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British Telecom, Hyperlinking And Mr. Englebart
tewl writes: "Saw this [article] on [New Scientist] --
'BT's hopes of enforcing its U.S. patent on Internet hyperlinking (New Scientist, 1 July, p 17) may be dashed by an old movie clip. The U.S.-based Internet Patent News Service is pointing patent lawyers to a website which says it hosts film of a prior demonstration of hyperlinking
prior demonstration of hyperlinking. BT is basing its claim on a 1976 patent (4873662) that through a legal quirk remains in force until 2006. The 90-minute film was shot by Stanford University in 1968 when Douglas Englebart showed 1000 people the first mouse -- using it to click on hyperlinks.'" What's not open-and-shut here?
Sometimes the patent system can actually work!!
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He lives in a world where those who do not run the client software of the omnipresent meme are unacceptable.
Who is this "Roddenburgh"? Do you mean Roddenberry, since you mention tricorders I'm wondering if you are attempting to equate writing the fiction called Star Trek with the serious business of inventing. :)
On that note, had he (or anyone) actually thought of the idea first, then all he needed to do was apply for a patent. This is what BT is claiming to have done, which is why this demo is important, it shows that they had nothing to do with inventing this idea, and that even if they did think it up in a vacuum, that they did so several years too late.
I do not have a signature
More specifically Real Video Demonstration of Hyperlinking.
--You will rephrase your request for me to go to hell. Goto statements are not acceptable programming constructs
You are probably thinking of the hypothetical "memex" device proposed in his article As We May Think that appeared in the Atlantic Monthly in 1945. He did not demonstrate anything, he only described it.
Somehow I think Heinlein wouldn't have minded using one as a sexual novelty in a sleazy motel, however, given his later fiction.
No offense, though. He's the man.
-m
The chorded keyboard that Engelbart introduced at The Demo(tm)[1] was used in conjunction with the mouse. During his Turing Award acceptance speech a few years ago he talked about the system.
His original design was to have both hands working when people would use the mouse. One to point and click and the other to issue commands (chorded keyboard commands like copy and paste etc). When you were generating text, he figured that you'd have both hands on the standard keyboard (it's faster than the one handed chorded keyboard). The chorded keyboard he used was capable of generating every keystroke a normal keyboard could do, but was designed to be used primarily to augment the mouse.
He's said that he was a bit dissapointed that the only thing a lot of people got out of the demo was the idea of the mouse (not networking, not hyperlinking, etc). He really wanted the chorded keyboard to be implemented with the mouse.
[1] Arguably the most important computer demonstration ever. In 1968 he began the demonstration by saying, "If in your office, you as an intellectual worker were supplied with a computer display backed up by a computer that was alive for you all day and was instantly responsive, how much value could you derive from that?" Then he went on to demonstrate the future of computing. The guy was WAY ahead of his time.
The protagonists of that class of Heinlein novel do not cheat on their spouses in motels or Las Vegas casinos, with or without waterbeds. Rather, they and their spouses and their friends get together for a friendly Sunday afternoon orgy; usually in the refresher or other hot-tub equivalent.
>The person who invents the corporate-whapping mechanism will become my one true personal hero...
;-)
I've applied for the patent already
"Open code, in other words, can be a check on state power." -Lawrence Lessig
This story was kicking around inside BT about twelve months ago. The office gossip then was that BT had been aproached by a legal company who had dug this up and where offering to take it on a no win no fee basis.
:)
Apparently BT's own people weren't aware that it owned a patent on hyperlinking (after a fashion
Please note this was office gossip, it may be inaccurate or just plain wrong!
That would be because the UK patent has expired.
It's not. That may, however, be true to some extent for trademarks.
HUH? What exactly do you mean? As an alternative hypertext system, it's been opensourced (see udanax etc. in my original) and is functional and scalable.
