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SBC Patents Links, Dynamic Pages
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."
What we really need now is patent reform. Companies should not be allowed to sit on IP while it gains broad adoption and then come back and extort companies in order to generate profits. We've seen too many companies do this, it's unethical, they know it, when are we going to stop them from continuing the practice.
"Do not be swept up in the momentum of mediocrity." - anon
Go check Apple's patents (maybe Xerox's) for hypertext linking. I think Apple covered this for Hypertext to Quicktime links.
Is this a FP? My first.
dot-sig.
> 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.
No, what's needed now is IP law that promotes innovation rather than blood-sucking.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Why not just patent images on a screnn conveying information.
that way you don't need to specify "buttons" of "frames".
I think that web pages should be treated as just a novel way to replace a library, and tell these wanna be patent millionaires to take a hike to the nearest cliff.
Information is information - doesn't matter if it's in a book, newspaper, or a bunch of pixles on a screen.
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
'sfunny but my story on this was rejected over a week ago. Anyhow SBC actually have 2 patents on this type of technology: 5,933,841 6,442,574 both are entitled Structured Document Browser.
--
This sig is inoffensive.
The idea that this is corporate greed rights all wrongs is really getting old. The catch all justification of our times. Where is this going to end?
What about linking to a search engine search results? Infoseek, Altavista or older search engines had the ability to bookmark query results, so there must be some use of that before.
If that can't be found in "normal" web, probably some results can be found in google groups.
Both Yahoo! and Amazon (at the very least) were doing this in 1995, well before May 1996. Proving prior art on this patent is trivial.
SBC *is* a villain for doing this, a big fat hairy villain.
Patenting the fundamentals of the net is like patenting the alphabet then charging every writer in the world to use it.
It's a scam and it may take awhile, but SBC is going to go down.
It's Christmas everyday with BitTorrent.
...than a patent on the human genome, which has been done more than once. (Note, for instance the patent on the genetic material of a member of the Hagahai tribe of Papua New Guinea - patent number 5,397,696.)
Like the article states, any kind of patent can be invalidated by the demonstration of prior art. This particular patent seems a bit too general to be nontrivial when it was filed in 1996.
The actual fees (starting at $570 annually for a company with a revenue of $100,000) aren't really all that large, though. My website would probably only have to pay $14 a year! But I do understand how this whole patent nonsense is spiraling out of control.
We can either work hard to prove prior art, or we can work hard to get the IP system restructured. Or we can just shell out the money and be done with it...
for great justice, this sig has been moved
Wired had an article [wired.com] last year about British Telephone's lawsuit against Prodigy for violating their patent on hyperlinks. So who really owns this patent?
No, they tried to patent the very concept of hyperlinking (they failed). This patent is an attempt to patent a particular kind of link. So the prior art needed is more specific. Others on the page seem to have some good examples, but a reference, for example, to "Hypercard" is not enough until you discuss the specific elements of the prior that match up to the earlier patent.
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.
But SBC is the villan. Who cares if they have a patent or not?!
If the some Nazi benefitted off from the murder of a few million Jews -- can he be faulted? After all, that Nazi had the law on his side! (/. tip: Always bring up Nazis to prove your point -- it works wonders.)
Morality is based on the Golden Rule. SBC's actions fail this. They used an overworked, clueless patent office to get a patent on a common, obvious process. And now they're attempting to profit from it by picking on a little guy. They not be villans under the laws of capitalism, but that doesn't mean they're not villans.
There should be some way to make the corporate patent pool a negative asset. Pity you can't just browse through all the patents a company owns and file preemptive lawsuits against them requesting that the court bar them from ever attempting to enforce their frivolous patents. Or file restraint of trade suits against the patent office itself. Bleh.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Does anyone besides me not equate legal with ethical, moral, righteous, virtous, etc.?
By Cringley's logic, if I do something vile that happens not to be illegal, I am not a villian. This is absurd.
</rant>
Not that they're bad guys. They're just prosecuting a questionable patent claim against tiny players. I'm still reading the claim, but my first reaction -- and please remember that IANAPL (thank God) -- is that the patent applies to SGML or structured language browsers that have buttons mapped to specific parts of structured documents. In the claim summary:
(Emphasis added)So, it seems that webpages, which are themselves documents that contain "links [that] may take the user to other documents or to locations within the same document," seem to be specifically disclaimed by the patent authors.
Furthermore, from a functional perspective, the purpose of the invention is to allow people to "browse[e] documents according to their structure instead of their contents," whereas a frameset navigation layout either uses links to documents or anchor tags within documents.
This seems to be a case where the problem addressed by the patent solved itself, and now the patent owners want to squeeze money from a better, but irrelevant, mousetrap (to hack a metaphor to death). Perhaps one of the lurking patent lawyers would care to discuss this further?
"Freedom is kind of a hobby with me, and I have disposable income that I'll spend to find out how to get people more."
