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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 wonder if I can get a refund. I knew I shouldn't have paid for all my future linking in advance.
My SUPER website had lots of superlinks, and my friend told me I MIGHT GET IN TROUBLE!!!!!! Luckily Im safe! Phew!!!!
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.
At least the Onion had intended the humor...
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
They lost the case on the kind of picky interpretation of words that, in everyday life, any sane person would just laugh off as irrelevant. There was absolutely nothing along the lines of, "look, your claim is idiotic, and you know it, now go away."
"Look, dude, we know you're guilty, so we're just going to skip the details and throw you in jail."
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
Yeah, you know why there's always a "tm" after that saying? Yeah, it's because I own it, and I didn't get my royalties for that post. I'll see you in court buddy. Then once I have my legal precedent I'm going after everyone else too. Foolish BT. Everyone knows you can't win against companies that can afford lawyers too. Duh. It's bling bling copyright.
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.
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Yeah, you can even find e-mail to Minitel gateways (kinda like reading mail with PINE on a VT100, if you want my opinion :-)
:-))
BTW, the Minitel terminals make good cheap consoles for Linux. If you happen to be in France, just put a modem with mgetty on your box. You can then access it from any house equipped with a Minitel just by dialing your box's number then pressing the `Connexion/Fin' button (don't forget to switch the terminal to 80-column mode). If nothing else, it makes me laugh when everyone in the room looks strangely at me, probably thinking I've just hacked the Telco's system
Xenu brings order!
The document write is missing an end parenthesis.
Oh well. Back to the drawing board.