If you mean that it would never have been socially accepted, well, I won't even get into that. But let's just say that the Xanadu idea is hardly dead... that the Web is less than a decade old... and that a number of us don't intend to let it survive another decade :)
Finally: as far as the 'the Web is what Ted was trying to prevent' argument goes -- I don't know that Ted specifically said that before the fact, but it's accurate. Ted and others saw the possible mess that is the Web in the mid-60s, and tried to work around it... IMHO, they didn't succeed in understanding the core issues of knowledge management... too data driven...
In any case, BT's patent is on things Ted, Doug, and many others were aware of, and had demonstrated in detail, by the mid-sixties. The only difference is that the BT guys (like the Mozilla guys) didn't see the overall picture that Ted did.
And the only difference between the Mozilla guys and the BT guys, that the BT guys didn't do a damned thing about what they had thought up.
This technique usually works when it's a large company going against an individual or small company.
But sometimes David can win against Goliath.
Fight Spammers!
This first time the story came up, I actually looked up the BT patent. As it turns out, they did not patent the hyperlink as so many people have been flaming. The patent is about hyperlinks over the telephone network. As I recall, the initial news release said BT is only going after the ISP and not sites; this makes sense given their patent.
The BT patent may or may not stand up, and it may be Good or Evil, these are all up for discussion; but at least flame them for what they are doing.
I guess, in light of how unworkable either of my above examples are, we would just have to shut down this whole web thing and appologize. I'm sure that would go through pretty quickly without any snags or complaints </sarcasm>
It's true! Picture it, many years ago...
Ogg (looking at stick propped under huge boulder): "Hmf. Writing on stick say, 'Push here to view Cave Defense Strategy.'"
Mogg: "Ug. I push." (press)
*** RRRRRUUUUUMMMMBLEE ****
-TBHiX-
Sorry to veer off topic, but does anybody know where I could find more information on the chord key set used in clip 3? There are some other images of it on the site, but I haven't been able to find an explanation of how it worked. Was it a total keyboard replacement or more like a macro input device?
I'm glad to see them get ass fucked on this one. How dare they think they could get credit for good ol' fashioned USA technology.
Fuck you pasty faced bastards. And tell Blair fluoride isn't a bad thing.
-- You see, there would be these conclusions that you could jump to
Now all we need to show is proof that someone, somewhere, thought to directly access the ARPA network before 1976 via phone lines.
- Sam
The secret to enjoying Slashdot is to realize that it should not be taken too seriously.
Yes, yes it does. And every day, the pots call the kettle black. Sheesh.
On top of that, it's the people submitting the stories to be posted that are making the mistakes, not the editors.
Hey Poindexter, Adobe is a little house of mud as well as the name of a software company. The gaffe was spelling it Abode.
Free Mac Mini. Yes, I'm
Lets all do the "Blow Me Dance!" You gyrate your hips and go "Blow me blow me blow me!" Everyone now! "Blow me blow me blow me!" And the chorus for Digital Convergence "Blow me blow me blow me!" And for the Supreme Court for not hearing the Microsoft Case and wasting another $10 Million of the Taxpayer's Money! "Blow me blow me blow me!" Oh yes! There are so many people in the world who just need to fucking blow me!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
(Curiously enough, the ever-practical Heinlein had envisioned waterbeds being used for long-term hospital patients [to avoid bedsores] and as acceleration couches for space travel. He was apparently a bit put out to discover them being considered a sexual novelty for sleazy motels ....)
They alswyas have them their. That's why the UK, which could have the best IT infrastructure in the western world, has one of the crappiest.
No but, yeah but, no but...
A few weeks ago here on /., there was a story showing three of the clips from this presentation. I ended up seaching a while before I found the whole thing, but I tell ya what, it was worth it.
I am not sure how much of all of the stuff in the videos were actually in use in '68, such as the database and the way you could jump from level to level, but I have a feeling that everything presented was just wowing the folks who were in the auditorium that day.
Looking back at the presentation, everything done there is still done today, with the exception of that weird ass 5 key keyboard Doug was using. Ya got email with message threads, relational databases, the mouse, multi media video, networking to a far away computer... I find something new each time I watch it.
But, whoever it was that decided NOT to make the computer go "bbeep! buzz! honk!" every time it started computing something - that is the person who's hand I want to shake! That would drive me nuts after a while - come to think of it, I think I would rather listen to that all day than the Win9x startup music.
