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Plugin Patent to Mean Changes in IE?
hexene writes "The W3C have issued an initial statement on the recent court case of Eolas v. Microsoft in regards to US Patent 5,838,906. The patent relates to the embedding of objects in hypermedia documents, and Microsoft has indicated they will have to make changes to Internet Explorer as a result of the ruling. There may also be far-reaching effects to both other web browser vendors and page authors. Check out the public mailing list to discuss the various issues." See the previous Eolas story for background.
Even though this was a loss for Microsoft, I am not happy about that ruling. In my opinion, this shows the harm that patents are doing to the computer industry. I also believe that patents last too long.
There's this really neat feature that IE has (whie no other browser has) is the ability to save a webpage in 1 file. It puts a base64 attachments before the tag, and self-links all the links.
If thats what they're talking about, that stinks.
From the W3C statement:
The implementation can be local or distributed across a network, and is automatically invoked based upon type information in the document or associated with the object's data.
It seems on initial glance that if this patent holds up, it could be argued to apply to the entire model of MIME types by which browsers invoke different behavior based on type.
It also seems to directly apply to the notion of having Word launch when clicking on a ".doc" file.
Couldn't one consider a browser and a word processor to both be "plug-ins" to the operating system? What specifically differentiates a "plug-in" from any other type of application functionality?
Surely there is massive prior art on this going back at least to the early 80's. This patent is obscene.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
Do you suppose Microsoft is simply "letting" these guys win, "forcing" them to change some minor detail in IE, so they can help legitimize software patents in preparation of going after Open Source should the microsoft-backed SCO lawsuit fail to destroy it?
Just my 0.02 conspiracy theory.
In the end there will be nothing done since eveyone has a patent on something and no one else can innovate..
And that was not the intentions with the patent system.
In the future everyone and everything is illegal..
Will these changes finally fix the object tag, which is not only for ActiveX?
Currently, for any object tag to work in IE, you have to enable ActiveX scripting.
And will that fix the display-everything-in-every-object-tag bug too? I guess I'm asking for too much here.
Reminds me of the Netscape4-era when you couldn't use CSS unless javascript was active.
The patent relates to the embedding of objects in hypermedia documents, and Microsoft has indicated they will have to make changes to Internet Explorer as a result of the ruling. There may also be far-reaching effects to both other web browser vendors and page authors
All I can say is "it's about friggin time." Plugins are great when they work, but nothing on the internet sucks worse than when they don't. They've also been used as a tool by microsoft to break competing browsers (and OS's) as often as possible, and I'd love to see that simply go away. The only downside that I can think of is that some dynamic and/or media content will have to open in a separate window now. Boo hoo.
On another note, how will this affect the Microsoft desktop, since they insist that I.E. is an integral part of that which cannot be removed? Are Active-X (and other com-type) components going to be considered "browser plug-ins" when they're run on what Microsoft insists is an integral browser/desktop?
To ensure perfect aim, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target
If the patent covers "mechanisms for embedding objects within distributed hypermedia documents, where at least some of the object's data is located external to the document, and there is a control path to the object's implementation to support user interaction with the object" then does OLE also infringe?
Is there really no prior art?
My only beef with flash is that (1) it is not a "standard", and (2) implementations are proprietary, and therefore only available or easily available on the right platforms.
Getting rid of Flash plug ins might give SVG a fighting chance to displace it. (Can someone please provide a link to svg?)
This might be a motivation for Microsoft geeks to get excited about building a good SVG implementation into IE. I think other browsers (Mozilla?) already are working on this?
The price of freedom is eternal litigation.
Patent 4,838,906 (the patent in question)
If the patent is invalid due to prior art, Microsoft should of course appeal the ruling and it should be struck down.
If the patent is valid, the W3C members should raise some money and offer to pay a one-time lump-sum ransom for the patent to be freely licensed to anyone who wants to use it. (This is what has to happen in a system where inventions are patentable. You have to pay for innovations that would otherwise, once introduced, spread naturally to all producers in the course of ordinary market competition. Invention, not production, is rewarded in the near term.)
If the patent system is invalid... but that's another discussion.
While I think that most of the current patents, especially the business practices ones, are against the original spirit of the Patent/Copyright/Trademark laws, as far as I know most of these patents fail the requirements for patents. I seem to recall the following things being required for a patent:
While a lot of these patents are useful, I think they pretty much all fail either the Novelness or Unobviousness requirements. I work for a company that patents hinge designs, for crying out loud! I recall the days that a waterbed patent was denied because waterbeds were described in a Heinlein novel. Aren't the patent checkers aware of not just prior art, but novel and unobvious? (It's like the laser cat toy patent of a previous Slashdot article (please help with link) - sure it might be useful, but any doofus 3 year old knows that if you shine a light on a wall a cat will chase it.)
