many people will get in on the ground floor of this revolutionary technology. I know that I'll accept the invitation. Oh, wait a minute...
Eh...
There's no way this can be right. I thought that the idea of a hyperlink has been around since the late 60's? Xanadu or something????
The government has sold a monopoly, errr.. patent to a company for an odvious technology
-Compenguin
Why didn't they try to charge a long time ago? Is there a rule, similar to the trademark dilution idea, that if you don't protest people violating your patent for 10 years, then it's assumed that you don't care?
Mind you I fail to see how ISPs are infringing on this patent more than browser/server developers since they are the ones actually using the technology. If a piece of software infringes on a patent, you go after the software company, not the users.
Oops! Mistook the filing date ('80) for the dated granted ('89). IIRC, Allan Touring had some opinions on the matter which influenced Bush as well...it's been a while since I've delved into the origins of the GUI. Hell, when you think about it, some Usenet readers and BBSs store and retrieve information along lines uncomfortably close to the BT patent, as does any program that acts as a front end interface for a database.
SoupIsGood Food
The patent is very clear -- it applies to computer systems where data is transmitted via the public telephone network.
Thats probably why they're only targeting ISP's.
This is a conspiracy on the part of us Brits to make it impossible for Americans to create any websites, thereby removing the strangehold the USA has on the web.
Just think - if this works, there'll be no more websites that automatically assume their users are in the USA ("Enter your ZIP code here"...)
As they have not ever bothered to enforce it in the past. Courts typically see this is "cashing in" and tell the plantiff to kiss off as they had plenty of prior knowledge of violation and time to enforce. Now to enforce would place a hardship on those already using the technology etc. and then the courts typically throw the claim into the public domain... so don't get your /. all bunched....
We don't have any 100 megaton bombs. The largest we ever made was about 15, and that was an accident. We barely make 1 megaton bombs anymore. Who's going to pay for this beast? Not our "cut the military spending" tree-hugging government.
Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
... ICANN
Not that I'd expect people like you to check facts, but there are no hereditary peers, and we are currently trying to figure out what we should do with the House of Lords. (in particular, how to appoint Lords).
$500/yr is NOTHING compared to some of the benefits that come from just holding the patent.
Good God!
You're right, $500/year is nothing, especially given that today's standard procedure with patent enforcement is to not enforce the patent for a period of time and encourage people to use it, then surprise everyone years later (when it has become a de-facto standard a la GIF and MP3) with demands for royalties. Obviously, BT had an extra nine years to persue this strategy, with possibly catastrophic results for the internet.
Another example of the patenting system not only being unnecessary for innovation, but downright destructive to the entire innovative process.
It is past time for the patent office to be closed and the entire system to be scrapped.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Americans, OTOH, seem to think that 'democracy' and 'freedom' was born in the US, long before you'd finished rounding up native people.
And how long did it take to eliminate positions in UK government based on birthright? Oh, I forgot, you still have them.
Yeah, a House of Lords is real democratic and free.
--
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
>Never understood how people like you can joke
>about a war where millions of people were killed
>in action, and millions of others effectively
>murdered for living in the wrong country or
>subscribing to the wrong religion.
You sound like a very serious person. Humor, I'm sure often does piss someone off somewhere. I don't know if you fought in the war, or had a close friend or family member fight or die in WWII. I have, my father was there.
How can I joke about events wherein people suffered and died? I suspect much the same way other have. Mel Brooks (who is jewish) has made fun of many events in hitory where people were killed for stupid reasons. The BBC aired an very popular TV show about WWII called Ello Ello(or some such). Broadcast in the US was a show called Hogans Heros, which also made fun of the war.
People can enjoy mement of humor without having it having an impact on their serious feelings about such events. I might very well make you "sick" or fill you with hate. It's hard for me to tell. You did little to eplain why you were made sick by my post.
I can only say that it was written in good humor. I doubt there was anything serious in my post. I was sure that even without a smiley face that people would know I was joking.
On a serious note, it's not important ot trace the roots of the oginal settlers who landed in, what's now called New England. From my point of veiw the people of the US have come here from all over the world. We had an exptremely imperfect history which included slavery, geneocide, and much more. I was not around for much of that. I except that the people who came before me had poor judgement (as I'm sure I will), or were maybe evil. I don't know. I do know that there are enough of us trying to be better and make this a better country.
History is something that came before. It's important to understand, but it's also important to understand that it's not over. History starts now. History starts with you, with me, and with the next tick of the clock.
I do the best I can to help other, to expect, to understand, to listen. I know that the goverenment of the US has often done wrong. The government is often the tool of whomever can pay the most to get "their man" into office. This scheme of government has cost lives, cultures, and almost entire races of people.
I am just a man. I must start with what is inside me, and move outward from there. I try to be the kind of people I might have looked up to as a child. I want my childern to look up to me.
I like to think that the people of the US (not the current rulers) see themselves as part of the world. We are not from here, not originally. We are the brothers, sister, uncles, mother, to all the people of the world. When there is a war somewhere in the world you know that there are people in the US who are losing family. That is a hard thought. What other country in this world is so touched by the world's pain?
Our government is not always so touched, but the people are. Our government is somewhat out of our hands and in the pockets of large companies, or other bank accounts. Our companies will go to any leight to insure that they make the most money, no matter how many lives are lost as long as they are lost outside of the US.
The US is imperfect, and we have much to be asamed about in our history and current activities, but we always dream of a better US and a better world. Someplace where the lives, and wishes of every single person means something. We want a better world, because we are from every part of the world.
I am a serious person, but I know that humor, jokes, and making fun are important. I am truely sorry that not everyone can see humor for what it is. I'm sorry, you felt hurt. I also know that that is no reason to stop.
-- TigerSmile
James Dornan
-- Prepared at the direction of, or to be sent to Legal Counsel, in anticipation of litigation. Attorney Client Pri
this is absolutely amazing. next thing we know, we will have people trying to reinforce patents on toilet paper, and more. when is this madness going to end?
--- d'oh
Right. And the way this is worded, the manner in which the typical forms-oriented mainframe application from the 1960s interacted with the typical block mode CRT would constitute prior art.
The language of the patent clearly releates to teletext. I don't know if you had/have this in the states, but it is a system which sends text pages either in the scan-lines at the beginning of a television frame or in simple dialup systems like the French Minitel or BT's own Prestel. The system is page-oriented, which is what is meant by a 'block' (40 columns by 25 lines of text and crude block graphics).
What I understand this patent to mean is that non-displayed information sent with a page could be used to select further pages which would then be requested from the server. So I think that it does describe hyperlinks adequately. I'm inclined to agree that the patent probably shouldn't have been granted (but if Xanadu was still under wraps at the time you can't claim it as prior art).
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
cipherpunk/cipherpunk
(you're welcome)
----------------------------
The patent says that (paraphrased) the link text is the first part, the address is the second part.
In HTML, the address (HREF attribute) comes first, then the link text.
May seem silly, but Motorola patented cell-phones with flip-down microphones. So what did the competition do? They created cell-phones with flip-up earpieces.
I know I'm nit-picking, but maybe it'll work. Any thoughts?
on the IBM patent db, it's listed under "BT invention of air(tm)" describing a breathable gas on planet earth.
i wonder what big-wig at BT thought it would be a good idea to try to enforce this. Idiots.
I am that that is, not that that is not, that is.
Okay I just checked out Xanadu and agree that I was wrong, it seems that they have Prior Art. I also looked at Xanadu's paper to the ACM and noticed that several references go back to 1965 or earlier. Could someone please email this link to info@scipher.com and explain to them why taking on BT's case was a lost cause.
What about Apple's Hypertext product from the mid 80's? That used hyperlinks out the yang.
"Stop whining!" - Arnold, as Mr. Kimble
Isn't Amazon.com's "one-click" patent American? Now, there's a big. At first I didn't pay much attention to these stupid-patent articles... then I realized that the USPO is kinda the world PO.
Then I was PO, because as a Canadian I don't have "home turf" equality if I ever have to attack a stupid patent in court. And my money's worth nothing. Goddamn.
Data East: "Leaders in Dot Matrix Technology" - Star Wars pinball
Where'd I hide that old Renegade BBS software. This could be a good thing.. In lots of ways BBS's had more class. Those rat bastahds won't get one penny from me.
----Thanks for this blood-boiling news--it's made my day.
I've always liked the idea of having the suer have the potential of having to pay the defendent's legal fees and court costs upon losing a frivalous lawsuit... Then again I guess this is partially in place with the concept of a counter-suit...
-- A computer without COBOL and Fortran is like a piece of chocolate cake without ketchup and mustard
Bzzt. Thanks for playing.
A: Until after the LZW compression was established in the CompuServe GIF format--this was in 1994, the year before Internet Explorer 1.0's release.
Or here it is:
RPT: BT to seek to exercise hyperlink patent in U.S. through Scipher19/06/2000 13:26:41
LONDON (AFX) - British Telecommunications PLC has employed Scipher PLC to exercise a historic patent on hyperlinks, the technology whereby internet sites cross-link to each other, to U.S. internet service providers, Scipher said today.
Dr Ken Gray, chairman of Scipher, said that BT claims to have patented the hyperlink technology in doing their work on information retieval systems, which is used extensively throughout the navigation of the World Wide Web.
He said the patent predates the HTML standard that currently exists.
