Slashdot Mirror
Could Eolas End Microsoft's Browser Dominance?
rustynail writes "The tiny Eolas web company is about to lock horns with Microsoft in a legal battle over a patent that Eolas owns covering all uses of plugins, applets, activeX controls and other similar technology. The difference here is that, according to
this article Eolas might not accept a payout: instead
they might exclude IE from using these technologies at all.. opening the way for a new browser war." We mentioned this dispute a few years ago, too, but an outcome to the Justice Department's case against Microsoft was far off in 1998.
Bob talks about this very thing in this week's I, Cringely
timmyf2371 wrote:
> As long as future versions of Windows include
> Internet Explorer, the masses will continue to use
> it.
Windows XP very nearly didn't include Internet Explorer. Longhorn will probably not include Internet Explorer. It will be replaced with MSN Explorer.
The masses will be browsing Microsoft's network, not the internet.
"At this moment, it has control of systems all over the world.
And...we can't do a damn thing to stop it."
Miyasaka, "Godzilla 2000 Millennium" (Japanese version)
Well, a search on Yahoo Finance for Eolas doesn't turn up any publicly owned companies that include that name.
But that doesn't necessarily mean that Doyle owns a controlling interest in the company. He could be answering to venture capitalists or other private investors and we'd have no way of knowing.
How can we afford to ever sleep
So sound again
--ebtg
A patent which, if you check was first demonstrated in 1993 (when WWW traffic was 1% of the whole backbone) and filed in '94. And what was the big Netscape breakthrough in 1995? SERVER PUSH.
Having everything integrated under one hood is only an obvious solution in hindsight.
--DocL---
If it wasn't for half of the people in this country, the other half would be all of them -- Col. Stoopnagle
The patent in question can be found here.
That was a copyright violation. "Space is big..."
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Read the patent itself. My intepretation of the patent is that he saw OLE in Microsoft Office and, as all predatory patent offenders do, he broadened the scope and then claimed invention (he actually even references OLE in his patent : "Other existing approaches to embedding interactive program objects in documents include the Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) facility in Microsoft Windows...At least one shortcoming of these approaches is that neither is capable of allowing a user to access embedded interactive program objects in distributed hypermedia documents over networks." ActiveX, a misnomer for COM, is a growth of OLE. Given that this guy references it in his patent, obviously Microsoft has prior art on that.)
His "invention" appears to be when these plug-ins perform work on another machine and then return the results. i.e. An embedded window in a "hypertext document" that requests information from a networked computer and then displays it. This seems to be the kind of patent that infuriates Slashdot normally, so it's perplexing how anyone would lines up to cheer them on, or to pretend that they're underdogs
You cannot specifically exclude a company from licensing your patents (it's one of the fundamentals), and furthermore you have to set a equitable and constant, non-discriminatory licensing fee.
Since when was RAND licensing mandatory, except as a condition imposed by certain standards bodies and the occasional court order? Go find me a reference please, I'd very much like to see it.
This is hardly the most important issue, but it occurs to me that the pronunciation of the word 'Eolas' (which is the Irish word for 'knowledge') might not be obvious to non-Irish-speakers. To assist you in participating in heated verbal debate on this topic, I offer the following pronunciation guide:
For those of you who don't speak IPA, this means it almost rhymes with 'toeless', and begins with a sound similar to the English word 'owe'.
I hope this will spare you the embarrassment of using pronunciations such as "Yo-lass" or "Ee-owe-lass".
RTFA!
It talked about excluding Microsoft. It said nothing about excluding the competition. His gripe is with Microsoft, since they stepped on his patent blatantly.
I also get the feeling that he hates MS, and will do anything he "legally" can to screw them. This has to be one of the best.
Hopefully Eolas is not a public company, for then they can fight this the way he wants, and not shareholders.
Tournament Management Online &
You're right about what the outcome would be. All Microsoft would need to do would be ask the founder, "would you rather harm our business or sell your company for $100 Million?" This guy is pulling a publicity stunt in order to sell his company to Microsoft. He's not an anti-Microsoft crusader, he's an opportunist.
