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BT Sues Prodigy Over Hyperlink Patent
Freshly Exhumed writes "British Telecom, believing (seemingly
against historical fact
) that an old patent entitles it as the rightful owner of the hyperlink, has filed suit against Internet provider Prodigy. Frivolous and of little merit? Great non-quote from Tim Berners-Lee!"
First, the patent claims call out a central computer (server), and a plurality of remote terminal means (clients), and modems. This means that the owners of the server can at best be sued for contributory infringement which means that they, along with the users, together infringe. This is a much harder case.
Second, most computers currently used are not terminals, they are independent PCs. Therefore, BT must use the doctrine of equivalents to show infringement. This is not easy.
Third, the claims are in the "means for" format. This means that only the appartus that is actually described in the specification can infringe the patent. Now the specification (which is the body of the patent) describes a system that uses analog modems to connect to a central computer via telephone lines (no network here).
This patent really appears to be about using an index of abbreviations (like titles) which are individually unique, to request data. The unique titles refer to unique addresses, at which the data is located. This certainly is not hyperlinks, except by the most strained of interpretations.
Don't expect this case to change the world of patents. Maybe, expect this case to be settled, if BT is asking for less than a lawyer would charge (if the licensing fee is under $100,000, it's just simpler to pay up... a standard patent lawsuit costs $1.5M or more.) Or, expect this patent go away when at the Markman hearing it is interpretted to not cover hyperlinks.
Thalia
This is not legal advice, so don't even think it.
Ted Nelson, who is generally acknowledged to have coined the term hypertext in his 1965 book, "Literary Machines."
Isn't BT in danger of losing it's patent? I mean if enough substantial information can be shown that "hyperlinks" existed before BT pateted them, then can't BT lose the patent? Not being familliar with English law, can Prodigy sue BT for bringing a "frivilous" lawsuit?
I guess in the end it's a gamble, and BT is going to take it. If it wins, then it gets MONEY, and more importantly sets a precedent. If it loses, it can always try again at a later date. I think somone needs to make this game that BT is playing untenable. How about a class action suit against BT by every person that has a web page? I'm not a lawyer so I can't think of any fancy charges to sue BT for (you can't sue for stupidity) but I'm sure somone can.
"Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
This was the public debut of the computer mouse. But the mouse was only one of many innovations demonstrated that day, including hypertext, object addressing and dynamic file linking, as well as shared-screen collaboration involving two persons at different sites communicating over a network with audio and video interface. "
http://sloan.stanford.edu/MouseSite/1968Demo.html
-- Prior art, anyone?
BT's patent is frivolous at best, what a lousy thing to try to do. This is akin to claiming the patent for steering wheels 100+ years after the automobile was invented. Hogwash! I lose more respect for patent attorneys every day.
But do check out Doug Engelbart's demo. Notice the functionality of the ancient technology used - instead of a bitmapped display, the whole screen you see is generated on a vector CRT (Asteroids!!), photographed in a box by a TV camera and then sent as a negative image to the operator's CRT (a TV, really.) This also allowed for the 'picture in picture' effect with the split screen, half showing the text display (notice the mouse cursor), the other half showing a remote TV image of the operator of the other console.
Other amazingly well thought out stuff is shown in this demo, including embedded hyperlinks and inlined illustrations, as well as a modern-looking file browser and a powerful hierarchical annotation system.
Prodigy is not just Prodigy--it's Prodigy+SBC. In a recent set of mergers, SBC acquired PacBell, Nevada Bell, SNET, & Ameritech. In a side deal, completed 01-Jun-2000, SBC created a new limited partnership (43% SBC, 57% Prodigy) in which Prodigy takes over all of the ISP operations, while SBC concentrates on the core telecommunications business.
At the very least, I expect BT is after some cross-licensing of patents w/ SBC, especially since SBC is one of the largest US investors in European telecommunications.
Which makes me suspect that this case will not lead to a major reworking of IP law . . .
Do not meddle in the affairs of bards,
for they are not at all subtle . . .
It'll be bad if BT offers, and Prodigy accepts, a settlement that's relatively cheap compared to the legal expense of fighting it, and if BT then offered the same deal to others.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Maybe Congress should pass a bill invalidating these stupid ass patents. These ones that they leave lay around for years and finally "discover" them should definately be killed off. The Rambus patent should be killed too since they participated in a standards making body to gurantee targets for its patent later.
C'mon, I mean really... The hyperlink patent BS again? This in just stupid. What's next, an MS patent on breathing? If we don't get this kind of frivolous litigation under control, things on the web (development-wise) are going to grind to a halt. All I can say is wow... this is bloody dumb. I am so mad I could spit, but hey, I am sure someone has a patent on that too.
I am become Troll, destroyer of threads
Is is possible to get a Slashdot interview witht his law firm? I would like to know just how a law firm like this expects not to damage its reputation.
Join the Fuck You BT Link Campagin!
Prodigy may not have deep pockets, but Southwest Bell does, and (according to their DSL home page) they are acquiring Prodigy.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
If it he was selected by 10% of our population, that'd make the countries population around 450 million. We're quite aways from that... The more reasonable figure is 20 or 25% of the population chose our next president...
Which is better than some other coutries where the people don't have a choice... No comments further than that, though.
Please go to:
http://www.bt.com/Talk/
and tell them what you think of their lawsuit.
Fox
Prodigy is just an ISP now - right? (or do they still do their own access software like AOL?)
So, if they are just an ISP providing access, how are they the ones to sue? TCP/IP&PPP doesn't use hyperlinks.
Shouldn't they be going after Microsoft (IE), AOL (Netscape), Opera, Microsoft (IIS), Apache, etc.. who actually have software that deal with hyperlinks.
And even then, going after web servers is somewhat of a stretch, since all they return is data and it's the browser that makes a hyperlink out of it.