"On behalf of BT we are attempting to licence (hyperlink technology), and inviting licences to be taken out by ISPs in the States," Gray said.
"We will be inviting ISP's in the U.S. to licence that technology from us."
"Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something" - Plato
Never understood how people like you can joke about a war where millions of people were killed in action, and millions of others effectively murdered for living in the wrong country or subscribing to the wrong religion.
Perhaps its time people like you stopped believing everything Hollywood glams up and rams down your throat?
Maybe you would profit by looking into "your" history a little bit too. Check out which army Washington served under. Also look to see where the original immigrants came from and then trace them back, ironic isn't it?
But then you won't as you're clearly jingoistic, as proven by your swipe at a nation rather than the faceless corporation in question.
Now don't you have homework to do?
Wow, this one might be big and bad enough that the whole patent system might take a shake. I can see all those ISPs calling up representatives to get the matter dealt with.
Good one, BT. You may yet absolve us of stupid software patents.
In space, no one can hear you moo.
You don't know tax hell... move to Canada :)
Remove the NOSPAM to spam me...
The only thing that could come of this is this asinine company lining the pockets of a few lawyers who jump on the bandwagon (I don't blame the lawyers - wouldn't you take money from idiots like them?). This case can't possibly go anywhere but to dismissal. I just hope a precedent isn't set too quickly. The more time the company has to file suits, the more money they'll lose.
Don't act too quickly - idiocy takes time.
Send your friends messages of love at fuck-you.org
The fact they think they can enforce this is pretty funny. This is nearly equivalent to trying to patent the concept of verbs.
--
I wouldn't bother to correct this, but when sorted by score, this comes out as the third or fourth post in the story. As a result, it should be corrected.
Anyway- to my point- Not to flame or anything, but many, many people in this discussion have pointed out that hyperlinks were a novel idea, not in 1980 (when BT "invented" it), but in 1960. Check out xanadu.net for more details. If 20 years doesn't a) qualify as "prior art" and b) disqualify you as "original" then I don't know what does.
~luge
IAAL,BIANLY
Actually, this method was first used by the Talmud...colored inks and everything...the idea was the basic text of Torah was surrounded by (I believe) 17 different commentators in the margins...
:)
This idea was further borrowed by later Christians to make Biblical concordances and glosses.
Hey....I'm Jewish, does that mean that BT is going to come after me for quoting Talmud?
Oh, wait, prior art, it's the other way 'round. I lived in London for almost 2 years and put up with BT's huge inflated prices, broken phonecards, and soforth...looks like they owe ME...jam today!
That their patent could be interpreted as to cover hyper linking, but from the wording of it, it sounds like it may be covering anything which can be deemed a terminal (ie including a PC running Windows, Xwindows, MAC Desktop ect) in which you use something to represent something else (Icons) which may or may not be on the local terminal as long as it uses Public Telephone lines to locate the resources. Kiss PC-Anywhere, VNC, Carbon Copy, Xwindows Terminals goodbye unless it is overturned.
OK, educate me. How are they appointed now?
BTW, I have nothing against the UK, but when the guy brings up slavery from 135 years ago...
--
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
"We will be inviting ISP's in the U.S. to licence that technology from us."
Better wait till they stop laughing, boys.
8)
"...they may harpoon us, but they ain't gonna pick us up on no radar screen!"
Wait, so is there a patent on using an Index or a Bibliography? There basically paper "links" to other papers. How many Web Pages are there? How many ISPs are they going to sue? This has gotten me so fired up I want to pull a fight club on their ass.
While the 'hyperlink' term may be a more recent event, how is this patent different from things I've been doing since the mid 70's. Example: IBM 327X type display device, retrieve information over lines from a central computer, storing hidden information in certain blocks on the screen. The user selects information from a visible accessible field on the screen, which is transmitted back to the central computer along with the hidden fields (blocks). The central computer returns more information to the terminal from based upon the selection and the hidden 'blocks'. Hey folks (ie BT), this has been done for YEARS before 1989 OR 1980. (To jazz it up a little, you could even use light pen fields to make your selection). Oh, and I first worked for a place that did this back in 9/74.
When did you first realise this? They Have had this patent for a while. Did somebody bump their head one day and realise they "invented" this idea? Get real. My best guess is that Brit-T was jealose of an American inventing the phone--an American I might add who was born in Scottland. I think They are just jealose of the technological advances that American Telephone companies have made. They just want to say..."Me TOO!".
This is utterly stupid. Why aren't they going after other countries--including their own. Why us? Time for another "Boston Tea Party"? This time we could all wear crowns and try and be the royal family!
I think I might have to go back to stop reading the news. It makes me sick to think companies will try this! Below is a letter of the future:
!
That will be all we have left to say if these stupid patents are allowed to continue!!
At the next eco-hypocrisy-meeting, count the private jets used to get to the meeting. Should be interesting to see that
See also:
l:cypherpunks p:cypherpunks
8)
"...they may harpoon us, but they ain't gonna pick us up on no radar screen!"
Here's a link to the patent.
Story here
They talk about ISPs liscencing, but all ISPs do is provide content. It's the browsers that will need to liscence this 'idea'. This is pretty obvious. Why go up against ISPs? Probably because it's less scary than going up against Microsoft.
--mere mortal--
A country that lets people patent obvious technology has STUUPID politicians.
As of now, I consider USA a shitty country. How can you let someone keep a patent secret, and then try to enforce it after it has been "re-invented" and widespread?
The "freedom" you talk about all the time in USA, what can I say? YOUR KIND OF FREEDOM STINKS!
Accually that is how the patent system works in almost every country except the US. Over here if you invent something (that is patentable) you legally own the patent no matter who pays for the registration. All you need is to have your lawyers go after whoever filed for the patent. If you have no money you simply prove to a compititor that you invented it first, sell them a license, and then they will pay the lawyer fees for you. Not exactly of course, I think you will then need to file for the patent and there are a bunch of other laws.
Point is, the US is the only country that protects the little inventor. Everyone else protects those with big bucks who file for a patent on everything they see.
Enjoy the show!!!
"Then it comes to be,
that the soothing light at the end of your tunnel,
is just a frieght train coming your way..... "
"Fortune, Fame, Mirror Vain, Gone Insane..... But The Memory Remains...
Basically BT claims it filed a patent in 1976 (eventually granted in 1989) due to its work on the old Viewdata and Prestel systems it ran as part of the GPO.
You can actually view the patent on line (it is a US patent) as number 4,873,662 entitled 'Information handling system and terminal apparatus therefor' (phew!)
Richy C.
--
Eminent domain is starting to be the *only* answer for things like this, and this.
Chivalry is not dead, it's just frequently misspelt. - M. Langley
Here's one for all you "replace www. with partners." crap........what's the magic key for this site?
Why win9x really sucks
The courts show that for well over 10 years British Telecom was NOT enforcing its patent, and therefore loses any royalties gained from its use.
There are diffrences between copyrights, patents, and trademarks. If you can't be bothered to understand them, then why do you bother do open your mouth?
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
I don't think they do expect it to stand up in a court of law. People who've experienced BT and their "services" will know they just want your money for doing as little as possible.
Well, if you think you're smart for bashing down the dumb Americans, think again. Britain only held out in the Battle of Britain thanks to US aid. You think those were all British fighters in the air? Ha! The United States was sending aid to GB since 1939.
You think the crappy British tanks did anythink in Tobruk? Think again, there were Shermans on those fields. Without US supplies, the British would have been raped.
How dare they choose to sue the ISPs!
Obviously, the people writing the browsers are the ones who are infringing on the patent.
They must sue MS! We must make this clear to them!
(cypherpunk, cypherpunk seems to work here, too)
To all those claiming this is a sign that patent reform is forthcoming are probably right but for the wrong reasons, in 1980 this was probably an original idea/
Looking at the patent, I see that it was granted in 1989, 9 years (!!) after it was filed.
What an obscenety.
What the hell was the patent office doing sitting on this for nine year! If it had been granted in 1980, the patent would have expired in 1997 and this wouldn't even be an issue. Patents have long since outlived their purpose -- the market encourages innovation without government enforced monopolies. I don't know if this particular abuse will lead to reform or not, but even if it does, reforming the patenting system will simply mean tweaking a broken and destructive system such that the net negative effects become tolerable to a majority. It will still be a millstone around our collective neck, perhaps with a few pounds chipped off to appease us but still weighing us all down.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Way to go BT! You have once again proved that people in other countries (let us not even talk about people in this country, notably the U.S. government, and Unisys) do not understand the internet.
n btnews_corpdoc.jsp?BV_SessionID=@@@@190570 1115.0961433426@@@@&BV_EngineID=calidckiijjbekfcfk cfcgeo.0&newsItem=9404
I guess the people at BT ignored this statment made by their own Cheif Executive Officer, Sir Peter Bonfield;
http://www.bt.com/btnews-bin/btnews/bt/scripts/
Given that we've all been hyperlinking for ages and BT has said nothing isn't it a case of well, tough, if BT wanted to enforce the patent they should have done it ages ago. IANAL BTW.
Dude. This is totally false. Often (in fact, usually), the Defense will countersue for attorney's fees and costs. And once in a while, they get it. But just because a Plaintiff loses doesn't mean their case is frivolous. Just like it's hard to prove that any given moderator is being unfair and has no legit reason for their actions, it's very hard to prove that the Plaintiff in a lawsuit has filed suit just to be annoying, like some kind of harassment tactic
"Beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he deems himself your master."
his troops were busy being pummelled in Africa
Oh, you mean the Afrika Corps? The under-supplied, under-manned Afrika Corps? The Afrika Corps that only lasted as long as they did because they were so well led? The Wermacht could eat up those casualties in a heartbeat. They had 2/3 of their army fighting the soviets and most of the rest was in Western Europe.
