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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."
Patent reform is a great idea, but I'd be more interested in hearing how you plan to implement it.
Despite millions of years of evolution, human beings, taken as a group, are still stupid, panicky animals.
Three letters: P H P
Conceived in 1994, first public version in 1995.
Hypercard came out in 1987.
DataBinding anyone ? afaik worked on ie3+ (1995) i believe, linked static content on the page with dynamic server data, enabling updates to be performed in realtime without refreshing the interface
Wired had an article last year about British Telephone's lawsuit against Prodigy for violating their patent on hyperlinks. So who really owns this patent?
One thing I don't understand about this (probably because IANAPL) is why the prior art search has to be limited to web applications. It seems as though the patent covers a pretty common user interface element. And slapping words like "over a computer network" on the end shouldn't be enough to differentiate (though, didn't some company get a patent for dutch auctions on the web?).
So what I'm saying is, isn't something like the "bold" button in Microsoft Word prior art for this. Or, if we want to get more related, can't we look for prior art in the CD-ROM applications that were common in the early nineties? They had user interfaces very similar to web sites.
It's been seven years. Patent's over. Right?
The fact that, due to a stupid ruling during the Raygun administration, software patents are now able to exist (they were previously and properly not permitted) does not absolve companies abusing this fact to steal money of being immoral ("villians"). As the US legel system is based on the "whoever has the richest lawyer(s) wins", you'll be waiting until Hell freezes over for "IP law that promotes innovation" -- IP law is not compatible with innovation, it's only compatible with blood-sucking. These IP law slime need a good ass kicking, not coddling by columnists.
Gopher was exactly that.
Links to dynamicly changing pages. So it existed before the web.
I am also pretty sure that I made an assignment with hyperlinks around 1988 at university. Think it was a help system.
manx / xman is actually prior work. Represents a list of links in one windows, and when you press it, it will compile the corresponding man page and display it in the same or another frame.
This is way older than 1988.
The best part of the article has to be that they approached museumtour.com (a site based in Oregon that sells educational toys over the Net) first. I WONDER WHY.
This is obvious. You knock over a small site to set a precedent, and then you go after someone with some real money. Build up your cash to knock over some real players out there.
This is its best moment in the article:
To its credit, SBC Intellectual Property was very polite in its approach to Museumtour, pointing out the existence of the patent, citing specifically how it believed Museumtour is in violation and offering to sell the company a license based on some percentage of gross sales.
I specifically love how they say they initially came in and asked nicely for a gross percentage of sales... it reminds me how the mafia is so polite, explaining how that you could avoid an "financial incident" by "licensing out protection" from said "financial incident" say, from, somebody you just met. Capiche?
If they really want to do this right, they need a fat man in a fedora and wingtips saying this to them in a raspy voice:
"Ya know, not saying that it is going to happen, but if it did happen it might cause you to lose some money there, pal. You better just license with us on your gross earnings, cuz, well, you never know. We live in strange times."
Yes, the article is right. They are very polite.
Until they attack you.
I remember designing BBS menubar interfaces using 'The Draw' way back in 1995 .. The menubar would be static but the content on the page (in this case user comments or lists of images and files) would change.
IANAL. If you use XHTML, does this patent cover you?
--
Annotateit at Annotateit.com
one word "Ebay" Founded in September 1995. Try running an internet auction without static and dynamic elements.
Get a free ipod.
It will be interisting to see who they sue next. Their going after this small .com because they know they cant fight, they know theyll roll right over them... set a precident, and then go after big dogs.
Our only hope is that the big dogs back the little guy.
The Code Ninja is swift with his tool, precise in his delivery, and deadly accurate in his execution.
OK, it is not related to a web page but this kind of ergonomy was already in either Atari/TOS and Apple MacOS...
(if the page is seen as the screen and the omnipresent-though-changing elements are seen as the menu bar)
I guess there is some sort of plagia, here.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
The idea here is that they will establish lots of history here with winning case after case. Once they have a "winning track record" here by winning the last 20 or so cases, then they will start to go after the bigger fish.