Not that I think this suit has any merit. If the original article is correct in their patent covering links to "hidden text", then it sounds like all they have a patent on is easter eggs!
From SBC's FAQ's page
Seems to me that BT may be picking someone bigger than they thought...
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Daniel was kind enough to say:
Everybody knows what my position is on software patents, right?
Nowhere does he say he hates all patents. He subtly conveys the message that he disapproves of software patents. Don't get too nitpicky without understanding what he said.
BT don't have a patent on hyperlinks under British law, because, under British law, you can't patent software...
Sensible, that.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
context covers a multitude of spelling sins.
Free as in "the Truth shall set you..."
I did some research earlier this year to establish if there was sufficient evidence to show prior art in BT's claims. Indeed, Nelson's Xanadu was a working concept which was publicly available, and was created 7 years prior to BT's inception of it's technology. Also, note that BT's patent specifically covers teletext devices attached to servers, and not networked computers. My question is, why not go after Minitel? Oh wait, I remember, too late you stupid jerks. They only "rediscovered" it 3 years ago. Sounds like an important technology to them, huh? I bet they even had a website at the time...
Black holes are where the Matrix raised SIGFPE
We need to bring Einstein back so he can resume his duties at the patent office and put some order in this mess!
AC comments get piped to
...But it would seem that the ISPs named in the law suit could simply put a disclaimer (the other legal favorite) that says to use the hyperlink one MUST use a mouse. Based on the description of the patent...
"...an operator is enabled to key-in to a key pad provided for the terminal numbers identifying a particular page of information which he requires "
it would seem that they have a patent on hyperlink use with a keyboard/keypad.
Of course, the drawback to this is that they would then try to sue the makers of Lynx, w3m, and other browsers that rely on the use of the keyboard.
So, surf with the mouse and use the fingers you save for BT.
Apparently BT lawyers don't read /. and no cooperative emerged to formally refute their patent due to the earlier discussion.
"Early in the year after discovering in a routine check that it owned the patent for the hyperlink, BT wrote to 17 U.S. ISPs (Internet service providers), including Prodigy, asking them to pay for the privilege of using the technology through licensing agreements."
Last time I checked everyone around the world uses hyperlinks so, why not charge everyone for the useage? Because then a new version of html would comeout and instead of hyperlinks they would have superlinks(or hydrolinks,or Knock-offlinks) which would be completely different and with out copyright or patent. BT is just trying to make a quick buck.
"The secret of success is to know something nobody else knows." -Aristotle Onassis
I was scared for a second that the music group BT, was suing the music group Prodigy over some mp3 thing.. nevermind, it's just telco's acting stupid
...and its failed attempt to put the .GIF cat back into the bag, out of which the .GIF cat clawwed (for many years) before Unisys even knew they owned the Genie in the bottle.
Look up Adverse Possession in a real estate reference book. If I was Prodigy's defending lawyer, I'd certainly make reference to adverse possession. ....Mike
Even if they do have a valid patent on hyperlinking, shouldn't they sue either the web browser companies (MS, Netscape and Opera) or the people who use hyperlinks (web page authors)? All the ISP does is transmit requests for data and data, the actual use of a hyperlink takes place on a users computer. God does BT need a good bitch slapping.
Actually I would LOVE it if BT WON. Then maybe the five guys you metioned might pour money into congress to pass a law saying patenting a process or software is illegal.
I miss the Karma Whores.
BT is using the law firm of Kenyon & Kenyon, which /. readers ought to remember as the lawyers who sent out C&D's to CueCat web sites.
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
Yes, Prodigy's still around. Its two main owners are a) Telmex, or at least its controlling owner Carlos Slim, and b) SBC, the American mega-Bell telco.
So there are Prodigy posters on every pay phone in Mexico. And Prodigy picked up all of SBC's DSL and retail customers, including the PacBell area. Thus it's not the same company that Sears and IBM owned, and it's acting like any other retail ISP, but it's still pretty big.
They linked to an article about BT sueing over links! I have a secret patent on bookmarks, i think i'll start to enforce that now.
Becuase you can't have hypertext without a linking mechanism. Since BT's patent claims revolve around a hypertextual linking mechanism, a prior example of a hypertext system (description or device, patents involve ideas and not having physically made something yet) would a priori contain a linking system that would be prior art WRT the BT patent. IIRC BT's patent was from 1974, this article was published 29 years prior to that. Hope that's clear, or something. :-)
--
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
For those of us who are British subjects/citizens/slavemonkeys/whatever, surely the intellectual property actually belongs to us. I mean correct me if I'm wrong, but when this patent was filed BT was still a national company rather than a private one. In a fair and just world that would mean that the patent belonged to the british state, the detr or whatever, as our taxes effectively paid for it. Well, not my taxes cos I wasn't very old then, but the same principles apply.
Of course its not a fair and just world. But it's a nice idea.
IANAL, but someone previously stated that a patent only covers that which it exactly describes.
Again, I am not a lawyer, and this is just my interpretation of the patent. Please correct me if I am wrong.
The Memex idea may also be worth mentioning.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Did anybody actually bother to read the patent? I don't know how the word "hyperlink" got associated with this whole deal, but it is an erroneous description of the problem. The fact is, quite simply, that the 1968 film does not cover all of the independent claims made in the BT patent. It seems as if everybody got the word "hyperlink" from the '68 film and immediately thought the patent had this magical word in it somewhere. It simply is not. I would be interested to see where, in the film, the word "modem" is mentioned, or perhaps "telephone network". Both of these concepts are required to validate the claims made in the patent. If these technologies are not utilized in the film, then it does not invalidate tha patent. Learn some patent law, and read the patent before going crazy about patenting prior art!