You'll never convince the yanks though. They've been indoctrinated since age six to believe that they saved the world
Go fork yourself. I suppose 'Brits' have been indoctrinated to believe they could have pulled off D-Day and crushed the Japanese themselves. Britain wouldn't have lost, but they sure as hell wouldn't have won. The Soviet Army would have pushed to the Channel and then you'd have had yet another unfriendly nation across the waters. Would you like that?
I propose that the French take up the practice of reminding Americans that they saved their butts in the war if independence
But they don't. You know why? Because they recall not one, but two occasions when lots and lots of US troops forcibly evicted foriegn armies from their territory.
During your great war of independence, that formed your nation, where you kicked redcoat butt, most of the British army was busy fighting Napoleon, and could not have cared less about you whiney colonials
WTF?!?! Hello, McFly?!? The Napoleonic Wars were 30 fucking years after the US revolution. And your opinions on accents are so stupid I'm not even going to address them.
Dyolf Knip
--
Dyolf Knip
Also in regards to Englebart, you may surf to:
http://www.csl.sri.com/history/augment.shtml
or
http://www.bootstrap.org/library.htm
No hyperlink included in post to protect me from BT.
_damnit_
_damnit_
It's my job to freeze you. -- Logan's Run
And outside of the Blitz, neither have you. As bad as the bombing was, it simply doesn't compare to an invasion by land forces. In fact, when was the last time there was any fighting in Britian?
No precision bombs then. It was indescriminate bombing. Civilian targets etc.
And when the Allies got the upper hand, the British were just as eager to start doing the same to German cities. In fact, they prefered night missions which decreased precision and increased civilian casualties.
It's understandable that we needed outside help for supplies, afterall, we are an isolated island without the massive natural resourses of the US.
Yes, very understandable. Correct, Britain does not have the natural resources of the US. But when you say it you make it sound like it's somehow our fault and that we were simply expected to supply unbelievable ammounts of food and weapons.
Dyolf Knip
--
Dyolf Knip
This is what happened with Napster. There is Gnutella, CuteMX, Scour.net, and the 100,000 banned Metallica users that got back on; but they don't sue them because it would drain even the RIAA's deep pockets.
2600.com put up the DeCSS program on their servers, when the court issued an injunction to stop that before the trial, they hyperlinked it to other places, which the court upheld. Why doesn't the MPAA go after them? It can't because they are in another country. But the MPAA is still suing 2600.
I don't really know my history all that well but I believe that whenever someone would get arrested or shut down for selling Hustler magazine, Larry Flynt would go to that town and get arrested just so he could fight it (and because he could afford to).
So this is what will happen. Cease and desist orders will be given, many will stop voluntarily, a few high profile people will refuse, and they will get sued. You try and put one up on your website though and your boss will tell you that we can't do that anymore because "We might get sued."
Of course that is the way it happened with Mp3's at my place of business. Hyperlinks... seem to be a different story.
It's ignorance itself to think you know all the answers. -Miles Comer
Dyolf Knip
--
Dyolf Knip
uhhh...Evidently I thought the Napoleonioc wars commenced on the date of his birth. My mistake.
Hitler could have invaded Britain, had he continued targetting airfields for bombing raids in the Battle of Britain, instead of starting the blitz early. He could have defeated fighter command, but he gave them enough breathing space to recover. This was the mistake that lost him the Battle of Britain, and made invasion impossible in 1940.
The Afrika Corps was under-supplied and under-manned because British bombers were so effective at bombing their supply ships, thanks to the codebreaking work done at Bletchley Park.
I agree with your point about the Soviets. They would definitely have won the war. I wish they had. They might have shut the hell up about it.
I agree that they're aiming the licensing at the wrong people. ISPs are just connectivity. But it's sort of an interesting question: Where, exactly, does the "linking" take place? Is it in the browser, when I click on a button, or is it in the html code itself when the author codes it, or is it somewhere else entirely?
It's obvious that this whole link patent mess is going to get the slashdot community up in arms, but I really have to wonder, is it worth it on this one? Obviously, the very notion of this lawsuit is ridiculous (does somebody have a patent on library card catalogs, too?), but it also seems that the "appropriate" target of any efforts to license hyperlinking is impossibly ambiguous.
-schussat
The hour of noon has passed. Let us go and get some Kentucky Fried Chicken.
Scipher is going to have a very hard time with this.
The patent is really focused on such things as display characteristics fully as much as location or a remote hard drive or other remote data storage system reachable over phonme lines.
If this is enforceable against ISP or other remote data storage sites, it seems just as enforceable against software developers (Microsoft? Sun?) who have developed operating systems to allow access of formatting information from remote sites.
Jack
J. V. "Jack" Bryar
Personally, I think that disbarring lawyers who file exessive frivilous lawsuits would work. Shouldn't that fall under unethical conduct anyway?
Ted Nelson coined the term. Ted Nelson attempted a more audacious version with micropayments, etc. starting in 1960. This predates the patent grant by over 20 years!
BT's in for a nasty surprise.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
--
OK, so let me get this straight. If this is being applied to the WWW, then the patent covers: TCP/IP, PPP, every web browser out there, and every computer connected to the web through a modem.
Man, I oughta try to patent some little bit of x86 assembly, and include the line "The invention also includes the apparatus used to execute the code." I'd be rich!
I know this is all a little vague, sorry, my memory isn't what it used to be...
British Telecom has just patented Bullshit and its smell!
-Compenguin
So the idea that if the USA hadn't entered the war, the UK would have been invaded is crap.
The UK was only able to fight in 1939-1940 because the US had been loaning it massive sums of money --- which was politically unpopular, and got a lot of people pissed off at Roosevelt.
Aparantly some people are walking around with their thumbs permanantly inserted into their sphincter. It is really hard to fathom that someone thinks that this kind of suit would work. THe free information economy is loooming ahead and big business is getting worried that they will no longer leverage control over the whole world, the information contained therein, and people in general. I hope this is tossed out and laughed at. Noone would ever accept terms like that. pay one entity for hyperlinking... go fuck yourself.
Indeed, Ted Nelson's stuff is useful prior art; also Vannevar Bush's "As we may think" was published in the late 40's / early 50s and definitely described hyperlinks.
So, a pretty obviously stupid patent. Even more stupid of BT that they want to enforce it - their chances of getting money are slim, and the negative publicity is just _bad_.
no taxation without representation!
Dream on, BT.
--
--
Wait a minute, this sounds like rock and/or roll. - Rev. Lovejoy
Uh, dude? I believe that Canada declared war roughly a week after Britain did. Now, Canada's not a large nation, but it did do its part, both economically and militarily.
Perhaps if we dropped a hundred megaton bomb on London, British Telecom would back off, no?
When you post an article about a patent, remember to include the patent number. The links given either require registration or don't lead anywhere useful. Thanks.
U.S. ISPs should just use the Napster defense ... don't sue us, we're not the ones infringing on the patent - it's our tens of millions of users!
I'd like to see those cybersleuths come up with a list of 'hyperlink abusers', a la Metallica. They'll have to haul in the print-outs using hydraulic lifts!
And for those of you who don't wish to register at the news site, the l/p: anoncoward/anoncoward phenomenon is now in effect...
---
script-fu: hash bang slash bin bash
[ approaching AI ]
Dear England,
Every so sorry to inform you again, that we are not interested in paying taxes to you. I thought we made that clear in Boston. Again, I'm so sorry the message was not clear. That is something I cannot apologize for enough. Sorry, sorry, and sorry.
What I have trouble uderstanding is that after killing so many of your "red coats", how did we leave you with the idea in mind that we still wanted to be taxed. I fear we, here in the "states", are not good at communication.
Never the less, do have you people speak to ours. We'll setup a meeting, and "do lunch" as they say.
PS: Please be kind to us, after all we did help a little with that small Hitler problem. Thanks.
-- With love,
The States
-- Prepared at the direction of, or to be sent to Legal Counsel, in anticipation of litigation. Attorney Client Pri
There's all sorts of talk about how the US Government might step in and screw the DOJ's antitrust suit, because Microsoft is such a big part of the US economy that you can't afford to have MS hurt.
:-)
How much more so if the WWW is shut down! The US economy would just tank: all that e-business disappearing. Sales of pron, books, computer crap, auctions -- all stopped!
There's no way BT should ever have received a patent on hyperlinking, particularly in the USA, where there was plenty of prior art!
The US Government may finally be *FORCED* to deal with the joke that is the US Patent Office.
And *that* might save us all.
I figure either this is all a hoax, or BT is trying to help put an end to Internet patent stupidity.
--
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
Patent applications provide no exclusive rights whatsoever. Thus, until the patent has issued, the applicant owns nothing.
any longer. Patents applied for in the US, and almost anywhere else in the world, are subject to a term beginning the date the PATENT HAS ISSUED, and ending twenty years after the APPLICATION HAD BEEN FILED.
Pushing back so-called submarine patents was the primary focus of recent patent reform legislation.
You can't get a public defender to sue someone; you can only get one to defend yourself in a criminal case. That's why they're called defenders.