Rather than just yap about this, why don't we form some kind of task force to fight this nonsense?
I'd be happy to join.
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
While I would love to see the demise of Flash in favor of SVG, I would be sad to see Java Applets go away.
It is good to have a way to run open-ended software in the user's browser, in a sandbox. For example, the VNC viewer is a java applet. But this particular application of applets was not necessarily what was envisioned when applets were first added to web browsers. I'm thinking of useful applications of java applets, not the latest flashing, blinking, twitching, scrolling seizure inducing eye candy.
Similarly, I don't want to see media players go away. (But I would like to see the demise of proprietary controlled formats.)
One solution is to link the applet capability and the media player capability directly into the browser. Then you probably don't violate this patent.
With an open enough Java implementation, Mozilla for instance, could just include the ability to run java applets.
With an open enough real-player implementation, Mozilla could probably also directly link that code right into the browser.
In fact, Mozilla, or more generally, Open Source browsers could become the "rich" cousins, while proprietary browsers become the feature poor cousins. This would be very ironic.
The price of freedom is eternal litigation.
At the risk of taking M$'s side......
This seems to be another example in an alarming trend of individuals or companies who had the forsight to patent an "idea" in technology for which they take no steps to develop, sit on it until they see that idea manifested and realized in someone elses work, and then sue them to make their money.
It seems to me that a better way to quantify these patents would be to require some set of initial source code, architecture or methods of arriving at a techinical solution for the idea being patented rather than allowing the patenting of an idea whose makeup & implementation are left floating in a technological ether.
What about the twinkie? - Dr. Peter Venkman, PHD
I'm surprised that nobody's mentioned this, but I'm impressed with the story outlined in the W3C statement... faced with a potentially large problem, the major players in WWW technology got together and had a really mature discussion about what they were going to do about it. It makes a good change from most of the practices that used to go on in the browser market.
Also, they surely must share the same opinions as the majority here do on these sort of broad software patents... if companies like MS keep getting burned on stuff like this, you can be sure they're going to lobby for something to be done about it.
On the contrary, I think things like this can lead to something new and innovative instead of just sticking with "what works" as we have for years.
When you just keep building on old stuff and keeping around what always "has been" and "always worked in the past", I tend to see this stiffel innovation. Being forced back to drawing board to come up with something NEW as a work around can be a good thing, especially for a company like Microsoft that has the $$$ to invest into R&D of something new and radical.
Whether or not it comes out better will remain to be seen. Also, I am not saying I agree with any of these lawsuits for IP, but merely stating that they can lead to new, exciting and more efficient handling of said things.
Let's keep our fingers crossed and hope it all pans out in the end and gives us something better...
Just do what I do -> ignore it and move on. Maybe eventually everyone will realize that shrink-wrap licensing is crap and software code is all just mathematical in nature, and therefore, not patentable; or licensable. C'mon! I mean, if Isaac Newton had patented the concept of gravity and charged $699 to everyone for simply using gravity, we'd all be broke!
I would love to see software either being totaly copyrightable and nothing else, or totaly patantable and nothing else.
if it the former, then anyone can write software tat does the same thing the same way, but the copyright lasts for a long time.
if it is the latter, it stifles inovation due to patent suits, but the ability to protect the code expires after 15 years.
the former I think is more favorable.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
I just hope some of this becomes clear before the Euro Parliament vote on the software patents directive (I heard that the vote is pushed back again, to september 22)
...will be that you can actually specify you don't want to load active x components: WITHOUT HAVING TO CLICK NO ON EVERY FUCKING PAGE!
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
hey sign cross licensing agreements with each other stating that they won't sue
This is not what a cross licensing agreement says.
The typical big company cross licensing arrangement goes like this. Okay, we've settled our dispute. Let's not bring patents into the war. (Like nuclear weapons.) So we will cross license eash other with each other's patents. I now have rights to all of your patents, and you have rights to all of my patents. This forecloses the possibility that you will ever sue me over any of your patents. But you still might sue me because I give you defective copies of Windows because I don't like the way you cozy up to Linux.
The price of freedom is eternal litigation.
If I read the webpage right this patent extends back to 1994.
Internet Explorer was at one time a liccensed version of Mosaic as maintained by Spyglass and 'enhanced' by Microsoft. I realise this isn't true anymore.
However it seams Microsoft dropped the ball on this one quite bad. Maybe suing Microsoft for intelectual property is Microsofts kryptonite.. no wait that makes them seam like good guys.. Microsofts dropped house... much better.