Is gnu.org gonna remove all hyperlinks from their pages and put up a message "No hyperlinks due to patent problems" :)
Actually, I would like to take this opportunity to point out that each and every one of you are illegally infringing on a patent held by me, method and operation of replenishing the human body of oxygen and disposal of carbon dioxide. Yes, that's right folks, I patented breathing! So, what ya gonna do? With your last breath, I get royalties!!! Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!!!!
--- Dog in, sausage out -mk
In that company there are people making descisions about subjects they have no understanding. You may have engineers who are loath to admit, but feel that truly the BT patent does speak specifically about hyperlinks. Again the subtleties of the law might be lost on them and their finding of fact might very well be incorrect yet honest, and honestly regreted. The lawyers on the other hand most assuredly have at most a superficial understanding of the technical issues at hand. So can their findings of fact be technically accurate? Then come the PR people they have the unsavory task of justifing the action. Fortunately for them marketing people are usually the most ignorant, and so they don't appreaciate the gravity of what they are being told. They blindly parrot, "Hyperlinks are our idea. It is wrong to steal others ideas. We're just asking for what is ours." When confronted with conflicting information, they just imagine that in some way it probably fits together ok, but the person asking the question is just as ignorant, so they don't see it either. All the while the world at large (well the part worth talking about) is also asking a different question. The world is asking, "Is it right?" Not nessecarily if its technically correct (and I think there are great many levels where you can argue that it isn't and few if any for the converse) but rather if it is ethically correct. At British Telecom, perhaps only the engineers and other barers of "The Book of Common Wisdom" (available from DelRay in paperback), understand what the lawyers are asking, and how utterly foolish the PR people are making them look. The PR people have been told by the lawyers that this is a legal request, they know naught of the law, the patent, or the tool in question. They're being asked to do something that they can't determine to be illegitimate. So are the lawyers. The engineers in the name of absolute accuracy are probably offering up a, "Yes..but..." to the Gods of Ignorance, and the process proceeds without them. These are adversarial systems in the US and UK so you can't trust your adversaries to offer up accurate depictions of the situation.
The people at the very top are probably either unaware of how much of their credibility is as stake or are keenly aware that they are low on both credibility and cash, so why not roll the dice. If either the people with the power had the knowledge or vice versa, then we wouldn't be bothering with all this. All it boils down to is a giant company where the right arm doesn't know what the left is doing, while the on lookers watch. Its silly, but what large company doesn't do things like that? Xerox? Apple? IBM? Microsoft?
This is a pretty small problem, the kind our social machinery is good at solving. After all it's not like they have anything resembling a reasonable argument. Wouldn't it be better to worry about the ones that have a case and are decidedly against the intrests to our happy little collective?
Maybe all BT offers us is a chance to laugh; both at them, and at ourselves. If you work at a large company, can you say yours is really that different?
--Jimmy has fancy plans; and pants to match.
You know, how often do you read about some case that is settled, but the exact terms of the settlement were not disclosed?
I'm cynical enough to think that maybe BT gets Prodigy to settle this for some ridiculously small amount of money ($10, or even $100,000) to make it go away, and both parties aggree, as part of the settlement, to keep the details of the settlement private.
Now BT goes to work for Prodigy trying to go after their competitors. Just like the RAMbus nonsense, the first few get to settle on generous terms. But after that it starts to get expensive even to just settle. Because now BT has precedent on their side. "well look, all these other companies have settled to license our innovative hyperlink technology."
The benefit to Prodigy is: A cheap settlement. The lawsuit goes away. BT goes after their competitors.
The benefit to BT: They establish precedent. They might even get a little trickle of money ($100,000 to settle?). They get really big settlements later from the others who didn't settle early.
If Prodigy settles, what do you want to bet that they keep the terms of the settlement a secret? Now why would they keep something a secret? What possible motivation? Obviously, it must be hugely in their interest to keep it a secret -- because it would be embarrasing to settle for such a small amount, because that would make most people realize the true evil movies of both parties. Gee, could they even agree to this under the table in advance? Okay, I'll agree to let you sue me and settle for cheap with an unlimited nonexclusive license in return. Okay, maybe now I'm being too cynical.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
You mean the basic framework of the Web. The Web is not the entirety of the Internet.
Those who produce html web content follow the html markup guidelines. Markup tags simply indicate structure or meaning to some text on a page. So something like
<a href="http://somewhere.com/somepage.html"> check out this reference </a>
is merely an indicator to a reader or parser. There is no linking inherent in such a markup syntax.
Even web server authors or those using web servers are not infringing since (at least on a very basic level) http servers simply comply to the requests of a browser: give me this page, then that page, and then this next one. Like an ftp server, there is no concept of linking, at least as described by the article.
The only ones I can think of who are implementing hyperlinks are web browser authors. It is the browser that adds semantics to the markup, which it attempts to display on your monitor. It is the browser that actually highlights the linked text, and it is the browser that "connect[s] text, images, and other data on the Internet in such a way as to allow a user to click on a highlighted object on a Web page in order to bring up an associated item contained elsewhere on the Web".
So BT should lose this suit, not just by way of the unwholesomeness of the patent, but also because they're trying to sue a company which isn't even infringing their patent. -Terence
Haskell, the static-typed, lazy, polymorphic, programming language.
Someone please mail/email/fax/anything Prodigy that earlier patent, just so they can make this suit look totally foolish...
Which claim of the patent does their supposed prior art pertain to? Each claim seems to contain the word 'modem', and AFAIK the alleged prior art hyperlinking demonstration didn't involve one.
then we can let BT and Unisys fight each other to the death.
now, what I'd like to know is: if you have a .gif of a browser that has links on it, do you have to pay DOUBLE??
--
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
It's clear that they have no shame ...
I guess at least they are up-front about not having any.
Gore invented the internet and didn't have a patent either.
"The secret of success is to know something nobody else knows." -Aristotle Onassis
AOL also filed suit against Prodigy, claiming that Prodigy is illegally violating their patent on unleashing newbies on the internet
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Too much time has gone past now without BT making a claim.