The courts don't care how big the defendants were (or are) in the wins, just that they won.
Any court will consider the fact that the patent has been successful 20 or so times in previous courts as pretty overwhelming evidence of it's validity.
Let's not forget the battlecry of the armchair observers - IANAL
Ron Gage - Westland, MI
In the US, you have one year to file for a patent, so prior art needs to beat the filing date by a year. This is not true for patents in the rest of the world, which have an "absolute novelty" requirement.
:)
If the only prior art that can be found is from early '96, we will have to relocate all our websites to Europe, which will really show how US IP laws protect American business
Yeah, that's it. AmigaGuide, which was conceived possibly in AmigaOS 2 (early 90s), was a hypertext system. The browser program always had a static set of buttons at the top (prev, next, toc, index, and so on).
i contacted him, and told him i am cancelling my service with SBC, and I am!
Before you start looking for prior art you need to know when the patent was applied for.
Like the infamous one click shopping of Amazon, the reason they could enforce it was they applied for the patent before everyone started doing it. If the application date is before the prior art, the art isn't prior.
I don't know the particulars, but keep that in mind when searching for prior art. And did they purchase the patent from someone else?
Well, I think it's time Sun and AOL weighed in to defend THEIR patents against this unwarranted assault on them by SBC.
... yes, for their patents on Java. One of the original purposes of Java was to permit websites to include dynamic content, INCLUDING NavBars (in fact, I believe the first JDK (1.0.3, IIRC) I ever downloaded included a navbar in the example code), and to not have to worry about what platform their dynamic content would have to execute on.
... yes, I'm SURE there is probably an old dusty Netscape patent relating to javascript and it's use for things such as site navigation aids, creation of dynamic content linked to a static element, and all those other client-side tasks that we've all come to love like acting as spyware, creating & reading cookies, pop-up windows that resize to take over the screen (oops ... my bad) ... heh!
Sun??
AOL??
Anyhow, couple those with Apple's HyperCard patents and there's PLENTY of prior art out there. Maybe, just maybe, if we could get Sun & AOL fighting with SBC over who owns what, the sharks might eat each OTHER instead of the small fry.
utter rubbish
The language of the patents cover document browsers. Web pages are documents, you know that things that are browsed by document browsers.
Even though it's a bull shit patent I could see trying to say it covered Explorer/Mozilla/Opera.. etc, but web pages? Come on.
IANAL but if a web page can constitute a legally binding agreement isn't that legal proof that it's simply a document?
-William Shatner can be neither created nor destroyed.
That's an excellent point. I've only glazed over the patent, and certainly I may be missing something totally obvious, but I think this answers your question:
Trouble is, I can't find anything in the Abstract or Claims that would indicate that their claim is limited to hypertext documents on the web. Surely interfaces other than web applications fit the vague definition they've given? OK, so a constant user interface for displaying and viewing that displays documents that have been marked with embedded codes? Glancing around my desktop, here are some other interfaces that seem to fit this description:
Then there's this gem:
The keyboard. The keyboard!! I guess all the mainframers out there aren't safe from IP liability either. Who do these clowns think they are?
Yes, we need cute cartoon firebomb graphics. They look great on anarcho-syndicalist agitprop, and are amusing to young people.
Karma: Bad (mostly affected by being such an asshole)
If we look at HTML the FRAMESET/FRAME construct has become part of the HTML 4.0 specification in 1998. Officially both HTML 2.0 ('95) and HTML 3.2 ('97) did not support frames. I think however this has been done because both IE and Netscape did support frames for a while at that time.
It's obvious that similar concepts and implementations of what they patented have been done before...
giel.y contains 2 shift/reduce conflicts
DIAMOND v. DIEHR, 450 U.S. 175 (1981)
Argued October 14, 1980.