Vote Nader
http:www.xanadu.com
and (in a different incarnation of sorts) was led by Roger Gregory:
http:www.udanax.org
and finally incorporated into AutoDESK in '88, at the urging of John Walker:
Statement for the Autodesk/Xanadu Press Conference
Unfortunately, AutoDESK (no longer under John's direct control) killed Xanadu in 92, of all times, not seeing any future in hypertext -- which is a shame, since IMHO Xanadu was and is much better than the mess which is the web.
Roger and Ted are certainly bemused by the BT thing... and would probably be more bemused if BT won :)
Nah isn't possible, cause there is prior art in the 1-click patent. (The click thingy :-))
- In Memoriam: Jeroen de Bruin (1972-2004), bye bro
No, no, no. What we need is a patent on *0*-click shopping. I'm not sure what's the best way to implement it, though. We have two options, as I see it:
1. Mouse-Over Shopping - this new, revolutionary system is a wonderful aid to those too lazy to click. Just run your mouse over our product listing, and they will be billed, packaged, and shipped without your having to lift (or depress) a finger!
or
2. Predictive Shopping - Based on your previous purchases, our cutting-edge neural network will send you the items you want *before* you know you want them.
Which seems more promising?
If anyone would bother to read the patent, rather than just going "I know what a hyperlink is, so I understand all the issues involved here!", then you would see that this is not by any means an open and shut case; BT may actually be in the right.
You see, whatever Rob Malda thinks, BT are not claiming to have patented the idea of hyperlinks. For a very good reason -- you can't patent ideas. What the Post Office did patent was a specific schema for a device which allowed information to be accessed using hyperlinks over the telephone system, in a certain way.
In much a similar way, whoever invents the flying car (in the sense of producing an actually working, commercially viable version) will be able to patent the technology they use to build it their way, in spite of all the footage that no doubt exists of weird and wacky flying car ideas. It so happens that BT patented their way of doing this, and, without knowing, the inventors of the Internet happened upon the idea of doing it the same way. If you independently come up with someone's patented idea, you're in the hole for a patent violation.
Note that BT doesn't have a claim against publishers of hyperlinks; they aren't using BT's patented system.
I hope, without hope, that this is now clear.
-- the most controversial site on the Web
This is brilliant! With your mouse-over patent,
you could claim Amazon was infringing every time someone moved their mouse over the "add to my shopping cart" button.
As a logical conclusion to making shopping
completely effort free, how about patenting No Shopping at All Shopping; The consumer justs sits at home watching television in a comfortable chair and waits to die. The e-commerce company just deducts money straight from their bank account. No user interface required.
The article has a bad link in it - nasty little parenthesis and period at the end!
Kinda sed some words twice and added a few characters at the end of the URL there (what of "Use Preview Button!" don't people get?)
http://sloan.stanford.edu/Mous eSi te/1968Demo.html
Nothing like having something "grandfathered) out from under you...
öööööööööööööööööööööööööööööööööööö
How Jaded Are You?
When some of the first computing patents started going through, they relized that alot of their ideas were previously patented, or partially in some cases by a certain mr Nicola Tesla. This is reportedly where the precident started to only looking back a hundred years or so for patents. IMHO they should revoke all patents and go back through them one by one, beacuse they'd end up finding that half the pantents in the past 10 years are probably invalid due to either prior use or even prior patent. But then again the government doens't ask me ;)
You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely.
Don't you wish you had a stick you could hit corporations with...
*Whap!* Bad British Telecom! No Patent!
*Whap!* Bad Amazon! No One-Click!
The person who invents the corporate-whapping mechanism will become my one true personal hero...
--
Feminism is the wild notion that women are human beings.
The reason why it isn't open and shut is that BT is a giant monopoly with it's fingers in everybody's pie. Of course it is going to try to use its mega-resources to try and fight this. And if it's strong enough and can yell loud enough they think that people will eventually see things there way.
After all, it isn't about money, it's about who controls the internet.