I believe that's the same reason Apple's look and feel lawsuit against Microsoft failed.
The very oldest hyperlink patent is for programing and is avalible Here. The Second "A technique for navigating between a first and second object in an object-oriented computer system" which could apply here,but still probably doesn't
This is probably the oldest having to do with anything like that:A reader for displaying an electronic document stored in a predetermined format and allowing articles of the document to be read in the direction of their content information flow
These are the best I could find.
"The secret of success is to know something nobody else knows." -Aristotle Onassis
This could be bad. We could get sued for providing links to websites with links on them.
I doubt the lawyers are stupid. They aren't banking on winning the law suit - but on a settlement, which seems all to often the case in these kinds of things (remember Microsoft's recent settlement?). A few million dollars to make it go away is worth it to Prodigy - public stocks are affected by lawsuits of any kind and Prodigy stands to loose hundreds of millions, lost oportunities and angry shareholders just for having lawsuits against it regardless of how outragious the lawsuit is. Sometimes it's just cheaper to pay the extortioners off and be done with it. Unfortunantly, a payoff sets a precedent for the BT lawyers that can be used in future lawsuits which could eventually solidify their "ownership" of hyperlinks just by perceived acknowledgement from the corperations settling out. I seriously doubt Prodigy will take this all the way to court and fear that common US corporate practices could very easily jepardize our freedom when it comes to seemingly open technology...
Mike
Someone should set up a peer-to-peer hyperlink sharing application so that people all over the world can share their collection of hyperlinks...
*shrug*
E.
Build Your Own PVR/HTPC news, reviews, &
I don't read anything in there about mice..... They go into a great deal of detail regarding keyboard operation and modem acoustic couplers so I can't imagine it being a simple oversight. I think they'll get slapped down pretty hard, but they must think they have a shot at this.
Except principles, ALL things are relative.
What the hell is wrong with the British, oh I know they are all horridly inbread, comes from living on that small island and marrying your cousins.
We might have a few inbreds (note the spelling, fool) living in Cornwall, but we shipped most of the foul incestous beasts over to 'Britain West' (currently known as 'the USA' for political reasons) where they thrive in their native trailer parks.
It you saw the Supreme Court/Hall of Justice bit on Wednesday (12/13/2000), read the articles below.
http://ridiculopathy.com/index.php?display=2000121 5
http://ridiculopathy.com/index.php?display=2000121 0
It could be just a coincidence. Or it could be that a Viacom/Time Warner company just ate our lunch. Perhaps they can get away with it because they're backed by three hundred rabid lawyers. But it may be that they stole from us. Or not. You decide.
Would Slashdot / OSDN like to file an amicus brief pointing out the prior art and general stupidity of this?
sulli
RTFJ.
- It's so ridiculous that it should make people think
- It's owned by a non-U.S. corporation. This should make the traditional patent-mongering U.S. corporations think
- It shows exactly why the whole idea of software patents hurts society instead of helping it
So, I wish BT the best in their pursuit of royalties for this one - it can only hasten the end of this whole embarrassingly silly fiasco.--
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
"....someone could come up with a patent on comment moderation."
Someone did.
censorship is a form of noise, which actively seeks to drown out content with silence - Crash Culligan
Uh... How is this prior art?
Fuck it.
:wq
It requires that you access the 'URL' with a 'keypad' (not a mouse) .... and by my reading it could also cover FTP, and other remote file access protocols - in 1976 is was already dated (and I suspect suffers badly from the patent lawyer's attempt to try and write as wide a patent as possible)
|\|0, d00d, h3 m3@n+ |\/|00r3'5 |_@w...
</sarcasm>
Yeesh, some people...
--
Do I play Hockey?
What you say!!
It would be one thing if their 'innovation' had actually ended up in something useful being done. IE: if they had never come up with it or patented it, would it have changed *ANYTHING*??? Have they actual created *ANY* value in the world?
The answer is clearly no. (They discovered that they had the patent...)
Please, pretty please, if in the distant future any of you come across someone who was involved in deciding to move ahead with actions like this, whether they are former managers, lawers, etc etc, please, give them a F****NG earful!
It's too bad big companies weren't lead by real leaders. Real leaders would see this for what it is, gang up, and drive BT into the ground.
could we then file a class action suit against british telecom for every broken hyperlink ever? this suit is so retarded it hurts. when did technology fall from the hands of righteous nerds into stupid lawyers and corporate idiots? tis a sad day. --rhad
Slashdot needs to interview Natalie Portman.
http://www.me.utexas.edu/~me179/topics/patents/cas e3.html
i haven't finished reading it yet
Worst case scenario, ISPs start charging an extra $5 a month for service for four years, and at the end of that time BT is a total outcast in the telecom community. Stupid? Yes. Annoying? Yes. A catastrophe? No.
Besides, as others have said, they probably won't win.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
the moral of this example is that patents really DON'T protect the 'small inventor' kind of arguing against what you claimed. pretty funny really
Picking a nit here but...
Shouldn't it be avoid using it in the proper context (lest you be sued)? Using English(tm) outside of the context of elecric/magnetic storage media as the tradmark mentions, isn't covered by trademark. (I.E. Apple Computer and the Apple the recording studio both have Apple(tm), different trades so they don't sue one another)
Inheritance is the sincerest form of nepotism.
Brian Transeau is a DJ better known as BT and puts his albums out under that name. Liam Howlett is the musician for the band Prodigy.
Prevent email address forgery. Publish SPF records for y
This isn't my first post. It's my secnod. But conrgatulations on postign. Your an ubber-geek now, like me!!! Do you use AOL!?
Hope you all get first posts and trolls for Christmas
If I were a clueful IT person with BT right now, this is the kind of fucked up action that would cause me to resign. That's right. Stalk into the board room, give them the finger, shout out, "WAKE UP. JACKASS!" and quit.
