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."

Comments

Thank god!

[JustAnOtherCodeSerf]

This is a giant leap for web design... it'd be great if someone patented every bad idea out there. Once the lawsuits start flying, people will stop using them.

Of couse, we'll just replace the old dumb idea with a new dumb idea.. but hey, it'll be fun to watch.