But the thing is, that was NLS hyperlinking and this is <i>Internet</i> hyperlinking. I mean, come on, the two must be sooo different! Why should the patent not be enforced? I mean then, we can sue every person who's every made a webpage and only be the biggest company on Earth? Really now! :)<p>
This is better
Again, I must ask, "Does anyone proofread these damn post before they go up." This is the second obvious mistake _today_. Everyday it gets worst. It's hard to take anything posted here seriously when the people who run the site don't even double check their typing.
Busy, busy, busy...
I certainly hope they intend to split the money made from their lawsuits with Al Gore. If it wasn't for him inventing the Internet, there would not be any reason to use hyperlinks! :o)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/business/newsid_9 46000/946717.stm
This confirms the fundamental principle of life:
What You Get Is What You Deserve
No, you see, that cad Roddenberry stole it all from the great Roddenburgh.
BT is crazy if they think that they can patent hippolugging. My great grandfather invented hippolugging and placed it in the public domain in the late 1800's. Here is an extract from his journal, which was published by the Natural Geogrampa Society (emphasis added)...
All kings is mostly rapscallions. -Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
I know bugger-all about patent law. But in UK, producing a prototype is a requirement before the patent is granted. I think. Perhaps. I read it somewhere once. Sort of thing.
/.
/. editors would like to contact a lawyer familiar with UK patent law for an opinion?
It would be nice if a lawyer familiar with UK patent law could give some insight. But I doubt if any UK patent lawyers read
<rant>
Perhaps the
<cynicism>
Or would that constitute 'journalism' and therefore upset the VA/Andover lawyers?
</cynicism>
</rant>
I believe patent filings are already required to contain an "implementation description", or something like that which demonstrates how to build a functional instance of the principle(s) being patented. After all, w/o that what's to stop me from filing a patent on a teleportation booth? (the implementation is left as an exercise for the user...)
Remain calm! All is well!
Wasn't there a Simpsons episode about this? Some bum claims to have invented Itcy and Scratchy, but the film strip that proves this burns up?
Mirror the movie quickly before it's too late!!!
A: British Telecom's Mouth
Go for it slashdot, patent your new system!
-
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
A published description is sufficient to invalidate a future patent.
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He lives in a world where those who do not run the client software of the omnipresent meme are unacceptable.
He was??? That's surprising, because if there is any theme that runs throughout most of his science fiction its SEX (e.g. Friday, Stranger from a strange land, I shall fear no evil, To sail beyond the sunset, etc etc etc).
"sweet dreams are made of this..."
Yes! Yes! That is what I was refering to. Thank you for posting the link to the article (my main familiarity with the article if from it's too brief discription in Stephen Levy's book 'Insanely Great'. As the other responder to your comment puts it "even a discription is enough to invalidate a patent." (Not a pure quote). What I am wondering is: Is that so? Would the fact that Mr. Bush described such a thing really be enough to fight this patent?
Brought to you by Frobozz Magic Penguin Fodder.
And then watch them patent the idea. Anyone tries to whap someone else gets two whaps and a lawsuit. In the end, we'll be wondering "Who whaps the whappers?"
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
Yes. Thanks.
That is what I was wondering.
Not being a lawyer and all, I was wondering if the mere fact that someone else had conceptualized the whole thing would be enough to discredit a patent on hyperlinking.
Brought to you by Frobozz Magic Penguin Fodder.
I used to think that Xerox PARC had done a lot of innovating to come up with the Alto in the early 70's but Doug's stuff at SRI seems to have beaten them to the punch.
"sweet dreams are made of this..."
Why bother to patent hyperlinks, especially when it runs out in '06? Does BT think it can take control of the web in six years?
What's the point? What will they gain?
VOS/Interreality project: www.interreality.org
> After all, w/o that what's to stop me from filing a
:)
> patent on a teleportation booth?
The oodles of prior art in comic books and bad SF movies?