Yes, the outcome of such a sale would be that Microsoft owned the patent to plug-ins. If Moz & Netscape had to pay Microsoft royalties for use, then suddenly those browsers are non-free. Now, Microsoft can charge money for its browser if it wants. The end result would be that the rest of us would have to start paying to use a plug-in compatible browser.
Amazing magic tricks
I did. If he wins, theres nothing to stop him from reconsidering his ideology and going after everyone else.
Infact, he'd be on even stronger ground.
lots of avant-garde websites use shockwave for their site design. Being much more flexible than flash amazing results can be achieved. Applets are also useful, for things like my ISP ATTBI, which has online tech support chat through applets embedded in webpages. Without applets they surely would have gone with something that required download, which would definitely have been windows only.
Photos.
Pilfered from the "Invest" link on their site:
*********
Investment Opportunities
Although Eolas Technologies inc. is privately funded at present, from time to time there may be opportunities for certain qualified investors to invest in the company. If you would like more information on investment opportunities in Eolas, please send an email to invest@eolas.com. Please make sure to include your personal contact and background information, as well as your investment history.
********
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
It's true. In the article, he specifically says, "What if only *one* browser was allowed to use plug-ins?" Not, "What if *everyone* but MS was allowed to use them."
Somewhere back in the IE6 betas Microsoft dropped support for Netscape style plugins, instead opting to use ActiveX objects exclusively.
And i quote, from the article: "It would sure be nice for someone to actually consider all of this from our point of view, rather than MS's," wrote Doyle in a recent message to me. "It amazes me that everyone just assumes that MS will be able to merely write a check and make the whole thing go away. What if someone went through the following, purely theoretical, of course ;-), logical analysis?"
"Is there any practical settlement amount that is worth more to Eolas than a victory at trial? Considering the facts in the case and the magnitude of the stakes here, a highly likely outcome is that it will actually go to trial, and, once it does, that a jury will award us both damages and an injunction. Injunction is the key word here. That is what patent rights provide: the power to exclude. What if we were to just say no? Or, what if some other big player were to acquire or merge with us? What if only one best-of-breed browser could run embedded plug-ins, applets, ActiveX controls, or anything like them, and it wasn't IE? How competitive would the other browsers be without those capabilities? How would that change the current dynamics in the Industry?"
Can Microsoft use that statement against them in court, claiming that they arn't even seeking a reasonable resolution?
Assuming the patent is upheld, and assuming Microsoft is found to be in violation, the law says the "resonable" resolution is that Microsoft cannot use the patent without permission. Period. They would have to pay damages and cease producing any product that violates the patent.
Microsoft is perfectly free to ASK for permission in exchange for money, but the patent holder is perfectly free to say "no thanks, I don't like your offer", no matter how much cash Microsoft offers. There is no law saying anyone has to licence their patent AT ALL, much less one that says they must do so in a "reasonable" manner.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
the only way this company could sue Microsoft and have judge take serious is if it did not limit itself to suing Microsoft
False.
When it comes to patents you are perfectly free to allow some poeople to use your patent unchallenged while prosecuting anyone you like.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Slashdot does not have a unified view about this issue. This isn't some political party.
If you mean to say that everyone who reads Slashdot doesn't necessarily have the same view, then of course you're correct. But then your comment about political parties would be wrong, since in any party there are always dissenters about platforms central to the party (consider say, abortion, or capital punishment, or welfare, and the Democratic and Republican parties).
Almost certainly the original poster meant his comment as a form of shorthand, a reference to the dominant view (or at least the most vocal or up-moderated). Not everyone has the same view here, certainly. But there is a prevalent opinion that is propagated by the most up-moderated posts and the editors. If you can't see that, you're just blind.
I don't blame Eolas for trying to cash in, but frankly the patent is ludicrous. Mosaic already had the concept of application helpers for handling unrecognised mime types even back in 1993 so the ability to embed data within the page was just a logical extension of that. X vendors have made a living for years selling widget kits and embedding content in a page is little different.
Michale Doyle wrote a manifesto of sorts about this in 1996:
http://www.ddj.com/articles/1996/9602/
There is far too much prior art. I worked for a company that sold a product, developed in 1992, that communicated over a network and used plugins wihtin a clickable multi-hypermedia enviroment. There are issed patents filed which describe the above product. Infact, Netscape did come to own those patents...