Many of these outrageous patent claims are not only frivolous, but fraudulent. Unless they were unthawed from a glacier in 1996, it is difficult to believe that the 'inventors' of this patent did not have actual knowledge of all the prior art. If it can be proven that they did know that they were not the original inventors, they can be subject to criminal prosecution.
Right up until Congress decides to treat patents like copyrights and extend, extend, extend!
"... is not a villian for doing this ..."
Nothing wrong with patents but you should have the common sense to know when and how to use them. This is an obvious abuse of the system. It is the responsibilty of the patent owner and the patent office to get this right. You don't get off the hook by just blaming the patent office.
Onward to the Aether Sphere!
This is truly an unacceptable situation. Many posts I've seen call for IP reform, and I think that it needs to be specific, as in:
1) If you do not enforce a patent against a certain infringement within two years, you lose the right to enforce it. If you don't LEARN about it until that point, well, tough.
2) Current User-Interface patents and similar software patents are released into the public domain two years after application, and new ones will be denied patent protection. Between junk like Amazon's 1-Click and this mess, we need to stop this type of patent.
3) In liu of this, a new type of UI/Software algorithm protection needs to be established with reasonably high entry guidelines - industry/community review, intense prior art search, reasonable announcement, significant achievement, etc. These would not have a preset term - this would be decided on with the application, with NO recommendation by the person applying. This would prevent 'hyperlink' patents but would secure important developments, like the predictive text input system on slashdot a month or two ago and other INNOVATIONS.
It's nice to call for patent reform, but you need to say what you want. The numbers and specifics are arbitrary, but you get the idea.
Tell your congresscritter that you want patent reform and then they'll probably *lengthen* the terms.
The "bold" button does not refer to "sections" of the document.
However, claim 13 of '574 starts with "a browser for navigating a document". A website is not a browser. It is a document. In fact, the title of both patent '841 and patent '574 is "structure document browser", not "structured document" or "structured document browsing".
Acrobat Reader's outline view (where it continues to be displayed on the side) to be might infringe. Powerpoint might infringe (browsing the presentation with a list of the slides on the side). Web browsers might infringe because it will render documents with this functionality. However, I do not see how one can objectively construe a website (a set of (possibly dynamic) text files with loose definitions of layout and navigation) to be a "browser", unles the website navigation is writtin in Java (thereby perhaps making it a "browser").
The truly unfortunate thing here is the future of www.museumtour.com. A huge company like SBC comes along and starts throwing its legal weight around and this poor company will be crushed. Hundreds of thousands of dollars spent defending the entire internet will be a huge burden and possibly destroy the company. On the other hand, If they give in and pay the license, they set terrible precedent.
The BS WILL eventually blow over. People WILL still be able to use their links. But, the unknown is whether www.museumtour.com, the random-target website, will survive.
(sig on loan to Smithsonian)
HOW ELSE COULD IT BE DONE?!?
What other way could you link to dynamic content? You could use a "dynamic link", but if it was a dynamically generated link then it would itself qualify as dynamic content! So how did you link to that? Must've been (eventually) from a static link, whether on a page or in your browser preferences.
All dynamic content is traceable to some static link. It's not a new idea, it's a necessary condition!
This is not a "valid patent". Every dynamic page which existed prior to this patent was prior art.
...is to stop supporting these companies.
Do you have Southwestern Bell Phone service? Switch to a local provider.
Do you have a Cingular phone? Switch to a different provider.
Do you have SBC DSL? Switch to RoadRunner.
It's easy. And when they ask why you're disconnecting, tell them that you don't like this lawsuit.
dude, you have to seriously improve your faster-than-light posting before your post becomes prior art.
Free as in mason.
I hope at least a few people who are slashdotting museumtour.com buy something. Paying SBC might have been cheaper than paying for all the bandwidth that is being consumed as a result of this story. This of course, is not even counting the loss sales if the site crashes from all the hits.
Support them with sales. Buy something off their site to support the cause.
Yahoo will not be attempting to void SBC's claim any time soon:
http://sbc.yahoo.com/
While not what they had in mind, The Commodore relative file format might technically fit the bill. It had fixed "pages" (disk sectors) with pointers to dynamic "content" (data).
That would have been 1983?
Check out Netscape 2.02's Navigator Handbook, which was created in 1995! (look at the bottom of the page)
AOL was doing this shit back in the 1980's FOR GOD'S SAKE! Everything they had was dynamic content accessed via static buttons, including documents.
How about every single HyperCard stack ever made? A stack is a document. Did these idiots ever try clicking on any of the buttons in a stack?
FROM WHERE THE FUCK DO WE GET THESE GODDAMNED RETARDS?!?!?
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
It seems like the patent is really covering only the "browser". A website only produces tags between funny little characters, and the human at the other side uses a browser which formats it nicely, presumably violating the patent. It seems like SBC has a nice case against Netscape and Microsoft, not content providers.