Decided March 3, 1981.
Judges and who nominated them.
For
Renquist -- Nixon
Burger -- Nixon
White -- Kennedy
Stewart -- Eisenhower
Powell -- Nixon
Against
Stevens -- Ford
Blackmun -- Nixon
Marshall -- Johnson
Brennen -- Eisenhower
Nice jab at the Reagan administration, but wrong as alway lib. He was in office a whole 2 months when the opinion was given. Why didn't that lib White dissent? Why didn't all the repulican nominated justices agree? This is hardly political.
That is, noone can stop me from producing a medical drug myself, for my own use, even if it's patented.
Thus, someone trying to sell a Content management system using static links to dynamic pages would be infringing. But just putting your own pages online is allowed. Or am I just uninformed?
This is the best comment I've seen so far, but it doesn't really prove prior art. The page you refer to is dated 1999. As with many innovations, the presence of an enabling mechanism does not necessarily indicate prior art.
Can you prove that frames were intended for use as contemplated by the patent, i.e. a consistent user interface across a document or site? Not from that article. Remember too that not only frames are at issue here -- a navigation bar using tables or divisions would appear to be covered by the patent as well.
While it is blatently obvious with hindsight that frames can be used in this manner, some Googling around will show that a huge amount of web design material at the time references a document called "Ameritech Web Page User Interface Standards and Design Guidelines" by Detweiler, M.C. and Omanson, R.C. (1996), on the matter of creating a consistent user interface by using frames. If that doesn't ring a bell, Ameritech was the original holder of the patent, and recently acquired by SBC.
Reading the patent provides some more insight too: they contemplate a document with embedded codes indicating document sections, that conforms to a predefined structure. Read this way, the patent does not partain to HMTL frames, because HTML is a hypertext linked collection of documents, not a single document. A navbar or frame moving the view to named references within a single document, however, would clearly violate the patent.
So is the patent valid? Well, that involves proving prior art; not just that frames existed, but that they were used for the purpose of navigation, both in a single document and between documents. Any evidence of tables to do the same thing would also be useful. Also crutial is having an incontestible source -- printed information is best, a reputable online news source or journal is the next best thing.
w3.org records Edelstein's Sep 1995 proposal to include frames in the HTML specification, but the example page he sites is no longer available.
The Netscape Navigator 2.0 announcement contains "Frames, a new page presentation capability that enables the display of multiple, independently scrollable panels on a single screen, each with its own distinct Internet address. They also enable a region of the screen to be frozen in place as the user scrolls through information on a page". Tantalising, but it doesn't mention using the frozen region for navigation.
Most promising are the Mozilla 2.0 release notes. Two of the example links are broken, while third doesn't work in my browser, although the pages appear to be there. It clearly demonstrates the use of a navigation frame to select different pages in a site, and view them in a "dynamic" frame. That said, the navigation frame itself is not entirely static (it scrolls, but does not change), and there is no navigation inside a single document from the frame.
There is a lot of effort required to find proper evidence of prior art that will hold up in court. The Wayback Machine would provide great evidence, if only we can find it.
i-name =twylite [http://public.xdi.org/=twylite], see idcommons.net
Perhaps I'm being naive but the "locked" screen areas of 3270 displays (and non-scrolling areas of vt100 as well) seem like the perfect prior art. From the 70s.
How about this: If an inventor does not collect royalities or otherwise enforce a pantent within two years of its granting, the patent is declared null and void, and the invention goes into the public domain.
"Do I dare disturb the universe?"
They learned to file suits on stuff where there most likely is prior art.
The first articles I saw claimed it was frames they'd patented. Netscape 2 had frame support in '95.
They learned to file the first suit against someone without deep pockets
BT filed suit against Prodigy. Prodigy was owned by SBC, who probably had deeper pockets than BT. SBC is filing against Museumtour. Who ever heard of them before this suit?
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
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."