--
It seems that BT is being a little unfair in targeting American ISPs (The article doesn't mention any international action). Other posters have brought up numerous examples of proir art that should invalidate the patent. However, assuming the patent is valid, it seems that the design of France's Minitel network more closely resembles the system described in the patent. Minitel is an extensive client/server database system that is typically accessed through dedicated terminals. The terminals employ modems and connect to the servers via ordinary telephone lines. Hyperlink style references, as defined by the patent, are used to navigate among the different services. The most important bit is that Minitel was deployed in 1981 so the patent should apply. In short, Minitel infringes on BTs "original" idea. It seems that BT is taking the opportunity to harass American ISPs while giving unfair lenience to their EU neighbor.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
What did they do in the 19th century? Now lets all count to 100 together.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
No. Prior art is anything described in sufficient detail to know what was meant. In practice, however, the Patent Office tends only to consider prior patents as prior art, unless the applicant brings other material to its attention, with the result that most of the history of computer science escapes their notice.
Note that none of Nelson's publications appears in the references to the patent.
I don't see how Nelson could have described hypertext without mentioning the basic mechanism that makes it work, so presumably the BT patent either doesn't cover hyperlinking as such or isn't valid, at least in part.
In any event, the patent expires in 60 days, so who cares? Let them go after Microsoft and AOL. It should be fun to watch, anyway.
You don't frighten us, English pig-dogs! Go and boil your bottoms, sons of a silly person. I blow my nose at your, so-called patents, you and all your silly English lawwwwwwyerrs.
I agree humour is required and generally take-the-piss as much (if not more) than most, but personally find the US "we saved the world (again)" japes somewhat disagreeable, especially when it's a casually thrown in Hitler reference. I doubt that you would joke so lightly about Nagasaki or Hiroshima.
However, I see that this was not a childish trolling exercise and that you are somewhat more thoughtful than I initially thought. I therefore offer my humble apologies. Perhaps I'm a bit too sensitive to such things at the moment. What with the moronic English football fans rioting in Belgium/Netherlands preceded by xenophobic attitudes from the media et al in the build up to the Germany game.
In the meantime, here's a few sobering WWII stat's courtesy of Grolier's site: Some WWII Stat's
PS Allo allo is bloody awful!!
If we wil die for oil, then why not hypertext. I think a few missle-platform-helicopters followed by an army of armed nerds hopped up on coffee and trained on quake can put an end to this evil.
-- http://thegirlorthecar.com funny dating game for guys
Wouldn't dereferencing a pointer count too?
Damnit! Reading this just cost me $.03! I hope I can make it back to my own server in less than $1.75.
- I like pudding.
Man, this is even worse than that GIF patent. Even stupider than that 'fresh grass scent' copyright we saw here on slashdot a while back. When will people stop patenting these absurd things!
Besides the creativity of an easy was of earning a buck, I think of these people as losers.
It seems offensive to me that just an idea can be patented. As other people have pointed out elsewhere, ideas are cheap and a dime-a-dozen. What's difficult is getting a working implementation of a good idea.
Patents should be restricted, at the very least, to demonstrated, working models.
First, make it work, then make it right, then make it fast, then, make it bloated!
Uhmm, I think Ted Nelson would like to get some credit for thinking of "hypertext" and "hypermedia", both terms were coined by him in 1965, long before (1960) this patent was filed.
/mill
http://www.xanadu.com.au/general/faq.html#4
Ted Nelson started on hyperlinking (In fact, he came up with the term in the first place!) in 1960 and had been attempting to develop it with micropayments since that time- hit www.xanadu.net for details of the history.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
the most relevant prior art in this case is likely:
n .html
Theodor H. Nelson, "A File Structure for the Complex, the Changing and the indeterminate." Proceedings of the ACM National Conference, 1965.
Theodor H. Nelson, ?As We Will Think." Proceedings of Online 72 Conference, Brunel University, Uxbridge, England, 1972.
I know of a least one proposal for a hyperlinked microfilm system that dates to the early 1950's but a reference to it escapes me at the moment. While I wouldn't give ted to much credit for implementation (we're still waiting on that) but it's clearly more than a decade before BT...
an article that covers the subject of xanadu fairly well is at:
http://www.sfc.keio.ac.jp/~ted/XUsurvey/xuDatio
see especially the section titled:
PARALLEL DOCUMENTS AND TRANSPOINTING WINDOWS
This could be the patent mistake that finally wakes the general public up to just how messed up the Intelectual Property laws have gotten. Most of the screwy patent decisions that have been made so far have only atracted the attention of the "geeks." This one has the potential to attract widespread attention.
Lets face it, how many people have the potential to be affected by Amazon's affiliate program patent or the one-click patent? It dosen't affect Joe Web User. This has the potential to affect us all where we are most sensitive the wallet.
Hopefully this is just a misinterpretation of some statement made by a moronic middle manager, but if it isn't then we could be in for a wild ride. Remember one of the necesities for any form of government is the consent of the governed. Even in the cold war soviet union the people consented, granted at the threat of death, to be governed. If everyone, and I don't mean everyone on slashdot, I mean a majority of the population of a given country, refuse to be governed by a law then there is nothing that the government can do about it.
"You can't fight in here! This is the war room" --Dr. Stra
Leaving aside for the moment the basic stupidity of what they are doing and also the fact that I misread "pre-WWW" as "pre-WWII"....
Why are they asking ISP's to license the technology? Well, I know why: money. Let me rephrase: How do they expect this to get by any court of law (even in the US)?
ISP's have nothing to do with hyperlinking. All they do is return a page based on a URL request. It's the BROWSERS that handle hyperlinking. Actually, that's not true either. All the browser does is highlight and underline a marked piece of text.
They really want to contact W3C. Hyperlinking is a feature of an "application" (the web) that is "supported" by them.
--
Compaq dropping MAILWorks?
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
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The Internet craze that has swept the U.S. seems to have bypassed France. What's the matter?
Weren't the French ahead of everyone else, going on-line in 1983 with their Minitel terminals?
They were, but their lead has faded. Minitel is a government enterprise. Seventeen million Frenchmen use the creaky system to pay bills, order merchandise and chat electronically.
"The Minitel was a blessing in the 1980s and a problem in the 1990s," says Alex Vieux, organizer of the largest computer trade show in France, IT-Comdex. "When the Internet flared up, there was this heritage, but it was a bad heritage. We French thought we could continue to do on-line, but in a French way." You've got to understand France. The place is run by a bunch of control freaks. If they can't control something, they try to ban it. Not only was the Internet with its easy, open access a danger to Minitel, which yields $1 billion a year in revenue to the government, it also promised to democratize access to information. Horrors. But BT is insane. Compuserve and every other BBS on the planet made all this work from about 1982 on.
And you've got the name of the book he published right too. This is going down in flames.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
PS: It's British Telecom, not English Telecom. English Telecom would be ET, and he's got his own way of phoning home
Does anyone know if USA patents apply to Canadians? Or are we up here entirely free from this patent?
----
Oh my god, Bear is driving! How can this be?
ADVENTURERS! - ANTIHERO FOR HIRE - CARDMASTER CONFLICT
British Telecom did not "come up with the idea of hyperlinks first." Ted Nelson coined both 'hypertext' and 'hyperlinks' in 1963, and worked extensively at Brown on hyperlink code for documents prior to 1970. After 1973, the Xanadu project (later the Xanadu Operating Corporation, later a division of AutoDesk) worked on hypertext systems far more ambitious than Berners-Lee.
For somewhat longer version of the story, start at http://www.udanax.com/.
Should the BT guys get anywhere, I suspect they find that a few other people will be waiting to pick up the check.
> I just read the patent three times and cannot believe it. It's a real
> patent filed for in 1980 long before Tim-Berners-Lee proposed the world
> wide web. To put it simply British Telecom came up with the idea of
> hyperlinks first, simply not in the context of HTML, but this does not
> change the fact that they did. To all those claiming this is a sign that
> patent reform is forthcoming are probably right but for the wrong
> reasons, in 1980 this was probably an original idea.
Sirt Peter Bonfield Comments
No, it's because the USPTO were the only national patent office dumb enough to award a patent.
-- "It's a sad day for American capitalism when a man can't fly a midget on a kite over Central Park" - Jim Moran
If the MPAA's current attempts to stop 2600 from linking to DeCSS fall through, they can bust them for patent infringement!
Maybe, just maybe, this might spark some sensible patent law reform.
Fixing copyright
the article was by Vannevar Bush (first head of the NSF)
As we may think, The Atlantic Monthly, July 1945
reproduced on the web at:
http://www.isg.sfu.ca/~duchier/misc/vbush/
I don't know if you had/have this in the states, but it is a system which sends text pages either in the scan-lines at the beginning of a television frame or in simple dialup systems like the French Minitel or BT's own Prestel.
Similar things exist in the US, such as closed-captioning. The bandwidth used for most data services in the US that transmit over NTSC-based TV signals is the "vertical blanking interval." I once set up a special modem which dumped to a fax machine with faxes of the NYT delivered via VBI.
I don't think this is terribly common now, or ever really caught on, except for such systems as closed-captioning for the deaf. I'm not sure whether CC systems use the VBI or some other unused area of the TV signal.
