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BT Loses Case Over Hyperlink Patent
Tarkie sent in this Bloomberg blurb noting that British Telecom has lost their patent suit against Prodigy over an old patent that BT hoped would cover the use of hyperlinks on the modern WWW. See our original story or check out the court's decision.
I think anyone sensible who saw their claims shook his head in wry humor.
There should be a moratorium on the use of the apostrophe.
Max V.
NeXTMail/MIME Mail welcome
I wonder if I can get a refund. I knew I shouldn't have paid for all my future linking in advance.
That they lost isn't obvious. The courts (in all countries) make dumb decisions every day. That they should have lost is obvious, but anything else shouldn't be taken for granted.
There should be a moratorium on the use of the apostrophe.
Max V.
NeXTMail/MIME Mail welcome
My SUPER website had lots of superlinks, and my friend told me I MIGHT GET IN TROUBLE!!!!!! Luckily Im safe! Phew!!!!
Its good to see some of these completely absurd lawsuits getting downturned. This needs to happen more, so we can legitimize patent law into something reasonable. All it does now is stifle market growth and create money for lawyers.
By the way the article is written, BT was using Prodigy as a "test case" for every ISP.
Could you imagine? Scary thing is, I wouldn't have been totaly shocked if it did pass.
These types of things need to be publicized as much as the bad/stupid rulings against MP3 sites or Microsoft.
Note that the opinion does not invalidate the patent. Rather, it says that Prodigy (and the Internet writ large) do not infringe the patent because the Internet does not have a "central computer" or contain "blocks of information" as the court defined them and the patent requires.
I think my reaction to BT losing is along the lines of "pleasently surprised." Which means I must be getting very cynical.
This will set the UK back at least 10 years. Imagine if you invented something wonderful, and the courts stole it from you.
Not only did they lose but they lost on Summary Judgement. Basically a SJ motion happens midway through the case when one of the sides moves for the judge to rule in their favor. In essence they are saying that the other side has nothing. It occurs in almost every case and is rarely granted in whole (typically it will make smaller parts of the case go away). But to lose it all on SJ means that they really did have squat, and that there was no point in continuing on. Cool.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
At least the Onion had intended the humor...
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
That they should have lost is only obvious upon a close examination of the patent claims, by comparison to the operation of Prodigy's server system.
BT had to make sooooooo many stretches of terminology and logic to try to get Prodigy within the patent that the result was not in serious doubt... but that's not to say another patentee might not (have)succeed(ed) in patenting the internet.
MHO. YMMV. Any resemblance between this post and real persons, or reality in general, was accidental.
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
there is a god??
It is far to simpler to hold the world hostage under the guise of protecting IP and charge a ransom from everyone who uses it.
Remember, the Amazon 1-click patent is still valid! It is not worried about the absence of a business plan that drives them towards profitability, but wants to prevent other websites from using cookies to enable faster checkouts.
Ultimately, I think that is the problem with all these patents and copyrights. If companies truly believed in their products and the value that they provide to their customers, they wouldn't have to resort such stupid mechanisms to make money.
All your favorite sites in one place!
Does /.ing count as a hacking attempt? Or maybe they disguised a mp3 as a pdf and we were just helping the RIAA.
Let's see some similar sanity with the JPEG patent
Some bastard out there is gonna file a patent saying he 'discovered' the makeup of air and is gonna try to push that through a court system somewhere. Kinda like the freak who filed this stupid patent. Next thing you know I'll be paying for the air I breathe.
Honesty may be the best policy, but apparently by elimination, dishonesty is the second best policy.
Based on that last paragraph, it sounds like BT was trying to pull a XXAA and declare the whole Internet as illegal.
I'm pretty sure that this is a troll/flamebait, but I'll bite...
The two matters are completely separate. Just because we are interested in this doesn't mean we don't give a crap about poverty and terrorism and everything else, but it is unrelated. Life goes on. If you stay regretting something which has passed and don't move on then what's the point in living?
here's to common sense! A victory such as this does that much more to help the side of thinking humans against the talking monkeys known as lawyers and supporters of back-bitting methods such as this patent filing and pursuit.
MHO. YMMV. Any resemblance between this post and real persons, or reality in general, was accidental.
I didn't read through the entire judgement, but does this nullify the patent, or can only the patent office revoke a patent? And if so, based on the judgement, is that enough for them to do so?
