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More Silliness Over Patents: NetZero Sues Juno

Posted by Hemos on from the what-a-world dept.

def con Cyber writes: "Is that idea so obvious it shouldn't be patentable? This is an interesting story where NetZero is suing Juno over its ability to "pop up external advertising windows". " Check out the update (Thanks to Dan Kaminksy) regarding the suit that Juno had filed against NetZero to start this whole thing off.

4 of 135 comments (clear)

  1. Is the use of salt as a food flavoring obvious? by crovira · · Score: 5

    You really have to hand it to the management of the USPO, since Bush Senior, or was it under Reagan, turned the patent office into a "profit center" they are just shoving patents out the door.

    Prior art? Never heard of it!

    Research? I doan even reed da formz!

    Boss says I got a quota to make. I don't care if I have to patent breathing. My Christmass bonus is based on how many I get out the door so hand me my rubber stamp and don't get betwen me and the ink pad.

    --
    MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
  2. Re:On the positive side.... by Coward,+Anonymous · · Score: 5

    What about all the other pop up ads that you see all over the place? I don't understand how NetZero can even patent that concept since they didn't even come up with it.

    According to the article, they patented the technology for an ISP to display a popup ad, the popups you see all over the place are from websites and (i hope) not from your ISP.

  3. NetZero are boneheads by thex23 · · Score: 5
    According to someone who does phone support on a contract with NetZero, they have to constantly change their software to stay ahead of the banner ad cracks. Well, not ahead of the cracking, per se, more the APPEARANCE of cracking, in that they don't want their advertisers (who are quite happy forking out cash to NetZero per ad viewed) from getting wind of what is really an inevitable result: people will abuse this stuff, because they can and it's easy.

    This has the unavoidable effect of screwing over the less with-it customers of NetZero, who get caught in the "I upgraded to 3.1, but it doesn't work, and I can't go back to 3.0, so what do I do?" They used to tell people to re-install Bindows... until they realized that most people will be completely up the creek, without disks to reinstall their appz.

    So now they just pass the buck and pretend there is not problem. Which is hard when you a) can't get a net connection anymore, b) don't have any alternate connection, and c) don't have the original software on disk. And they don't want to send out thousands of CDs to people, either.

    I'm just glad I don't have to do phone support for these boneheads.

  4. On the positive side.... by nurikochan · · Score: 5

    If Netzero wins, no one but Netzero will be able to pop up adds.

    Horay! Now I no longer need junkbuster!