I think most of the old BBS menus fit the description of this, and predate it. I also remember dialing in over a 300 baud accoustic modem on a VT220 terminal and playing ASCII Star Trek on a mainframe before this patent was applied for. That version of Star Trek certainly meets the description. :-)
Well see, AOL/Time Warner, MS and the link won't have to pay money. They'll just sign a "cross licensing" agreement. In other words, they'll throw a few tasty patents at BT for them to use at no charge in exchange for using the hyperlink patent.
So no, they won't lobby the government to change this, because, as you may conclude, a patent like this only has the effect of keeping out the little guys, who don't have patents to cross license or money to pay BT. This means less competition for the big guys, which means more money for them. Everybody worth a billion dollars or more wins.
In a country that is specifically trying to kill Windows, I wouldn't be surprised if they make us pay to link!
OK.. they can sue the users, at which point American society will rebel against England (again), forcing war, destruction, and a resurgence of hippie movements. They can sue the ISPs, and be shot down because the ISPs don't use the hyperlinks (except maybe on the ISP's homepage, and how many of us go there??), and probably be shot down by the American people (who attack as in #1, even though the courts already told BT NO and sent them home). OR.. finally.. they can sue the browser makers. Netscape and others laugh and ignore them. M$ ends up being the target of a law suit (suprise suprise). That just leaves the question: Which Microsoft??
We don't need no Net Explorer We don't need no Thought control
This has GOT to be the most blatant scam BT has pulled in a long time. It's certainly comparable to their 35 GBP connect charges + time charges + packet charches + phone charges, for their early rival to the Internet, the International Packet Switch Stream.
The idea may have been patented, but "linking" has existed to the earliest days of man. A bit before BT's time! The idea of placing a reference, rather than a complete description, appears in early forms of writing, early naming systems (ever wondered how people got the surname of Cook, Baker, Smith, etc?), early artwork (cave paintings are essentially URLs to the animals being hunted), myths and legends (cross-references are everywhere in that stuff), and even appears in early architecture.
So, unless the patent can be shown to have been granted 10,000 years ago, in which case I'd check it's expiry date, it has been in common usage prior to the patent being granted, which is grounds for dismissal of the patent.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
IANAL of course, but it looks to me like this is a patent for a centralized client server system. The links on the client are supposed to refer to some centralized "system". The web is distributed. This link takes you to my website on a completely different network, different "system", than you started (Here of course). Unless you call the entire Internet a "system" (I suppose you could, but I think that it would have a hard time in court), this patent does not seem to apply.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
Hyperlinks come the closest in my mind to the index in a book. They both direct you to different regions, the hyperlink to a webpage, the index to a page in the book. So maybe I should patent the index for books and magazines, and get paid royalties for everything published with an index. Obviously this is stupid, I see no plausible way for someone to recieve royalties for hyperlinks. I guess I owe them money for this right?
--C:\DOS C:\DOS\RUN RUN\DOS\RUN
Why is BT going after the ISPs? It's the web browsers that implement hyperlinks. If anyone should compensate British Telecom for their use of hyperlink technology, Netscape and Microsoft should.
Did anyone notice that? "... different from a conventional computer terminal ..." does that mean they cannot enforce it on conventional computer terminals because they specifically said it was not applicable to them? Just something that caught my eye.
-djneko
`/\/\
(^.^)
(")(")
not quite an analog pussy, just a cat that plays with vinyl
Here you are doing hypertext over a 'phone' network using 'keyboard' navigation.
Could this be a better target for BT?
Gab
Could someone point out exactly what part of the patent describes "hyperlinks"? It talks a lot about using keys, but the patent really seems to describe those VideoText systems that failed so miserably in the early 80's.
And that BT can scam as many dollars out of the US isps.
That should start to compensate for all the technology US companies have 'invented' from other people over the years...
:-0
To know what you prefer instead of humbly saying Amen to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive. -Robert Louis Stevens Amen.
Donate background CPU time to fight cancer.
This was tried previously with currencies - people printed their own, backed by gold or silver or whatever, and people began to use them. The government (don't recall if it was federal or state) shut them down. Anyone with a hyperlink for this? (and willing to violate patent law by making it? :P)
Windows 2000: Designed for the Internet. The Internet: Designed for UNIX.
You can find the patent here: http://www.patents.ibm.com/details?&pn=US04873662_ _ Here's what it means: IF you have a modem and IF you only dial in to one machine, and IF that one machine has a display system by which it uses one chunk of memory to represent both display and formatting information, and IF you use ONLY keystrokes to indicate that you wish to a) use another piece of data in another block or b) change the formatting of the current block, then you are in violation of the patent. Clever lads, they even designed this unique technology to cover the case that one "computer" might be accessed by several "terminals" (oh, the technology!). In NO case, however, does it cover the possibility that a chunk of information in memory might refer to a memory address on some OTHER machine, which it might be conected to via some newfangled technology, say, a thin piece of wire running out the back. I am especially thrilled by BT's assertion that it is merely because of the "American culture" that we will fight any and all attempt to enforce this "patent" as regards the hyperlink. What's even better is if that you read this patent the right way, BT could claim to have invented computer memory. Wow! GBlandston
Paul.
You are lost in a twisty maze of little standards, all different.
My reading of the patent is that it was a modification to an early version of Viewdata (which originally required the user to enter the full page number of the desired page) in order to permit the more user-friendly "hot key" method of operation ("Press 1 for more, press 9 for menu"). In the context of a videotex system this was probably an innovation, but it's a huge stretch to try to claim it represents "hyperlinks".
Also, IIRC, George Leonard's 1968 book "Education and Ecstacy" foresaw merging of domains of knowledge through what he called cross-linked computer-aided instruction. Sounds a LOT like a hyperlink to me, and probably based on Vannevar Bush's ideas or systems like the old Plato learning system from Control Data Corp.
The clearance system sounds logical. It is not. It is completely arbitrary. -- John Bolton
Bletchely Park
"...in response to a keyboard entry signal. ...selected by the operation of a selected key of the keyboard."
Easy way out: ISP's include a clause requiring users to use their mouse to click on hyperlinks.
--
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http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
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Oops. My bad.
:)
By the way, how the Hell did my post get to 5? I was thinking it deserved the two it started with, maybe three.
Geez.
Is this post not nifty? Sluggy Freelance. Worshi
ok, apparently this is the patent. Two things that bother me:
1) It is a patent regarding terminals. Specifically, links to what they refer to as "blocks". "Blocks" that can control things such as the color on a terminal. I'm assuming that doesn't mean filesystem blocks.. so what exactly is it referring to?
2) It was filed August 15, 1980. How is it possible for this to apply to something that didn't exist yet? I mean, the patent covers a link that controls things like color on a terminal. Hyperlinks consist of addresses to other computers. Hyperlinks don't control the browser at all, they just allow a computer to connect to another. HTML controls what the browser displays.
So what's the deal?
then there's Engelbart's "oNLine System" (NLS) first prototyped some time in the in 1960's.
When you add in Ted Nelson's first use of the term "hypertext" in print, in 1965 (Project Xanadu, the greatest piece of vaporware in history, and Tim Berners-Lee's self-confessed inspiration for enquire Within, which became the Web when it was adapted for WAN use), it gets even more doubtful.
Enquire Within was in use at CERN from 1980.
So it certainly can't be a patent on hyperlinking as such. Actually reading the patent it seems to be more of a patent on Use Of A Markup Language In Computer Networking. Which is definitely pushing it.
TomV
Ahem. I've official decided that "Intellectual Property" is now the property of anyone you've expressed it to, based on the simple premise that most of us have brains and can act on any idea imposed on them. For all those who wish to keep their ideas to themselves, please do so. Thank you. mindslip designs. "We Think, Therefore You Are."
This is a good thing; and this case is a fantastic example of why.
BT did emphatically NOT invent the concept of hyperlinks. At best they bought the patent of someone else, who didn't invent it either.
Hypertext was invented in the 1960s by Doug Engelbart, and the term Hypertext was coined in 1968 by Ted Nelson. The patent would have run out by now if it had been patented at that time.
In the US it is entirely different of course... if someone else invents something but you steal the idea and stick a few grand down- the idea is now legally yours and you can successfully sue the person who invented it!
The US patent system is nutty.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"Shouldn't they be suing Microsoft for having a File menu?... This is absoutley insane. There are *hundreds* of things that this could relate to, they could even sue the University of Washington for making Pine, because, it has, "Informaton for display at a terminal apparatus of a computer is stored in blocks the first part of which contains the information which is actually displayed at the terminal and the second part of which contains information relating to the display and which may be used to influence the display at the time or in response to a keyboard entry signal. " ..... *sigh*
--- 'dex
now I could be wrong, but I can't see this being HYPERTEXT unless all the links are in a block at the end of the file - surely a pretty restricted patent?
--
-=DaveHowe=-
Some British company, and some goofy story about how they are going to use patents to destory the web in their attempt to own it.
Thought I was reading The Register for a second =)
Doesn't the MS help system work with hyperlinks?
It would seem to me that MS will be really hurting when this comes to issue.
Norris/Palin 2012
Fact: We deserve leaders who can kick your ass and field dress your carcass.
--
--
Socrates was asked where he was from. He replied not "Athens," but "The world."
Sorry all, but I patented breathing in 1974. So, you all will have to pay royalties everytime you breathe. Smokers also have to pay taxes.
-brain
Second, to me it doesn't sound like the patent describes hyperlinking. How many navigate the WWW by using a keypad to select numbered menu items?
Claim 5(d)
...