... is team up with the guy who "owns" .jpg
Two jackasses is better than one, right?
That's Star Wars. Don't get them confused. One sucks (Star Wars /w hyper/lightspeed) and one is good (Star Trek /w warp speed).
I find it interesting that prior art was not mentioned in the decision. Instead, it revolved around the concept of "central computer" in BT's patent vs a large number of computers in the internet. Also interesting was that BT's concept involved a physical pointer (track and sector) to the data rather than a translated, possibly indirect url.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
Nope, you're not cynical... this is BT we're talking about here.
A company that is universally shafting most of the UK, especially concerning DSL (or lack of). And with a overseeing body called OFTEL (should now be OFCOM, not sure) who are supposed to make sure BT doesn't engage in monopolistic practices (just image what would have happened if they were granted the hyperlink patent!!). But OFTEL don't even have teeth, just gums covered in sponge, and a hand that lighty slaps BT's wrist and says "Bad boy, don't do it again" (for the n'th time).
Are you local? There's nothing for you here!
I never tought that such a thing would be possible, but the court decision is actually a good read.
If I understand correctly, BT's patent describes an old system whereby `continuous blocks of information' stored in a databased on a central `system' can be accessed remotely via telephone lines. The interface allows for accessing the data on the system by chunks. The users somehow selects a menu or a link when they want to access the next bit.
The court comprehensively dismissed all parts of BT's infringement claims.First the Internet is not a central system, second a central database is not accessed (the judge writes that the Internet is in fact the very antithesis of a central database), next the data on the Internet is not in the form of blocks: HTML is far more flexible than what the BT patent describes, and finally the concept of hyperlink is far more advanced than what BT described in its patent (basically a `give me the next bit' button).
At some point during the trial, BT's expert tried to submit made up web pages that conformed to what the BT patent was describing. The judge found that totally unconvincing, writing `a device does not infringe because it can be made to infringe'.
In conclusion, the jugde writes `In contrast to what BT would have us believe, there are no disputed issues of material fact in this case'.
Let's hear it for the court today.
I hate that god damned hackers language shit...It's like some fucked up computer version of Thieves' Cant in D&D...can't read a god damned word.....
This will set the UK back at least 10 years. Imagine if you invented something wonderful, and the courts stole it from you.
Sorry, A.C., but they didn't invent it.
Hyperlinking, as practiced on the internet, was described by Ted Nelson, in books published years before they applied for that patent.
Indeed, Ted is the one who coined and popularized the terms "Hypertext" and "Hyperlink".
What bugs me is that, as I read it, the judge's decisions about "central computer", "blocks of data", and "complete address" are all wrong. The patent should have applied to the Internet (by the doctrine of equivalences) and should have been struck due to the prior art.
But then again, IMHO patents on "doing X with a computer when people are already doing X by hand" should be unpatentable. (A generic patent on simulating human workflow would have been patentable shortly after the inventionn of the digital computer, but it's far too late for that now.)
And also IMHO essentially all software patents OTHER than "doing X by computer when people are already doing X by hand" should be struck as patenting "mathematical algorithms".
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
If M$ did patent 1's & 0's then there would be an easy way around it...call them ons & offs or highs & lows unless of course M$ patented those too. Then again 1's & 0's don't look like 1's & 0's inside the chip so I guess thier patent is really just against engineers who write that crap down....
So I'm wondering about all those /. readers who complained about how terrible patents are because they allowed BT to make this claim... doesn't the fact that BT lost the suit prove that the law isn't as broken as you thought?
Same with the case with HP and the DMCA. The fact that HP can file the lawsuit doesn't prove that the law is broken; it's only broken if they would have won.
-a
How to rationalize theft.
Slashdot has just saved me a lot of embarrassment. It's truly an indispensable resource for people in my line of work. Now I can devote all my efforts to my father's claim that he invented the question mark.
Read the decision PDF. It makes it clear that Prodigy (and the internet in general) didn't infringe on BT's patent because BT's patent description was slightly too narrow -- and also because the judge [IMHO] doesn't understand what a "server" ("central computer" in BT jargon) is.
What it does NOT do is throw out BT's patent on the basis of prior art. That is, BT's patent still stands to harass us yet another day.
BT vs. Prodigy? Sounds like a concert I'd like to see.