Thank you, that will be all.
- RLJ
This is just as stupid as the GIF patent Compuserv used to hold a gun to everyones head.
When did that happen? I thought the sell-out to the Mexican mogul was it for them.
What a wonderful place to work it was. (???)
Easy does it!
This comment has been submitted already, 276865 hours , 59 minutes ago. No need to try again.
I wish BT luck. This is a typical example of an American company stealing a British idea and then claiming it's American. Americans like to rewrite history. Of course this will get modded down because guess what...most Slashdot users are American. Doesn't make it any less true though.
Here is the thing. Patent something. Wait for some else to figure out how to make that thing useful, but ignores the patent. Wait for everyone to adopt that useful thing. Now sue everyone because they are infringing your patent that you couldn't do anythign with...
I'm noticing that slashdot users seem to think that any demonstration or article that describes anthing related to a patent is prior art for the patent.
Now, IANAL, but I own a good dictionary... The only think that would constitute prior art is an apparatus that corresponds precisely to that in a patent claim, and not one that is a bit similar, contains some of the same pieces, was invented by the same guy, involves some of the same buzzwords, or something like that. I'll restate this for the extra-thick-skulled users out there: The patent covers only that which is described in a claim, and nothing else.
Now, given this, I'd like to suggest that: - Slashdot users get their asses in gear and find some real prior art. AFAIK, none of the descibed systems that have been suggested as prior art contain a modem, for example.
eek. s/think/thing/
Sorry about that, all.
-amt
You may not have to. I have been the part of three class action suits over the past 5 years. I never signed up for any of them. One was a Blue Cross Blue Shield suit in Maryland. The other was a Sprint Spectrum cell phone suit. The most recent was against my credit card company.
.74 cents. Oh and I got to trade my sprint phone for the same phone using a different standard. I can't wait to hit the mother load one day. Wonder how much the lawyers got? I know my health insurance premiums went up more than $1.10, where the suit subject matter was for overpayment of insurance premiums. Trial lawyers will destroy the world.
My total lifetime winnings: $1.84 - and yes they sent checks for $1.10 and one for
"I don't think it's selfish, to eat defenseless shellfish." -NOFX
BT isn't a DJ.. I also thought of the musicians when I saw the title though.
AOL merged with time warner. Time warner owns CNN. Sueing AOl means suing CNN and if you sue CNN they'll hate you for life and give you so much bad press that your obese braindead 9 year old won't ask you to host his napster server on a 14.4kb gateway from you pathetic 2bit company run by a bunch of arrogant pissdrunk crackheads. I doubt they'll win, but then again america has a crackheaded vegtable elected president. Wait I mean DWI convicted crackhead vegetable. If only geeks ruled the world...
Maskirovka
-History is on the move: those who don't keep up will be left behind. Those who get in the way won't survive at all.
Yeah..BT won't survive at all. I hope.
Actually it's life + 70 years.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
how often is it the small inventor coming up with something like that situation anyway
The perfect example is the guy that invented intermittant windshield wipers. He tried to sell the idea to GM, whose people basically laughed him out of the office. Then about a year or so later, guess what GM has as an option on thier cars? You guessed it, intermittent wipers.
I saw this on 60 Minutes, 48 Hours, or one of those others... It was a couple years ago, so please forgive me any specific errors.
BTW, I think he won his case.
The ivory tower has never had to reach so h
It's about time BT tried to enforce this patent. This is good news. Prodigy is a big company that can afford the legal resources to defend itself against this ridiculously absurd patent.
I expect that it'll be an easy case for Prodigy. And once Prodigy wins, the patent will be null and void. This is good for all of us, because it means that we can all go on our merry way developing and using web products. If BT had selected first target that didn't have the bucks to hire good lawyers, the case might have gone the other way.
Worst-case scenario? BT wins, Microsoft goes to BT for an exclusive license to their innovative hyperlinking technology, and all other developers effectively become legally barred from writing or publishing web software. (Ok, it's a stretch, but worst-case scenarios usually are.)
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Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
For the past 6 years, I have held a patent on providing utterly abysmal telephone and internet service to the British people. I now feel the time is right to enforce it.
BT - I'm warning you - watch your back.
Does my bum look big in this?
Considering that Al Gore invented the internet, I don't see where BT are getting off saying that they own hyperlinks on it :-)
I'd say that BT was stupid here, but if you read The Register, you'd know that they're stupid just about EVERYWHERE. I think we need to get the BOFH a job there., He'd sort them out...
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Brazil has decided you're cute.
Ummm... the guys at CERN were using this waaaaaaaaaay before some opportunistic schmuck decided to file a patent app w/o any prior art listed on it.
You CAN'T patent that for which prior art exists. All Prodigy has to do is to provide one piece of prior art to the court, and it's all over for BT...
Although I really can't stand Prodigy, I think it's time to dig thru my crawlspace and look for some of those early docs I had from CERN w/*tada* Hyperlinks!
Ma Bell is a Cheap Mother... BT's a stupid bitch...
BT rocks, I especially like Lullaby To Gaia and Believer, oh wait, the article is talking about British Telecom. I wonder if they do any techno?
This Wiki Feeds You TV and Anime - vidwiki.org
Terradot
When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout!
I move that all future IP infrigement disputes be resolved in the Deathmatch ring, with the winner of the dispute being the survivor of the deathmatch.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
The news article has the incorrect title of the book. It is Ted Nelson's Computer Lib / Dream Machines -- the kind of book that changed many peoples lives.
Suing Prodigy makes no sense. They should sue Tim Berners-Lee first. Then every sap who ever created a web page. Oh year, and Apple for creating HyperCard and everyone who used it. And Microsoft, and Lotus, and Corel ....
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
this is yet another example (Apple against the theme makers was another) of lawyers running business now. the world seems to be strangling into a deep pit of litigation and lawsuits. guess who comes out on top - whether these cases win, lose or draw.
