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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.
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.
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."
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
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!
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.
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
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.
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.