The parents of Harold Theodore Michelis-Lenord (H. T. M.-L.) are suing the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) for their use of their son's copyrighted initials.
Mordor...a magical, mythical land where women are more rare than dragons--but where every man would rather find a dragon
It's weird, I mean, I'm more surprised that BT didn't win, and this is obiously a good, no-brainer thing, but I can go to bed now knowing that sanity does, occasionally, prevail.
I am a science fantasy fan
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PT O1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/netahtml/srchnum.htm &r=1&f=G&l=50&s1='4,873,662'.WKU.&OS=PN/4,873,662& RS=PN/4,873,662
Me lost me cookie at the disco.
First, while that's true, that's not the only part of their argument the judge found lacking. He also asserted that their patent claimed it involved "complete addresses", which a URL is typically not because it must be processed with name resolution to be useful. There were other issues, with BT trying to claim that an Internet address was 'equivalent' to a 'complete address' (per the "doctrine of equivalents" embodied in patent law), but that was shot down too, because apparently BT narrowed their claims on the patent to get around prior art.
I find it interesting, of course, since DNS is not the only address translation required. Before reaching the end server (and the patent says, "Central computer"), an ARP translation will be required as well to translate an IP address into a MAC address for transit across the physical+datalink layers of IP.
The funny thing is that this patent was supposedly dead from prior art from what we've all heard, and it didn't even get far enough. Basically, the judge dismissed them for grossly misinterpreting the patent, never mind that it would likely have been rendered invalid by prior art had they even made it that far. I hope BT had to pay court costs.
That wasn't off topic. It referred to the ruling as being obvious. All the people who replied knew what the hell he was talking about. What idiotic moron is modding today?
By a shaved-hair, I'd say. Having read hizzonors discussion, it looked to me like a man who patented the ice-creme cone '... a right rectangular polysacaride cylinder containing frozen cow-ooz ...'. Only he can sell a cone of ice-creme and people are happy eating it. Then joeblo comes along and sells THREE ice-creme cones at a time and people go bonkers. Bonkers is MORE than happy, so the patent gets broke. And while joeblo can never sell ONE cone he can always sell three. Hummmmm .....
I have strong feelings about this case, and I want BT to lose, but I have to say that the judge missed the point that BT was making. The claim that the Internet infringes, not because it has a central computer with centralized data store as described in the patent, but that it is made up of many such arrangements.
This is fundamentally true, though inaccurate (the terms "Internet" and "World Wide Web" are confused here). The World Wide Web's HTTP+HTML elements (certainly what most people think of as "The Web") do infringe the patent on this basis. A Web server provides a central service of delivering data to remote clients. Each Web server provides this function, and thus infringes. The "Internet", does not infringe, and thus Prodigy's ISP business does not infringe, IMH(IANAL)O, but the World Wide Web does. In this way, I think BT should have gone after Microsoft for making IIS, but then they would have had to explain why the didn't go after NCSA back in the days of the NCSA Web server....
or be forced to eat hot grits that have
been previously poured down their pants.
or previous eaten and "expelled".
yes, that's the ticket!
Read the bottom of page 18 and the top of 19. "[T]he question is not what a device could have been made to do, but what it was intended to do and what it did do." I wonder if this will help a big in the RIAA mess. It would be a little bit of a stretch, but lawyers are supposed to be good at such things.
"Never, never suspect the dreams within the dreams of dreaming children." ~The Amazon Quartet
Now, if we can get this court for the JPEG issue....
Read page 24 of the Memorandum and Order Granting Summary Judgment.
I think the Judge was clued in - the "central computer" in the BT patent was the essential component that all the terminals talked to. They only talked to one computer because that computer was central to the operation of the ViewData system. The terminals wouldn't have a clue how to talk to another computer.
Perhaps it is this Anonymous Coward who doesn't understand what a "central computer" is in the context of the BT patent.
While I'm not normally one to go aiding SBC Communications, the current owner of Prodigy, I do believe BT needs to be smacked with a remedy of paying all the legal costs of the defendant. Because the ruling came early, it won't be so much. But because it is so blantantly harrassment and baseless, even SBC Communications deserves to recover the costs they had to spend to pay for their lawyers and legal department staff to research and prepare briefs, make motions, and all that other mumbo-jumbo that lawyer types do.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Of course, I'm glad the Internet isn't infringing a patent. But it'd be good to know that we won for the right reasons. (bye bye karma)
Yes, I did read the opinion, and I actually disagree wholeheartedly with the judge regarding the interpretation of "central computer".
