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SBC Patents Links, Dynamic Pages

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the you-can't-make-this-stuff-up dept.

Oculus Habent writes "Robert Cringley has an article on a patent that SBC aquired. Patented in 1996 is the concept of linking to dynamic content with a static element of a page. First approaching museumtour.com, a small site, and asking them to obtain a revenue-based license, SBC appears to be trying to set precedent. He goes on to note that SBC is not a villian for doing this - it is after all a valid patent, and that what is needed now is prior art."

11 of 444 comments (clear)

  1. Gee by Verteiron · · Score: 5, Informative



    Anyway, here is the letter itself and here is the obscene pricing scale for using navigation bars. I'm having a hard time thinking of a site that DOESN'T use a unified navigation interface...

    --
    End of lesson. You may press the button.
  2. Prior ARt!! by linuxislandsucks · · Score: 5, Informative

    okay here is prior art..

    Bluestone formely owned by HP coded a vendor website for NSA 1995 that used the same linking mechanisms!!

    --
    Don't Tread on OpenSource
  3. Contact Info by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://www2.museumtour.com/sbc.html:

    Harlie D. Frost
    President
    SBC Intellectual Property
    6500 River Place Boulevard
    Building III, 1st Floor
    Austin, TX 78730
    (512) 231-7000

  4. Re:What we really need now by angle_slam · · Score: 5, Informative
    It appears that the patent was filed in 1996 and granted in 1999, so they weren't sitting on it for a long time: the patent statutes allow you 6 years before you can sue.

    However, looking at the letter sent to museumtour, it looks like they patented frames in which one frame has navigational information. So no one had frames before 1996?

  5. The Reg has a prior art reference, sort of by philipsblows · · Score: 5, Informative
    here

    As I read what SBC has in one of the patents, they claim the use of frame tags to make a static menubar frame that controls a dynamic target frame is covered...

    Funny thing is, the frame and frameset tags were sort of designed for that...

    I would liken this to patenting the notion of paragraphs when typewriters came out with carriage return keys.

  6. Re:Ridiculous by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Errrm, static content linking to dynamic content? Has no-one ever heard of icons? I was writing RPGs back in the 80s where, for example, an inventory icon would link to (you guessed it) a character's inventory. The icon was a static part of the player's HUD and the inventory was dynamic in that it reflected the current state of items carried by the character. Games have used this "technology" for years. I think this qualifies as "prior art".

  7. Suspicious Timing.... by FleshMuppet · · Score: 5, Informative

    Prior art? I find it awefully strange that Navigator 2.0 was released in the fall of 1995, introducing frames to the HTML worl, and months later some corporation is trying to patent one of the primary purposes of this innovation. From the Netscape website:

    These properties offer new possibilities:

    Elements that the user should always see, such as control bars, copyright notices, and title graphics can be placed in a static, individual frame. As the user navigates the site in "live" frames, the static frame's contents remain fixed, even though adjoining frames redraw.

    Table of contents are more functional. One frame can contain TOC links that, when clicked, display results in an adjoining frame.

    Frames side-by-side design allows queries to be posed and answered on the same page, with one frame holding the query form, and the other presenting the results.

    If you read the legal letter they sent, it seems this is precisely what they think they're patent covers. I'm beginning to get to the point where I think we need to enact criminal penalties for this type of obvious scum-mongering.

  8. This Sept 95 software is prior art by nuzoo · · Score: 5, Informative
    The SBC patent covers page-dependent modification of the GUI to allow navigation controls that remain visible no matter what portion of the document is being viewed.

    Although the primary way this functionality is implemented today is through frames, the SBC application appears to pre-date frames appearing in Navigator. Remember, they had up to 1 year from the time of their work in order to apply for the patent in the first place. This pre-frames software, released in September of 1995 but well known far before that, shows all of the features claimed in the SBC patent, through use of LINK and GROUP tags. This should be all that's needed to invalidate the SBC patent, which was applied for in May of 1996.

  9. How to read a claim, was:Links to the actual pat. by seschmi · · Score: 5, Informative

    Patent claims have to be carefully analyzed, often they don't mean what they seem to mean at first sight, and one has to be extremely petty-minded.
    You have to break up the claim into single features. In this claim, features are:
    1. a browser for navigating a document
    1.1. comprising a plurality of sections
    2. The browser comprising
    2.1. a display window ...

    And so on. To infringe this claim, your "device" has to have ALL the features, if it lacks a single feature, it is no infringing the patent.
    On the other hand, something that is "prior art" needs to have all this features, too. The only exemption from this: If the additional feature is "obvious", whatever this means.

  10. Re:What we really need now by scoove · · Score: 5, Informative

    Geez... is it really that hard to find dynamically-updated pages back then, or am I missing something.

    Having formerly been a undercapitalized ISP back then (1993-1996), I remember several customer projects that had links to dynamic content, including:

    Omaha Steaks, who was an early merchandiser on the net

    and

    the Applied Information Management Institute, who had written their own code to front-end an Oracle database complete with company and job listing information. (I remember the Sparc servers rather well sitting in the equipment room and listening to their IT people talk about how the code and project worked). Click on CareerLink button and it would take you to a page of career areas, and click on the career area and it'd pull up dynamic pages of content all driven by the back-end database.

    This was all pre-May 1996, since my involvement with the company began winding down over summer 1996.

    *scoove*

  11. Re:When was the patent issued? by true_majik · · Score: 5, Informative
    Before you start looking for prior art you need to know when the patent was applied for...And did they purchase the patent from someone else?

    From the article:
    This column is about U.S. patent 5,933,841, which was granted to the old Ameritech phone company in 1999, and is now owned by Ameritech's acquirer,SBC Communications...patent exists and was applied for on May 17, 1996.