In the html for a hyperlink, the extra linking info is first, and the "information for display" comes second. Not the other way 'round as they describe. Nyah nyah! :-P
Furthermore, it could go all sorts of places in RAM or on disk. And, a relative URL doesn't contain "the complete address".
Forget prior art. Charge the idiots with fraud for trying to get money based on this crap.
If a patent claim covers some proper subset of hyperlinking techniques, then a hypertext system (which, as you state, necessarily also contains a description of some hyperlinking technique or techniques) is prior art with respect to the patent if and only if the set of patented hyperlinking techniques has some members in common with the set of hyperlinking techniques used in the prior example.
1974... Which patent are you referring to? I'm talking about the one referred to in the New Scientist article, the one that the suit is apparently over (U.S. Patent 4,873,662).
IANAL, but I know quite a bit about IP law
I think a lot of this discussion has missed the point.
The focus of the patent -- if you look at the claims, rather than the assertion that the patent covers "hyperlinks" -- seems to rest predominantly in the area of universal addressability (local or remote) of blocks of textual information.
In such case, it would affect the status of universal resource identifiers and universal name locators. The 1965 video would have no relevance to this. The Xanadu work might if it covers addressability of remotely stored information. Somebody familiar with the Xanadu work could help greatly with any information, or if you could cite other prior art.
Quoting from Memex does *not* help. Think about it, patents don't cover an idea, they cover the expression of the idea, so unless the Memex thought experiment also proposed a method for universally addressing information stored in remote locations, it wouldn't constitute prior art.
He could help them out, because we all know that he invented the question mark
This post is a violation of copyright law.
I am reading with interest your patent suit against the ISP named "Prodigy". I have not heard anything wrong against the abovenamed ISP, and I believe that the abovesaid ISP will sink in any legal action due to insufficient funds.
I suggest another target for that patent infringement lawsuit: AOL. That way, you'd be sure of targetting a company with a substantial amount of money at hand (which will have a greater effect on the Internet) and you will be doing the world a great service.
Thank you.
(BT and The Prodigy are (relatively) mainstream techno for those who don't know.)
tiamat
67.5% Slashdot Pure I guess I need to work on that....
I think the 15 largest ISPs should band together to fight this suit. That way each would pay a smaller part of the cost and they could put up a much more effective fight.
BT is just attempting to bully the industry and does not have a reasonable claim, but it may still be expensive to litigate.
Doesn't Amazon's 1-Click Shopping Patent use this "hyperlink technology"?
It's too bad they didn't sue Amazon.com first to kill that patent before being blown out of the water themselves when they sue someone like Prodigy. Oh, well. Maybe the next company with a frivolous lawsuit will do a better job.
By the way, how does a company "discover" that it has a patent for something?
Mr. VP: "Johnson, what is that sticking out of your ass?"
Johnson: "I don't know sir, let me check..."
*pop*
Johnson: "Why, it looks like a patent for hyperlinks."
Mr VP: "Hmmm, do you think we can still collect royalties even though one of our engineers pulled this patent out of his ass?"
Talmud has been around what, two thousand years now? From my experience it's the oldest hyperlink system known. I wonder if this could be claimed as prior art?
String them up for even trying this. We need to make an example out of someone. Let's start now.
The word is for, not "fer" you fnckin' hillbilly
because ub 'one click shopping', your clicking on a hyperlink, eh?
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
"worst patent ever"
Around 30% of the UK public have signed up to cable-based competitors, despite cable being available to only just above 50% of the UK population, despite the fact that "competitors" are limited by BT's tariffs and interconnect regimes, and despite the fact that cable companies over there have the same, incompetent, badly organised reputation that they have in the US. Companies like MCI Worldcom in New York would kill to have sign up rates that high, even AT&T Long Distance has not done that badly keeping existing customers, and competition has been available in the US long distance market for much longer.
What I see here are two positive aspects to this sorry mess. Firstly, if the hyperlinks patent is upheld (and, as, despite simplifications suggesting the contrary, it is not a patent on all hypertext but the notion of using a hypertext system over phone lines, it would seem quite possible that it will be upheld), then this is the biggest argument against software patents we've seen so far. It puts the Unisys/LZW patent in the shadows, a patent whose impact and dishonesty was only understood by a handful of academics and geeks. It's a clear, visible, example of how "patent bombs" can be planted, to profit from independently developed examples of the obvious, years later.
The second is that it will backfire on BT. They may not care, but in the UK, where antitrust law is limited and rarely results in the break-up of companies, they may find Parliament considering to do just that over its behaviour so far. The issue right now is Internet access, and BT's attempts to reduce its popularity, attempts which the latest figures, which show a drop in sign up rates, suggest is working. With BT being seen on both sides of the Atlantic to be the enemy of the Internet, I can see more effort than ever being used to deal with them, from political pressure to the 'net community organising against it.
If Prodigy loses, and AOL loses, and Worldcom loses, and BT walks away with the Internet usage royalties, it will be the end of patents, and the end of BT. And that can't come soon enough.
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You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
"Slow down cowboy!
/comments.pl in order to allow everyone to have a fair chance to post.
Slashdot requires you to wait 1 minute between each submission of
It's been 60 seconds since your last submission!"
Last I heard, 60 seconds WAS 1 minute, heheh.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Monolopies are obsolete
Not all Monopolies are obsolete... Waddingtons and Hasbro have been making board game and computer versions (like the Star Wars edition) of 'Monopoly' for years and I can't imagine the day when no one plays them anymore...
? I don't get it. *woosh* sound of jet flying over my head.
Judge 1: You heard about that BT patent thingy?
Judge 2: Uhm... you aren't talking about the hyperlink stuff, are you?
J 1:Yes, I am. I think we should give them the right to enforce that patent.