The judge basically equated "central" with "single" and spent quite a while explaining why "central computer" by anyone's definition must mean a "single" computer. Ask anyone on Slashdot and they'll tell you that when I say you've got to connect to the central computer system to get your payroll information, it doesn't preclude that "central computer" from being a rack full of servers. From now on, when you patent something that requires a server, you'll have to be sure to specify ther plural as well, just to be sure it handles distribution. It's a bit silly, but I guess that's why IANAL.
I also think that, although the Internet as a whole is not infringing, a company that sets up a webserver on a single machine that is connected to by remote hosts may still look like good targets.
chiguy
passetspike!
Maybe I'll send them a virtual posie of goatse images in condolence ;)
--
"we live in a post-ideological world..." - Billy Bragg.
by Vannevar Bush, in As We May Think
I am sorry to see such an important case squandered by a short-sighted judge. He managed to turn them down this time, but the fight is not over. A decision in favor of BT would have been more fortunate in the long run: then the absurtidy of patents, and software patents in general would get some intense scrutiny. Seeing BT sue every hyperlink author, hyperlink user, web server operator and all their respective mothers for billions of pounds in damages would surely make one or two people think twice before defending the righteousness of intellectual property law.
As far as I can see, and the law goes, BT was right, the judge was wrong. What this all comes down to is the fundamental truth: Intellectual property is a flawed concept.
The BT patent comes from a previous generation of technology, which included Ceefax, Prestel, and Minitel. Ceefax and Prestel are dead, but millions of Minitel terminals are still out there; France Telecom uses them instead of phone directories. You can click on the link above and download a Minitel emulator, which allows you to emulate a 16-color block graphics terminal inside a web browser. From there, you can access the telephone directory of France or the Minitel services directory. Most of the services are pay, and at sizable per-minute rates. That sort of fee structure was characteristic of those first-generation systems deployed by telcos.
It's little-known, but Telecom France actually deployed Minitel in the US. There were dial-in ports in all major cities. There were even some English-language services. I had an account for about a year around 1989. International text chat for around $0.06/minute, which was good back then.
...that the judge is male (1):
U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon, in White Plains, New York
I don't know too many guys named Colleen, do you?
(1) e.g. "sucks to be his secretary", etc.
I think that you're misreading what he said. His point was that the patent was intended to cover a system in which there was a central server that was the only thing that the terminals could talk to. In the web there is no central computer, but instead each client is free to connect to any web server it chooses. That's a huge difference, and it's that difference that the judge was harping on.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
If only a US company had this patten...
A successful ressurection of one of the 11/9 trolls. You, Sir, are to be admired.
I don't understand that one at all. If you do, can you give me the 25 word or less English version? Thanks. :)
...I would like to apologise for British Telecom.
But hey, you only have to deal with them when they try stupid shit like this - we have to deal with their crapitudinality every day.
Introducing competition in the infrastructure of a country is a good thing.
Privatising the main company running that infrastructure **before there is competition** is a bad thing, e.g.: British Rail, British Telecom, British *.
It happens almost automatically in UK court cases that the loser pays the winner's costs. Especially when summary judgement has been given.
I believe that official (but not publicised) US government policy encourages US patent office to award as many silly patents as possible to US companies. It is a valid way to stimulate national industry. Due to its overwhelming superiority, the US is the only country that can enforce its laws abroad.
The example of British company losing its patent claim in the US court to a US company doesn't disprove above point.
--
I invented that trick where you tear out a little drinking hole from the plastic lid of your mid-morning coffee, so as not to spill it everywhere.
I'm gonna sue everyone who does this, and I'm gonna sue Starbuck's for putting ready made holes in their lids.
[cut'n'paste...]
which sounds about right...
It's fairly rare for someone to actually have the means to fight back against the patent/copyright cudgel. The massive cost of defending oneself in court means most people now cannot afford to do so.
Right now, at least here in the US, we have a "guilty until proven innocent" civil legal system, as nobody can afford to fight back against the horde of lawyers.
Also the patent wasn't actually overturned, the judges just refused to enforce it (same net result, but that wouldn't have happened if it were a small company).
We really should be cheering these Prodigy guys for fighting back and not settleing.
Any more good news I can ruin??