Duh?
end of line
I read the original article on slashdot when this came out and every since then i have been thinking that is probably the worst example of stupidity ive ever seen.. The very idea that you can own clicking on something that takes you somewhere else is like saying Roddenburgh owns half the things he thought up years ago... he had 3.5 inch floppys pretty close years before they showed up and he could easily argue that he owns the ideas of things like PDAs or various medical devices that (tricorder) I'm not a pattent specialist but if i were an employee of a company that claimed to have a pattent on something like this or the look of a computer I would seriously consider the reasons that i was still working for them.. :(*
The Country will be a lot better off after the next revolution... are you ready?
-------------------- Success is a Journey, NOT a Destination....
I think Vannevar Bush (is that spelling right?) demonstrated the basic /concepts/ of hyperlinking back in the 1940's (although the actual technologies involved did not exist at the time. Would this, or would it not, be an example of "prior art"?
(YES. This is an invitation for further discussion on the subject.)
Brought to you by Frobozz Magic Penguin Fodder.
Their tactics were as unethical as an ex post facto law, but it's the other way around, chronologically. Here, they were creating a patent before a system could be invented to run the subject of the patent. I think that there should be a rule for new patent applicants that the subject of the patent in question should be demonstrated somehow, be it a prototype or otherwise. If a rule like this already exists, then I'd at least be happy for that.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
Has anyone checked on a *gasp* TWO click purchasing patent? Is maybe three-click still up for grabs?
I'm still waiting on my patent for breathing. My edge is that it's an inhale to exhale loop. The rest of you better start listening to REM's "Try Not to Breathe"...
If my memory serves me right, this could be a clever fraud!
Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose
Funny how when nobody uses something it's thrown in the cold like a peice of trash, but when the potential for dollar'$ is there then everyone wants a peice of the action. --Toq
For years we used an integrated office suite called Enable where I work. I know for a fact that starting with version 3, circa 1989 or so, the complete documentation was shipped right in with the app, and it was all hypertext, sort of like hard coded web pages without images, and it worked exactly like the web except the documents were all on the local machine.
"I will gladly pay you today, sir, and eat up
Sacred cows make the best burgers.
They could quite easily do something similar to the strategy of Unisys with the gif patent. Rather than try to destroy or control a technology (which they no doubt know they would never get right) they could legally charge big, rich companies to use their innovative "hyperlink" technology.
One good candidate is CNN. Enormous company (time-warner) with lots of web sites (cnn.com plus hundreds of sites all over the world.) Charge them a smallish monthly fee for each web page (.htm file essentially) that has hyperlinks on it. Do the same for a number of large-ish companies (say, about 50 to 200 companies) that find it easier to just pay (don't make the fee *too* high) than try to fight a legal battle. If you're not too pushy, and if your rates are relatively reasonable, you can make quite a lot of money and not have anybody try to challenge you in court. Ask Unisys.
I would probably do the same if I was them. I'd make more than enough to retire a very rich man in the year 2006. Naturally BT isn't an individual though, so they might see it a little differently, but money is money. And there's the old adage, "theres no such thing as bad publicity".
Hehe! Unless those [ ] marks used in this story are actually there for some other reason, that I've possibly missed, which wouldn't be suprising, then it looks like Everything2 has permeated into timothy's soul. ;)
(Shameless plug): ProcessTree - Put your idletime to use.
Well, LordHunter, are you sure you didn't mean this is Internet hyperlinking?
Malformed HTML aside (hint, forget MSFT IE coding), the problem is a runaway patent system that serves only to stifle innovation and reward the megacorporations.
Like the ones I invest in. Why do you think Pharmaceutical companies and Tech companies reap such undeserved rewards - because they can get patents for incredibly obvious things, and extend copyright far beyond the grave.
Will in Seattle
Hi,
Just check the clip N.7 on Stanford and decide for yourselves.
Quite amusing, isn't it? It looks like... mmm... something called... Internet?
Come on, you BT guys. If you want to be rich, work. A lot. But do not pretend to own something taht is not yours.
Maybe the DeCSS Judge actually knew about this patent, and was just trying to protect us from being sued! We should all thank him! =-)
Doh!
I prefer to use the term "whore", thank you very much.