(Some seconds of dead silence)
(Both judges bursting in laughter)
J 2: Man, that was a GOOD one! You almost had me!
J 1: That one is great, isn't it? I had the whole pub laughing last weekend!
As for me, BT can stick their fingers up where the sun don't shine (or does it at these people? At least, there's not too much to block it.) and play rotating chair until the men with the straitjackets come up!
Fight hunger. Filet a politician and send him to a 3rd world country of your choice.
the us government expires the patent for them
"The secret of success is to know something nobody else knows." -Aristotle Onassis
or not BT...
That was a pretty funny article! Whoever wrote it did a good job coming up with quotes for British Telecom that sounded real. And this was the best part:
"Discovered the patent," I love it! Like some company is digging through their dusty attic and finds they have the patent for the wheel. Eureka! And like any company would be so stupid to try and enforce it!If it wasn't for the mistake of saying "copyright infringement" instead of "patent infringement", I would've believed it. Damn, even the IDG logo looks real.
Hey..wait a minute.. oh crap.
Don't count on Prodigy doing the Right Thing. All BT has to do is convince Prodigy that licensing the patent is cheaper than taking the case to court, even if it is guaranteed to win. Look at all the companies that rolled over for Rambus. Prodigy doesn't have morals. It's a publicly traded company.
Corporate-owned copyrights get 90 years now.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
When the first sentence of the article, which concerns potential patent infringement, ends in the statement "has sued U.S.-based Prodigy Communications Corp. for copyright infringement", one can only wonder about the accuracy of the entire article. I suspect they would be suing for patent infringement, not copyright infringement.
badtz-maru
Hah! More like ``it wouldn't be profitable''. Individuals don't have Prodigy's deep pockets.
Stop The Insanity!
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CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
oops! hit return...
anyway, I hope I'm not the only one who thought Brian Transeau was suing the electonica group prodigy over a hyperlink when I saw the headline...
<g>
Kawaldeep
replace 'berserkeley' with 'berkeley' to respond via email.
SUE ME!
...should be along the lines of this (in an article on The Register covering the suit):
Can't understand why this has gotten as far as it has.
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details.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
IF they loose, then it's one less bad patent.
If they win then AOL has got to be on their hit list, and suddenly patent reform is at the top of the political agenda at least as seen by CNN. Gofigure.
Sooner or later one of these things has got to lead to reform, cause it's such a mess now.
-Peace
Dave
Free as in "the Truth shall set you..."
That's one of the problems here - it's not gambling. It's stealing.
It never ceases to amaze me how lawyers seem to think that stealing via court order is morally justifiable. It's not, and who engages in it is nothing but a petty thief.
own a US patent. I thought they were a British Firm??
I thought we threw the british government out of here in 1776. Ironically the british don't have a software patent problem.
Brian Transeau vs. Liam Howlett! Total Turntableism! May the best beats win. Oh wait...
Yeah! Then HTML would fade into obscurity just like GIFs, MP3s, and the x86 instruction set did. Only true hacker loremasters remember those things anymore.
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
ESR has announced that december 18th will be Burn All Hyperlinks day, and put up a page about it here... ah, crap
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Communication is only possible between equals
A Sciphincter says, "what"?
Well looks kinda like AOL/ Time Warner better get out their checkbooks.
There is no spork.
Shouldn't they be suing all the users and authors and the browser companies that use the patent, not the sites that host it?
I don't really see (except on their own pages) how an ISP is responsible for the content. Oh Yeh, this is the US.
man, I never thought I'd see two techno musicians go to court over a patent.
-- these are only opinions and they might not be mine.
IIRC, Vanavar (sp?) Bush talked about having a global, hypertextual web of information in the late 1940s (48?49?), which is discussed somewhere in Brook's Mythical Man Month I think (or maybe it was Levy's Hackers, I've been reading both in the past few days and they are starting to blend together). Even if he didn't patent anything, his writings are a part of public record. When is BT claiming their patent is from again? ;-)
OK, I actually found some substantive evidence:
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News for Geeks in Austin, TX
Can I patent my name, which happens to be John Paul, and tell the Pope he can't use it anymore? Now that would be pretty spiffy, but I wouldn't do it, because I'm not an asshole out to piss off 95% of the world, like the most of the rest of the business world.
Ah, such is the time in which we live. God (if you're there) bless this time and place.
Say that again and I'll sue!!!!
kidding(tm)...
English(TM) is a registered trademark of Microdata Corporation. Please avoid using it outside proper context.
I wouldn't. Maybe you are a hypocrite, but I'm not.
As much as people may think goat.cx sucks, they still have a right to exist.
Anyone silly enough to go the link more than once deserves to see what they see anyway.
Some photos of Ten Nelson's Xanadu displaying hyperlinks in 1972 are here. Hopefully, Prodigy's lawyers will see this.
I've just filed my patent application for being British. Guess we'll be talking about the Not-French Telecom pretty soon.
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
....someone could come up with a patent on comment moderation.
Sean
This is not much surprise to me, coming from the same company which forced Sun to rename its NFS companion technology from "Yellow Pages" to "NIS" because they own the international trademark for Yellow Pages.
What do you mean they cut the power? How can they cut the power, man? They're animals!
- In their patent, the first part is descriptive and the second part is a pointer. In a URL, the first part is the pointer. They're very, very emphatic about the order.
- The link has to be selected with a keyboard. Only Lynx users need pay royalties.
- If you're using a terminal, you must needs connect with a modem. If a computer, the link needs to be on the same computer.
Have fun!"The biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place."
As a British subject (remember, we are not citizens), I say we all write to our respective and MPs and request that British Telecom be disallowed to use the word British in its name or any of its literature, for we own this word!
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Blaming GW Bush for the Iraq war is like blaming Ronald McDonald for the poor quality of food.