(d) keypad means coupled to at least one of said modem means and said local memory means for manual entry of keyed digital data,
(f) means coupled to said further memory means and to said keypad means for addressing such second portion stored in said further memory means using keypad digital data of less extent than any one of said complete addresses for another block of information to address a portion of the further memory means and cause a read-out portion of the further memory means to supply the complete address of the next block of information which is to be retrieved and utilized for display purposes, the thus obtained complete address being transmissible via the modem means to said central computer.
RocketAware: Code and the knowledge to use it!
The idea of hyperlinking can actually be traced back to the reading of the Koran, cross-referenced with the writings of prophets. When one reads the Koran, you switch between the main text and the subtexts fluently. Hypertext links.
(thats the rough ida, perhaps someone with a more in-depth knowledge of Islam would care to add....)
Know what I like about atheists? I've yet to meet one that believes God is on their side.
As dumb as it may sound, why don't we open a username "slashdot" with password "slashdot" on all these lame places that require registration? Fake information would fill their nasty little forms in nicely, and then it wouldn't be an issue, da?
Thank you for helping me see the light.
Your wallet stays open. Our source remains closed. We are MSFT
...of the attempt to enforce a patent on browser status bars a few years ago? That fell through, and this will, too. We have nothing to fear from this. The government wouldn't dare enforce this, because there's too much money invested in the Internet right now.
Which is a problem, if you think about it. The government will only pay attention to freedoms on the web whule there's money in it. And that's why the economic downturn among the dotcoms is bad (along with the unemployment it will cause, of course). As soon as it doesn't look like the Internet is creating multimillionaires capable of donating large amounts of cash to campaigns, and they can't be accused of stifling business opportunities (the businesses having already stifled themselves, and the opportunities having dried up), Congress will move to establish as much control as possible.
---
Zardoz has spoken!
Oper on the Nightstar
Whoo hoooHaHaHaHa!!! Those British have a real sense of "humour", I've got to tell you.
...Unless USPTO has say in this... ::silence::
Don't overreact, guys. Just give it the hardy chuckle it deserves and move on with your day.
I mean, honestly, who is going to take this seriously???
This is a manual virus. Copy it to your sig and help me spread!
Perhaps we could learn from BT. I mean I remember a time when AT&T pursued any firm that was trying to work on telephones for violating AT&T's patents. Between the passage of time and the anti-trust lawsuit, almost all of AT&T's telephone patents have become public domain. However, AT&T could pursue royalties on a whole range of technologies and terminologies today based on dormant copyrights and patents. Out of sanity AT&T refrains from doing so.
Perhaps BT should be brought to its senses by being subjected to licensing of all sorts of patents and copyrights that we've come to consider common. This includes such things as the word telephone, the basic concept behind networks, fiber optic cables, transistors, et al. I'm sure that AT&T, Lucent, AOL, MCI, TI, Intel, Motorola, Cisco and others could recoup the cost of royalties on BT's hyperlinks quite easily by the enforcement of their patents.
If this sounds crazy, it's just an idea. But, if your major company makes use of it to defend itself from BT, then I'll let you know who to make the royalty check out to...
Do you honestly think that AOL Time Warner, Microsoft, Earthlink, etc. will actually start paying royalties to British Telecom for something as lame as hyperlinks?!?
Would they be troubled if no-one could call their UK offices?
>> In any event, the patent expires in 60 days, so who cares? I'm not sure that's true. Patents used to be issued for 17 years from date of granting. Now they are 20 years from date of filing. So, under the current policy, it expires in 60 days. But, under the old policy, it has 6 more years. I'm certain that the old policy was in effect when the patent was filed. It may have still be in effect when it was granted.
They are the real and true fathers of hypertext (and thus hyperlinks). If anyone should benefit it should be them (or in case of Bush his estate), not some lameass monopolist who probably stole their ideas and filed a patent for it (and that goes neatly with what I said on the Mir discussion that inventors and creators rarely benefit from their idea's, it is always some corporatist shark who files a patent for the idea and becomes the sole benefitor).
Here is some reading about it, for those not in the know:
Vannevar Bush
Ted Nelson and Xanadu
Douglas Engelbart
Putting aside for a moment the complexities of the modern patent system, the historical example just shows that when people create some sort of advantage for themselves they want to milk it for everything they can. Regardless.
Witness the news re. possible American 'sanctions' against South Africa. RSA have a huge AIDS epidemic, and the treatments cost $$$$. South Africa is threatening to ignore the American drug companies patents, and just produce the stuff locally, at local cost, given that they are in an emergency situation. But USA wants to protect it's business, and are making threats.
This basic greed is the basis for our society. And whomever is born into it (society) is educated to "go forth and be greedy". We all want more, be it money, security, status, power, popularity etc... So somehow 'we' society have to formalise this so that we can all play at getting more. The rules of the game are codified into laws, like the patent system. This sort of prevents an all-out anarchy, but in no way changes the spirit of the endeavour. Someone who is not successful is described as someone who does $1 worth of work and gets paid $1. While success is doing $1 worth of work and getting paid $10000. We call it making 'investments'. In a sense it would seem fair that someone who spends a year developing something should be paid a year's salary. Instead licensing means we could be paying said inventor a million fold.
But any attempt to codify what is 'fair' will not work because it's in the context of people grabbing all they can. Someone will inevitably grab more, which with patents might mean getting an extension on the life of a patent, or patenting something that they can grab us by the balls with. The basic greed is not going to go away while it's the object of the game. It's like, the games that end in a draw are boring. The people who manage to screw the patent systems to their own advantage best are the winners. And those of us who wern't trying to are the 'losers'. They win because, at the end of the Monopoly game, they count their cash and come out tops. Winning by any other measure would not be the same game.
Just like the rules of Monopoly are designed so that someone will gain control of everything, so our 'society' game is designed so that the most greedy will aquire the most. But I'm not advocating any sort of political revolution.... the politics are just the mechanism, not the origin. It's our basic outlook on life that's creating these games, which we only complain about when we feel we've been dealt a bad hand.
I started working for BT (Horwood House) in '82, and we were well familiar with BT's use of hyperlinking at that time -- Prestel was a really cutting edge solution. 8-)
OTOH, we were still jealous of Xanadu, as they'd invented all the good stuff a few years before us, and we knew it.
1945 Vannevar Bush proposes Memex in his article "As We May Think".
j .h.veenstra/hypermedia/review.html
1965 Ted Nelson introduces Xanadu and coins the term hypertext.
1967 Andries van Dam develops the Hypertext Editing System at Brown University, followed by the introduction of FRESS in 1968.
1968 Doug Engelbart gives a demo of NLS, a part of the Augment project, started in 1962.
1975 A team at CMU, headed by Robertson, develops the ZOG system, which later becomes KMS.
1978 A team at MIT, headed by Andrew Lippman, develops the Aspen Movie Map, the first true example of a multimedia application including videodisk.
[Bush, 1945]. Bush, Vannevar. "As We May Think" The Atlantic Monthly, July 1945.
[Nelson, 1965]. Nelson, Ted. "A File Structure for the Complex, The Changing and The Indeterminate" ACM 20th National Conference, 1965.
[Nelson, 1980]. Nelson, Ted. "Replacing the Printed Word: A Complete Literary System" Information Processing '80, 1980.
I could cite a lot more sources, but most can be found at:
http://members.brabant.chello.nl/~g.vandijnsen/
Johan V.
This must be a hoax, or someone making a futile attempt at a cash grab. If they had patented this thing, why is it they waited this long to gripe about it. I think it's a case of someone stretching their imagination a little beyond reality to make a quick buck.
"When you gotta shoot, SHOOT! Don't talk." Tuco Benedicto Pacifico Juan Maria Ramirez
This patent is soo damned vague it could technically apply DSS and could be argued that it applies to cable TV! A library works on this system too. You ask the librarian or card catalog for a certain book or general material and she or it either provides it or helps you get there. Are they going tyo sue libraries too? I think they predate 1980 a wee bit.
Do you honestly think that AOL Time Warner, Microsoft, Earthlink, etc. will actually start paying royalties to British Telecom for something as lame as hyperlinks?!? Hell no. They're huge companies with a large influence in the federal government, and if they all get hit with this, I have no doubt that the patent system will be changed.
--
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Hence, only ISP's might be liable to the usage of this patent. IE, people using a 'modem' as it was in those days, MOdulation-DEModulation. Those
of us on ISDN, cable, ADSL, and com-grade services are not affected. `8r)
ISDN, cable and ADSL still use modems, they're just faster versions using more bandwidth rhan that traditionally allocated for voice. As far as I can see, this patent would apply to them too. However, since the patent writer had no idea about the WWW, I'm sure this patent is to specific to it's purpose to be enforced today. IMHO, BT are just chancing their arm and hoping for an out of court (enormous) settlement.
Well, here is the register's version of the story and you don't have to hand in DNA samples to read it.
Not that it helped _me_ very much understanding the patent it is definatly beyond my english skills. Ciao, Peter
If you read the patent Description, the first line reads:
This invention relates to an information handling system in which information is derived from a computer at a remote point and transmitted via the public telephone network to terminal apparatus. The invention also includes the terminal apparatus itself.
which means that the patent also includes the computer to access thishyperlinking ability. Specifically it relates to a cathode-ray tube
terminal responding to keystrokes. I would think that hyperlinks in web docs are alright therefore, of course, IANAL....
