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SBC Getting Aggressive With Frames Patent
mpthompson writes "Aspects of the SBC patent shakedown were covered previously on SlashDot, but the following article has more details including the royalty fee schedules on the two patents that SBC is seeking to enforce against web sites that utilize frames in their design. In short, SBC has asserted that it is the exclusive owner of a technology for "structured document" browsing - the use of frames to provide hyperlinks to documents displayed by a browser. Apparently the strategy by SBC is to set precedent against small web sites that will presumably capitulate before going after the big guys. Based on the fee schedule, SBC seems to be pretty serious about this whole patent thing and may not go away so easily."
Web sites don't use frames. Web browsers use frames. Web site author doesn't know how it will be renderred.
will any big entities threatened by these astonishingly silly actions join together to get this permanently invalidated?
...is the end of frames on the web a bad thing?
That means that site will have the choice between:
1) Give money to SBC
2) Get sued
3) Stop using frames
Guess which one's simpler (hint, 3)? I don't think they'll make a dime out of it because unlike gif (at least at some point) or hyperlinks, it's not an essential technology for the web.
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
Refuting the SBC patent claims in an article is one thing. Refuting the claims in a court of law is quite another. This is going to cost small sites like museumtour.com real money to fight. If they capitulate and pay the damn licensing fee to SBC then precedent will be set and it will cost that much more for the next round of victims. And so on, and so on...
The game SBC is playing creates a pretty pernicious circle that works to the benefit of those with deep pockets. The best we can hope for is that at some point the whole cycle gets absurd enough that lawmakers take notice and finally fix the situation once a for all.
Reading that, it does look like "name" and "target" tags would also be covered.
My only question is this: what separates the "user interface" from the "document" portions of the browser?
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
If they capitulate and pay the damn licensing fee to SBC then precedent will be set and it will cost that much more for the next round of victims.
museumtour.com cannot set a legal precedent- only a judge can do that. No matter how many people caved and paid off SBC before going to court, if a judge finds that the patent is invalid, then it is invalid. Whether or not museumtour.com capitulates has no bearing on the legality of the patent.
> This might be a good excuse to dump frames.
Never let the assholes win. If browsers and web authors dropped frames "because of this patent," then they'll use the same patent to go after tables and explicit positioning and it will be a lot harder to defend against the claims.
I don't know the wording of the SBC patent, but I can guarantee it doesn't say anything at all about the <FRAME> tag. It refers to some unspecified mechanism for formatting text, combining it from different places, etc., and any decent lawyer can stretch it cover pretty much anything you can name.
The only way to stop this crap is to make it hurt when someone (corporation or greedy individual) makes excessive claims.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
To everyone on Slashdot, remember: you have a choice in cellular providers, long distance services, and ISPs. You may not have a choice in land-line phones, but you can make them beg for every penny they get from you. Do not use SBC long distance. Do not use SBC DSL. Do not use CellularOne in areas where it is run in conjunction with SBC. Do not use Cingular Wireless.
SBC is truly an evil company, far more so than even Microsoft. They're a baby bell who longs for the days when they had a complete monopoly over telephone services across the country, and as a result, they have repeatedly abused their limited monopoly power over the citizens of California (and probably other states) and repeatedly tried to gain even more power through legislation that would keep them from having to lease shared access to their lines to other companies (for DSL service, etc.). Now in yet another act of petulance, SBC is suing companies for using web standards rather than suing the bodies that made those standards and the companies that implement them.
Worse yet, their patent is at best loosely tied to the concept of frames, and any reasonable person would laugh at them for this. However, because many of these companies are smaller companies that can't afford to defend themselves, SBC is able to use these fraudulent legal strongarm tactics to extort money from them.
My friends and colleagues, it's time to draw a line in the sand, to say we will go this far and no further. Everyone who is being sued MUST fight this. It is your civic duty; your national honor is at stake. You must organize and work together to form a united front in the legal defense of every case, and make certain every case goes to trial or is dropped outright. Do not settle. Do not pay one penny in patent royalties.
While you fight---and win---the cases against SBC, you should also file individual countersuits for harassment against them in your LOCAL court system to force them to send their lawyers to YOU. Your goal should be to literally drag SBC into legal fee Hell.
The only way to deal with a company that attempts to make fraudulent use of patents is to make them pay for their abuse of our legal system, and if necessary to end their attempts at extortion, to literally sue them into oblivion. And yes, I will contribute to a legal defense fund if you set one up, so long as it is with the clear intent to counter sue the living crap out of SBC.
The usual IANAL caveats apply, as though it were not obvious.
120 character sigs suck. Make it 250.