So, how much money has BT lost as a result of the spread of hyperlinks ? Is that not how the damages will be calculated ? If it turns out ( gasp! ) that BT made money as a result of hyperlinks, will they have to pay prodigy ?
That was the best!!
If I were a moderator I would give you all my love. Old school Prodigy rules.
=steve
www.mp3.com/funky49
--- rapper/producer/bachelorette party stripper
Reasonable action. I just think it's so funny that their legal engine is going to plow through and rack up fees et al. Reasonable action would be for them to recognize that this has been prior art described in the 1965 work. In some ways, this has always been prior art with texts referring to another part of the book with the ever famous, "See chapter 3".
Reasonable action - they can bite my shiny, metal...
I donate all spillover Karma to the charity of my choice... Ada was still a babe despite what people may say...
It's called the card catalog and they were in use in libraries around the world long before BT or computers existed.
Consider a future device for individual use, which is a sort of mechanized private file and library. It needs a name, and, to coin one at random, "memex" will do. A memex is a device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory.
It consists of a desk, and while it can presumably be operated from a distance, it is primarily the piece of furniture at which he works. On the top are slanting translucent screens, on which material can be projected for convenient reading. There is a keyboard, and sets of buttons and levers. Otherwise it looks like an ordinary desk.
Vanavar, who? Son-uv-a Bush.
illegitimii non ingravare
I would think it would be better to start with the small defenceless companies and work their way up, get some common law decisions behind them...
Don't count on Prodigy doing the Right Thing
But you can help create an atmosphere in which they feel encouraged, perhaps.
Prodigy Biz
P.O. Box 1969
Stafford, TX 77497-1969
Phone: (281) 276-7900
1-800-480-9080
Email: info@prodigybiz.net
Strategic Alliances
Long Term Strategic Relationships
Contact: Ken Domnitz: alliances@prodigy.net
Press Inquiries
Please call (512) 527-1120
Job Opportunities
Contact Human Resources: human_resources@prodigy.net
Corporate Headquarters Telephone Number
(512) 527-1500
I know, you might have to use the _phone_!
Tweet, tweet.
...I'd better remove all the hyperlinks from my page, or I'll get sued too....Not!
I hadn't known there were so many idiots in the world until I started using the Internet -Stanislaw Lem
So, I'm reading the claims of the patent on the delphion patent server (was ibm's patent server).
I notice that the make claims to a complete "terminal apparatus" but never to either the client or the server themselves. Does this mean that BT must identify a specific client/server instance where both are controlled by prodigy to even show a violation of the patent?
Also, does this counterexample everyone keeps talking about involve a modem? Given the recent decline of the IQ of the average slashdot user to somewhere between 5 and 10, I can't really make the assumption that someone would actually read the claims before trying to think up a counterexample.
Did anyone notice that the article talking about BT suing Prodigy over hyperlinks was itself using hyperlinks?
And why go after web pages and ISPs? The real "implementation" of hyperlinks is in web browsers, and there's a much better case to made against Microsoft than there is against Prodigy. Why is BT suing the end-user and not the implementers?
SO SUE ME TOO, BITCHES !
For those who fight for it, life has a flavor the sheltered will never know.
(and the IDG article is good, as it points out that prior art exists in 1965. Ooops).
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
sue the US Patent office next
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So what the HECK happened with that? Did anyone even attempt to refute the patent on those grounds?
If it ain't broke, it doesn't have enough features yet.
I've got a patent pending on the full-stop; after all in the US it's only known as a period, dot, or decimal. So, I suppose that everyone who posts a properly punctuated sentence owes me some kind of licencing fee. Where does this stop? I wonder when the government will realize the purpose of the copyright and the patent, and business will be forced to stop these BS lawsuits.
Remove *your pants* to send me email.
Even IF this was valid at some point for British Telecom, they're going to lose the suit, and any rights they may have had, for failing to defend it for the past FOURTEEN YEARS! Remember, if the company doesn't defend their rights, they lose them.
I've been called a "Fucking Dick" by better people than you.
Nobody.
/. or Andover. They use enough anchor tags.
This discussion is really getting boring.
And why the hell would they only sue Prodigy???? Why not AOL? Or hell, sue
Prodigy does not have the financial resources to fight a long protracted fight. They are so heavily burdened with debt that they may have to be bailed out by new investment capital. This is something that is not going to be easy to do with the stock market going like it is, particularly if there is this lawsuit over Prodigy's head. Tenious lawsuits are usually filed against the company with the deepest pockets (more likely to get a large settlement) or the one hanging on by the skin of their teeth (more likely to be able to bully them into a settlement). Looks like BT is doing the later.
Great ! this frivoulous patent will help us fight against the coming EU patent modification. Yet another very good example of the harm software patent might do !
I don't get it. I read the patent and to me it sounds like it could be misinterpreted to cover anything from dial-up BBSs to OS/400 (all you RPG/II programmers out there, you understand), but I don't see anywhere where it could be said to cover hyperlnks.
This patent seems to be for some kind of markup language, in the primitive 'big iron' jargon of the mid- to late- '70s. So, why not try to say it's a patent for SGML? Or that SGML was infringing on prior art?
They 'discover[ed] in a routine check that [they] owned the patent for the hyperlink.' They should keep a little closer eye on their IP, I think. The 'hyperlink' has only been in use for...at least a decade...give or take.
So, in short, if you develop a method for distributing data that could become an inherent part of a revolution in the way data is perceived and used, you might wanna keep track of who's using it and how. It might be worth something someday. But, if you have a worthless patent that's good for another five or six years, don't waste your time trying to prove that it's something that it isn't.
Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball.
If BT were suing goatse.cx's ISP, we'd be cheering BT for ridding us of that menace to our delicate constitutions.
as the entire 'net community collectively mutters under their breath.... "dick"
Turns out Bush did invent the internet before Gore was even borne..
www.Beyond7.com Insane modern art water sculpture.