OIC. So if something is "legal" then you're not a villain for doing it. So like if it's legal to shove Jews into gas chambers then it's ok to do it and if somebody hauls you in for a trial years later, you can just bleat out. "But I was just doing my job..." and that makes everything ok. Bullshit.
BTW, if you're wondering...I use this example for all cases when people justify their actions by saying "well it's leeeegaaallll so it's ok", not just for patents.
Best. Comment. Ever. Enjoy!
I'd be more interested in hearing how you plan to implement it.
Alright, here goes.
1. Hire patent investigators who are qualified to appraise the value of patents. The original patent clerks were supposed to be "skilled in their profession." Require a Master's Degree in the field they work (ECE, CS, etc) or equivalent experience. Pay patent clerks enough that people with Master's Degrees will apply. Make it so that patent clerks have no incentive to actually grant a patent. The default case should be "think about it more" and after that "deny until it's further clarified."
2. If you file a patent and while it's under investigation (as this takes a while), you discover other people using technology which might infringe, you should be required to send them notification formally stating what you feel might infringe on your IP, and exactly what remedies you desire should your patent be granted.
3. Patents should work like Trademarks: if they are unenforced, they lose their enforcability. You should be required to file for redress IMMEDIATELY upon hearing that somebody uses technology which may violate your IP. No submarining patents. No going after 100 small fish instead of actually filing a lawsuit against IBM or somebody who might have the power to take you out. You want your IP, you must defend it vigilently.
4. Patent terms for technical innovations last 20 years. In today's fast-changing society, this is far too long. Software patents should last no more than 4 years, hardware for no more than 10. A 20-year patent on the WWW filed in 1990 would set it back until 2010 for public use!
5. Patenting business practices is just fucking stupid. Disallow this.
There's a federal law prohibiting telephone solicitors from calling cellular phones to sell products or services. Check out US Code, Title 47, Chapter 5, Section 227(b)(1):
Also note paragraph 3:
Looks like SBC Ameritech owes you at least $500...of course it'd probably cost you $10,000 in attorney fees before you saw a dime (unless you feel like buying a few reams of legal-size paper for the paperwork you'll need to file with your oh-so-friendly local civil servant), not to mention the lost wages from having to take days off from work to show up in court, etc. etc.
"Alcohol, Tobacco, & Firearms" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
So I propose a very simple solution:
-A.C. (for obvious reasons)If SBC is going to argue that a site is infringing on their patent, they have to argue that a site is the PRODUCER, not the CONSUMER, of the patented device.
So if there are thousands of different people on the internet who came up with the same invention, would that not make the patent invalid as it would be a natural conclusion of any competent person?
Conversely, if they argue that it's a device produced by only a small number of entities, but USED by many, wouldn't the sites not be liable since they are only comsumers? It would be like Company X suing *ME* because I bought a product from Company Y that's infringing on X's patent.
IANAL, of course.
paintball
I was discussing this particular patent with friends a couple of weeks ago (when the story debuted in The Register).
Would it be possible for some trusted organization (EFF?) to set up a Journal of Prior Art, where you could submit ideas you wanted to give to public domain? Once a month, all the submissions would be bundled and published, with one copy sent to the Library of Congress to establish timeline. Whenever some new technology like frames came out, you could iterate over ideas and submit them. That way, when bonehead patents like these come up, you'd have at least one resource to search through to try to invalidate them. From a legal point of view, you should be safe...worse comes to worse, you get some already patented ideas in the Journal, but that's not illegal, and doesn't really decrease the usefulness of what would be there. About the only legal risk I can see if is someone managed to violate the DMCA with a tech description (decryption or the like).
The questions would be:
A) is this feasible from a resources point of view.
B) Does prior art have to be a full implementation, or can it be a description of an implementation?
And most importantly,
C) Could someone take any of the suggestions, vary one tiny detail (that one's red, this is blue), then patent that? You don't want to create a cookbook for scumsuckers!