Guess what. That still isn't funny, nor are any of the other "I patented air, I patented water, I patented electricity, I patented your mom" posts.
BilldaCat
The ISPs all laugh and go about their business, assuming that BT wouldn't sue them all.
The ISPs point their finger at W3C and say, "We were just using THEIR spec. THEY told us it was OK."
The courts show that for well over 10 years British Telecom was NOT enforcing its patent, and therefore loses any royalties gained from its use.
BT spends a few million pursuing this lawsuit, we all have a good laugh, and get on with our lives.
BT spends several million, lobbies for several years, and causes millions of people to volunteer their computer and bandwidth to the most massive DDOS attack ever conceived, targetting any computer related to BT attached to the internet, and simply kick them off by force. (ie, mark their report card, "Doesn't play nice with others.")
No matter what happens though, I doubt we'll have to change anything more than our terminology. I don't hyperlink. I just annotate my pages with relevant information, which may, or may not, be found on another page. These marks are made in english, and some browsers convert the marking to a highlight and automatically go to my reference if the marking is clicked. (sorry, I guess BT with have to go after people who make browsers now...)
-Adam
"For example,
after I [found] myself being attacked by csh,
csh was shot by friendly fire from behind,
possibly by tcsh or xv,
and my session was abruptly terminated. "
Dennis Chao on the new machine process management utility, "Doom"
If you read the patent, it describes a physical system used for data retrieval. As far as I can tell, BT is claiming that hyperlinks (a part of the HTML protocol) are the equivalent of that physical system. Claiming patent rights on data retrieval in general can only be valid if BT pursues the rights under a "method of doing business" appeal. Unfortunately, at the time of the patent (1980, which, by the way, was over TWENTY YEARS ago, and therefore invalid), "methods of doing business" were unpatentable per the rules of patent law. Thus, BT could not claim that they were patenting a method of doing business at the time.
This patent predated the WWW which began its explosion in the early 1990s. Why did they decide to wait so long to 'require a royalty'? So they could make it seem like there were no patents or restrictions to setting up shop (i.e. using hyperlinks) on the internet, then coming out with this news to thousands of ISPs once the illusion of free facilited enough growth for them to make a nice wad of cash? I think it has something to do with it. Also, links (as in posix links in the filesystem, and short-cuts in microsoft windows, and aliases in the Mac camp) have been around a while, are quite useful features. I think hyper-linking is a natural extension of this as we can now see with IE x.x internet shortcuts and the like.
/08/29/0722236.shtml /08/31/0143246.shtml /10/31/1337238.shtml /04/18/1949239.shtml
This is going to go nowhere. No I'm not just guessing, I'm using common sense. This is BS. Just like that little jpg liscensing fiasco by Unisys that was nothing but rumor. For those that aren't farmiliar, watch the saga unfold!
http://slashdot.org/articles/99
http://slashdot.org/articles/99
http://slashdot.org/articles/99
http://slashdot.org/articles/00
It seems to me, that the continual references throughout the patent to a "central computer" and "terminals" describes something vastly different from simple "hyperlinks". Unless they're prepared to try to enforce their patent on the entire idea of client/server architecture they're on pretty shaky ground here.
-J
---Joe Merlino gnupg public key ID: 1E91EBAF
Based on that, it seems like they'd ought to be suing Apple over the "forked" file system, which sounds a lot more like what they described. But anyway, since links in HTML are interleaved with the content, it really doesn't seem to fit under their description at all.
As far as Minitel goes, see my other post about "Viewdata", which was being developed in the UK prior to Minitel.
That may be a lost battle. There are bunches of people out there that say that spammers, patent holders for obvious things and other lower life forms are good businessmen, as long as they operate within the confines of the law (i.e., they don't get caught). Nerds like me tend to underestimate the power of the "any money is good money" doctrine that many people subscribe to. Morality is a closed book to them (and if they had their way, a burnt and buried book).
As in the Microsoft case, we need to make it clear to lawmakers that stifling innovation eventually hurts the consumer. That is not an easy case to make when law makers see dancing paperclips as innovation enough to let Microsoft get away with claiming the Internet wouldn't have blossomed if it weren't for IE.
Sorry for the cheap Douglas Adams quote.
Bert Driehuis -- All I asked was a friggin' rotatin' chair. Throw me a bone here, people.
the claims granted on the application are limited to claims supported by the subject matter disclosed at the time of filing. The applicant is not permitted to add new matter to the specification by amendment. The specification must be fully enabling of the claims, which is to say, it must state the subject matter of the invention in terms sufficient to enable a person of only ordinary skill to practice the claimed invention.
For these reasons, a claim derived from an enabling disclosure is invalidated only by prior art antedating the date of filing.
Um, remind me again who was it who invented the web? Some limey with a posh sounding double-barrelled surname wasn't it?? And while yodeling from the top of some Swiss mountain with Heidi and the von Trapps...
It seems like the guy had a very specific use of these links, coresponding to function keys and modems. The use of a modem is implied in all manners, with only references to using the 'telephone network'. In fact, the term 'modem' is used 18 times, while the term 'telephone network' is used 7 times. However, the idea of a data network or a LAN is completely missed under this patent.
Hence, only ISP's might be liable to the usage of this patent. IE, people using a 'modem' as it was in those days, MOdulation-DEModulation. Those of us on ISDN, cable, ADSL, and com-grade services are not affected. `8r)
Don't patents expire after a certain amount of time? I know if they go after a company like AOL, they will be caught up in court until the patent expires. and if it expires from when it was first filed, it's already been 20 years.
It'd be pretty funny to have someone say 'You cannot use a modem any more to access the internet' forcing everyone to upgrade to another type of high speed connection though. that wouldn't be a bad thing for our society, IMHO. Cheap, easy frame relay drops for everyone!
--
Gonzo Granzeau
Gonzo Granzeau
"Nothing the god of biomechanics wouldn't let you into heaven for.." -Roy Batty
BT comes clean
The ordinary man in the street might be forgiven for thinking that BT is in the business of telecommunications, however due to a lack of investment on our part, and other companies doing it so much better than us, we at BT have decided to diversify and leverage our Intellectual Property, these assets include but are not limited to, air(TM), earth(TM), wind(TM) and fire(TM) and the Fifth Element(TM) should it ever be discovered (note: we are suing all those involved in the film of the same name for trademark infringement at this time). As BT has the ability to get away with being above the law, due in part to the wonderful politicians that take bribes, like Tony Blair and Patricia Hewitt we feel confident of completely destroying any hope that the UK has of being a force in the New Economy (we have that TMed and patented too), then we can take our country back to the Middle Ages, where our glorious leader, Sir nay King Bonfield will rule for eternity. BWAAAAAHAHAHAHAHA!
Any sufficiently advanced man is indistinguishable from God
Ummmm ... me and my frat buddies were wondering if you could, like tell us where the cool places are round here? Errrr .... maybe introduce us to a few friendly young ladies? We've got money ....
-- the most controversial site on the Web
I hope this guy meets one of these patented babies instead of me, because when I'm done using this patented device, he'll need some patented cutting edge medical tools! Afterall, there is no UNDO operation for people like me getting medival on your patent-pending ass! And when I'm done, I'll read VOGON POETRY to you!
Everybody remember when Wang tried to use their 1988-issued videotex patent to get royalties on web browsers in 1998? No? Look here for the Mozilla.org description of the lawsuit, here for the patent, and here for the Mozilla.org description of its dismissal.
Now, it says that BT is going to go after ISPs on this. Well, AOL (including Netscape) is the biggest one around, and the Netscape lawyers were sent tons of prior art during the Wang case. I rather doubt BT is going to have a chance on this...
Steven E. Ehrbar
Any Mac afficionado worth her single-button mouse knows the name Vannevar Bush and his concept of hypermedia, which detailed most of what's covered in that patent, only this was well before the second world war. Ted Nelson has worked for most of the second half of the twentieth century bringing Bush's vision into fruition using computer science. The technology he developed is called "hypertext", and has been implemented in everything from the old Xerox Star to the Apple's Hypercard. Hypercard has been around since '87, and does pretty much what the BT patent describes.
Prior art, bay-bee! Can't wait to see the AOL (doing GUI-centric internetworking before internetworking was cool) lawyers put the smack-down on these idiots.
SoupIsGood Food
Why do people insist on proving that they are idiots! Constantly! Why is Mandrake still advertising Mandrake 7.0 when 7.1 has been out for weeks? Why would I want to punch the damn monkey? Why is there a special Linux PPPoE module for Sympatico Canada? Why didn't anyone like Dilberitos? Why do I have to have Win98,2000 on my laptop just to make a living when Linux will do just fine thank you? Why does it hurt when I put my hand on a lit barbeque? Can I have 8 drives on an Ultra DMA 66 Motherboard? Can I go sailing now?
"Some mornings it's just not worth chewing through the leather straps"
The good people over at The Register have the story without registration [sic].
The only thing you can accurately describe as "Scotch" is a sticky tape made by 3M. And it's
IANAL, but you would know that two sentences in.
This specifically deals with documents stored on servers, sent through a PSTN to a terminal. It would seem to me, that if you asked six random people (i.e. the jury in the civil lawsuit) to equate a web server and a browser to a server and a client, they wouldn't do it. Especially if one of them has a cable modem.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Personally, I think Microsoft should buy Nothern Telecom - that way they can say they invented the hyperlink, just like they invented the Symbolic Link!