Free Mac Mini Yeah, it's
Tommorow I will patent the 2-click check out. First to place the order, second to confirm it. No one is safe.
I have been listening to way too much techno lately. :)
I had no clue these guys were in court over a patent!
[Error 407: No signature found]
You wouledn't happen to have any sources or references for that claim, would you? Because it sounds like a total pile of bullshit.
The document write is missing an end parenthesis.
Oh well. Back to the drawing board.
So BT lost his lawsuit against The Prodigy. I hope that other electronic musicians recognize this precedent and stop suing each other.
So we can apply this idea to patent law, but my question is can it then be applied to copywrite law as well?
Theoretically, yes. The Betamax decision protects products that have a substantially non-infringing use, such as VCRs.
The DMCA (17 USC 1201), on the other hand, is not concerned with copyright infringement but rather circumvention of access control. It does include an explicit exemption for devices with substantial non-infringing use in 1201(a)(2) and (b)(1), but judges ignore the exemption if they are bought and paid for like the MPAA attorney turned judge who heard the DeCSS case.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Don't they know that Al Gore invented the Internet?
I dug up this link to the opinion and order re the Markham phase of the trial, which concerns how the claims of the patent are construed.
<ramble>
Since it's apparently necessary for all free developers to know the u.s. patent system well in order to more effectively undermine it, here's a good place to start. Hats off to this judge for presenting the material in a clear, almost tutorial manner.
It's essential to be able to read patent claims the way a judge does. It's not as hard as it first appears - remember, the Judge has just as much trouble with technical aspects as we have with the patent legalese. One thing to keep in mind is that it's the claims that matter, and these are generally a fairly small part of the patent.
Once you figure out what the claims mean, it's a lot easier to go hunting prior art or find a workaround.
Of course I'm not suggesting that all developers have to stop coding now and become patent lawyers, but we do need a lot more eyeballs on these things to help counterbalance the prevailing insanity. Besides, undermining patents is an interesting sport in and of itself.</ramble>
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
Ok, so if they had won, everyone would just replace hyperlinks with raised buttons with the same function. No more hyperlinks. Hehe. Besides, they would have had to try to sue Microsoft since IE is integrated into the operating system.
I wonder why the clueless press does not do a wee bit of research and discover the obvious impotence of these "narrowed by argument" patents instead of issuing simple minded alarmist headlines proclaiming the "patenting of hyperlinking" controversy.
It's a cascade of a couple issues.
A media distribution point (television channel, newspaper, magazine) has to put out a great deal of information in order to maintain its viewership/readership. Journalists only have so much time to find a story, research it, put it together, and pass it on to their editor. In times of economic boom, (like the 90s,) there's plenty of money to go towards paying for writers and reporters. Now, there are fewer resources, fewer journalists, and less time for each journalist to put his story together.
That's why in the 90s everyone knew about the Microsoft antitrust case through television, but now only the really big newspapers (like the New York Times, or the Washington Post, or USA Today), or the specialized news services (Wired, The Register, Slashdot) have stories on these issues.
With the current economic drought, nobody's going to waste resources on stories that aren't the most newsworthy, or the simplest. The reporters at NYT and WP that do these stories are probably close to being laid off, as is.
Take it from me, I've held both levels of authority(writer, editor) at my old high school's paper, during well-staffed and understaffed times. I know what it's like to whip together a story in three or four hours.
What's this Submit thingy do?
But... and it's a big BUT everyone knew the claim was FRAUDULENT yet they are not being charged with attempted fraud, criminals should be punished for their crimes,yet BT walks away with their wallet just a little lighter, this is not justice.
Any sufficiently advanced man is indistinguishable from God
Intellectual property is by no means a flawed concept. Those who say that it is usually simply don't want anyone to be able to force others to pay them for intantingible content. Well too bad. As our economy becomes more and more information instead of materials based it will become even more important for people to enforce patents and copyrights on their IP. Otherwise you have people who cannot earn royalties and income from the product of their minds. I'm not going to say that would eliminate the willingness to invent, it would just seriously suck as well as knock a huge revenue stream out of IP creation and obliterate a huge tax base.
If you want to be able to download MP3's for free I can understand where you are coming from. I don't want to pay for them either. But wanting it to be "right" doesn't make it right. Lets at least encourage people to admit they are being theives when they steal IP. No one is helped by anymore lying.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.