Then hopefully they will go on to prove that black is white and Steve Ballmer (I don't feel like picking on Bill Gates any more - it's too easy) will get killed at the next zebra crossing.
Is this post not nifty? Sluggy Freelance. Worshi
To bad Ted Nelson never delivered a working version of anything in his life.
I belive that prior art applies to implmentations...
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
Well, as Al Gore invented the Internet, maybe BT will have to pay him royalties.
There are four boxes used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order.
Anyway, they would have to claim that the "phone lines" are the Net's backbone, the "central server" is anyone with Apache running, and the "terminal apparatus" is the browser.
Here's some more that makes it sound distincntly unWWW-like:
Now tell me that sounds like the concept of hyperlinking. I don't think so. The only thing they even came close to getting right was the part about "the system is to be operated by unskilled operators". There's no arguing with that.I really hope we can get some US patent reform. Does anyone know of a decent movement to let our US representatives know how silly this has all become? I mean, everyone smells money in the "digital goldrush", and so they do inane thingsd like attempt patent enforcements like this. But everyone forgets that the only people to make a lasting living off the California Goldrush 1800's were the guys selling food and equipment to the miners (ever wonder where Levi's Jeans came from?). Everyone would be much better off letting the WWW do what it wants while concentrating on becoming the one that facillitates those goals.
This whole thing blows.
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
FANTASYLAND (AFX) - Slashdot plans to exercise a historic patent on the letter "A", the letter when combined with other letters is used to form words.
CmdrTaco, chairman of all things, said that Slashdot claims to have patented the letter "A" in doing their work on time travel systems, which was used to travel back in time immediately before the letter "A" was first thought of.
He said the patent predates the English Language that currently exists.
"We are attempting to licence (the letter "A"), and inviting licences to be taken out by all people dumb enough to do so," CmdrTaco said.
Just when your sure you seen the dumbest thing ever... Look again.
IANAL-
Even if the patent was legitimate(burning 8 permanent willpower to say that) there is no way in hell they would win the case. Just imagine how much money is available to fight this. AOL or Microsoft could handle it.. Wait not Microsoft, they lose in court. But EVERY ISP, everyone who runs a webpage who could be added, all the geeks who would donate to the already multibillion dollar legal defense fund... My god they think they can win against that force?
This patent seems to cover pretty much the entire Internet. Remember gopher? It could be navigated by entering a key for the information that you want and brought pages of information to be displayed on your CRT.
Looking further this might not cover HTML... It refers to "The details relating to the page of information may be retained in the computer, for example, in a special register provided for the purpose," which could mean since the details relating to pages in HTML are stored on the terminal, not the server(which is apparently what they mean by "computer") HTML is fine. But what they are trying to patent in 1989 was done on bulletin boards, Gopher, just about any client/server setup prior to the WWW. Even if it covers HTML, it certainly seems to cover those as well. They have no leg to stand on. Every BBS and Gopher system prior to 1989 qualifies as prior art.
Aside from the use of terminals and modems that has already been pointed out by others, there are other limitations to the patent. :two: blocks of data. One is text, the other is control. This is very different from hyperlinks, which are :embedded: in the data. :keyboard: signals as a navigation method, which is pretty weak terminology.
It refers to
Additionally, the patent literally refers to
Seems to me browser manufacturers are the ones providing terminal apparatus that takes two blocks of data across a public network, one representing the contents of the document and another containing data about how to display it and links to the location of other documents (we could call it metadata, or perhaps HTML tags), renders them to a screen and allows people to access other documents by using a button on a keyboard (often a two-keyed moving keyboard with a ball in it, which sits next to their alphanumeric one, but a keyboard nonetheless). Why aren't BT after M$ and Netscape (Sun/AOL) for licence fees? Because they have large legal departments?
...it's just a lesser evil.
Remember, *People are stupid*. The majority of voters will vote for a tax cut and then complain when public spending gets cut. (for example)
Democracy isn't some magic shining Holy Grail that is the One True Way to run a society... you Americans seem to be brain-washed into thinking it is, probably as a side effect of the "Evil red commie bastards!" brain-washing.
Having a non-elected section of government is a fantastic idea; it means there is some other influence than petty short-term vote grabbing by politicians. Sure, it's not perfect, and hereditary power isn't particularly fair, but it's a solution that works well and is proven.
>they're certainly doing a good job of it
*blink* So your argument is "Indigenous people can't rule themselves effectively, so we'll kill them and steal their land?
Ooh, good argument. Hmm.
There are more than 10,000,000 web pages on the internet with an average of 10? links. BT doesn't want to kill the market so they charge .01 $/year per link. this gives them ONE MILLION DOLLARS a year in revenue. Clearly Doctor Evil is behind this. This is .003353% of their yearly revenue. So actually, they'd charge more. .01$/mo.? Only .04024% .05$/mo.? .201% a quarter per link per month? about 1%. Assuming the Internet wouldn't die or revolt. which it would. (disclaimer: all numbers are mostly made up. Actual Size of internet may vary. By a factor of 10.)
I'm just as much fed up with all this as I can be. The patent system as we knew it no longer match its purpose.
For how much longer are we to hear about these incidents?. Companies attempting to enforce patents they have obtained of legacy systems that they have no rights to.
Its about time this is to be changed. In Denmark we've had the discussion, and politicians appears to be dealing with the issue. But how about the states.. Its about time this gets straightened out. Denmark was the first country to legalize porn, who will be the first to straighten out the patent mess?
NB.
Just for the record.. how about the hyperlink system used in gopher?
&
I would assume a company such as the size of BT would care for its image and customers much more than trying pull of such a scam like this.. Its large scale and we know it. I wonder when the big boards will begin concidering their relationship to their customers/people again. Are randoM$oft just the first in a row?
The United States Patent + TradeMark office has a copy of the patent -- check it out here.
.- CitizenC (User Info)
Specifically, the Carmody hypertext system, built in 1968/69, had keyboard-driven navigation of hyperlinks. There's a good description in Ted Nelson's "Computer Lib", published 1974 or so. There's so much prior art on this one it's laughable.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
I find it absolutely ludicrous that a British Telecom Company would try and impose a patent on United States based ISPs. Is this even legal? If British Telecom is claiming a patent within the US patent system do they not have to have a US corporation? I am unfamiliar with patent law but I would like to think that in order for their claim to be taken seriously (as ludicrous as *that* idea is) they would need to have a BT-subsidiary or branch office legally incorporated in the US. I feel that there need to be some serious inquiries into the legality of certain patents and pending a full-blown investigation into US Patent law reform a moratorium should be placed on obviously questionable patents.
Seriously how do companies come up with such inane ideas? I'm curious to know if someone at BT has been planning this for a few years now, waiting until the WWW was so big and hyperlinking so entrenched that they could make millions licencing or did some company lawyer stumble across an old patent and then hatch an evil scheme? Just based on what the painfully short "nothing-ventured" story had to say this scheme doesn't appear evil so much as it comes across as just plain stupid. I mean going after ISP's for hyperlink license fees doesn't even come close to making sense. I could see the logic, if not the ethics, behind pursueing web developers and web site owners for using hyperlinks but why ISPs? ISP's just move data, they don't have anything to do with the actual linking process.
After reading the patent abstract, and correct me if I'm wrong here, their version of hyperlinks rely on a central computer system to handle the linking and displaying of information, rather than the distributed free-for-all of links that we enjoy on the internet. Based on that it looks like someone was trolling through BT's patent portfolio and came across this little jewel, realized that it was remarkably similar to WWW hyperlinks, but was based on a the idea of a central server both creating the links and providing the information. Because of that they go after the ISP's which appear to the lay-person to fill that role (seriously how many people do you know that think of their ISP as the Internet). Or at least that's the only rational explanination I can imagine for this situation, based on the limited information available.
I'd like to on record again as saying that this is about the dumbest patent/license story I have heard to date. I hope someone with a clue over there realizes that not only is this action utterly deviod of anything resembling ethics, but is also pretty lame as far as evil schemes go...
"Listen: We are here on Earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you any different!" - Kurt Vonnegut
They've got the money, they're the best ones to sue. Make a quick buck, stomp on some important people, and then leave the little guys alone so everybody admires them.
Then with no clear industry-dominant browsers, people would have to start obeying the standards. Then, anyone could write a web browser, because they would just have to follow the standards instead of matching all the commonly exploited bugs in NSN and MSIE.
NS screwed up the web with their "extensions", and MS has pretty much taken over this disgusting business for them. If they both go, so does the E&E strategy that keeps down all of their competitors.
Finally, freedom finds the web!
Muahahahaha!
For the last time, we're "'Merkins", as in the pubic hair wigs worn by syphilitic noblemen.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
As a Britisher, one who thinks that BT have done more than any other company in the UK to hold back the development of cheap, reliable and fast internet access (doing all kinds of damage to our economy in the process), I think BT have truly lost it this time. One more bad move like that and they might as well change their name Microsoft.
Seriously, that's what comes of listening to your lawyers - witness MPAA vs 2600, M$ vs
We will be inviting ISP's in the U.S. to licence that technology from us.
Strictly speaking, the ISP's aren't using this technology. People who use the browsers are. Maybe they should get the licences from Netscape and Microsoft instead.
I think the Jewish Talmud has something like this too. (Commentary surrounding the main text). It isn't really like hyper linking I guess, but...