Microsoft has a bit of a history of losing intelectual property lawsutes. It's a long term blind spot for them.
Mosaic has had plugins for a while and with Interenet Explorer being just part of Windows now I wonder if this applys to web browsers or dose Microsofts own Windows explorer also qualify as prior art.
It was mentioned this could apply to Unix mime but that would make Unix mime prior art.
Someone suggested this could also apply to any method of matching an application to a document type even one implemented in the operating system.
Mac Os, Windows 286,386,2.xx,3.xx, OS/2, Geos [64/128/Apple], Geoworks [PC/PDA/Cell phone/wordprocessor], Amiga Os, Atari ST/TTs TOS, some interface programs for CP/M and some for Dos, GemOs, TI Explorer.
I'm sure you could find all kinds of software for all operating systems that could handle this.
That is presumming I got this right.
That we are talking about is a patent on a program that recognises what a docment is and forwards it to an external handling program that was issued in 1994.
I don't actually exist.
you -cant- "embed" anything in w3c standard hypermedia. you place an tag and let the browser do the requested work. the object isn't 'embedded' in the hypermedia document, it's referenced by the markup tag.
.
there's no 'embedding' going on in the document whatsoever, it's a request to the browser to load an object from a specified location and launch it with specified parameters.
beyond all that, 'an object' is about the most broad concept one could possibly patent. not to mention the ambiguous nature of 'embed' with regards to a markup language.
if i have a that specifies an url to a swf target inside a frame on my hypermedia document, is that 'embedding'? it could look to a user every bit the same as if i'd used
is it the functional 'embedding' of object data they have patented? (which as we can see -isnt- happening) or is it the visual presentation of an 'object' amongst hypermedia elements? because that would rule out java apps, -all- audio/visual components, swf, and any custom com/activex plugins.
does this mean that i could have patented 'embedding an image' in hypermedia documents?
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
The Common Application Platform that the Browser tries to be is braindead anyway.
.NET platform for applications
It would be great to have HTML just that, no DHTML, no javascript.
I'd love to go back to programming applications again but every idea anyone has seems to end up "can we do that in a web browser" and we end up with cookies and an inability to rely on anything being in the other frame.
The result of this mess is the
The Web must die and we must be ready to rebuild it.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
One of XHTML 2's more controversial points is removing the img tag completely and replacing it with the object tag.
This would superficially seem to put that strategy in jeopardy.
Or would it? Images, at least, have a very limited interactivity with the browser (if you don't specify width and height, the browser calculates it and renders accordingly). There is, absent an image map, no interactivity.
This is a serious question--does anyone know what this may mean, in light of the W3C's statement?
Mike Doyle clearly is seeking not a simple settlement. he is either on an anti-MS crusade, or looking for a more lucrative licensing deal for his patent.
He could license the ability to run plugins to browser developers. guess where that most likely leaves the small market boxes? Linux, Unix, and Mac. behind and under-attended to. the developer couldn't release the code under the GPL, so the community wouldn't be able to fill the void.
Alternatively, if this guy is on a little quest to knock down MS, and withhold the tech from them, or any developer with plans to release their browser to them, i think he is insane.
Microsoft does not lose.
would MS -really- lose if it isn't -their- browser on the desktop, but, for example, Netscape's? did the emergence of the web before MS had dominance lead do a decline in MS desktop sales? history tells us that they'd perservere, and find some way around it, to provide the same functionality with their own proprietary code.
what happens when mr doyle flips his switch and 95% of the browser market (IE) can no longer watch flash videos in a web page, chat through a web page, watch a movie clip on ifilms, or use simple scriptlets or custom applets (potentially not even take advantage of mime typing or any function which invokes a dll)?
why, microsoft would simply -stop- using hypermedia. it's not like they've been shy about breaking from standards in the past.
They'd create a proprietary tangential protocol, that allows them to create a proprietary application that continues to offer full media control. if there is no hypermedia, there is no patent infringement.
no longer will a page be an open collection of tags. rather it would be, potentially and probably, a DRM'd stream of data from provider to consumer, invoked and displayed according to user request, but never using hypermedia, or an industry standard.
every URL becomes a 'msnet' network stream request - probably with simple XML still, but not in the 'hypermedia' sense. simply put - there is no longer an open standard.
we are left at MS whim on whether they want to provide access to their new network on competing operating systems. (mac would be almost guaranteed, linux/unix and abandonware OSs would be in limbo).
businesses -must- deal with the realities of MS corporate market share, and the web would fade into the mainstream background like IRC and Usenet, as underutilized text-only forums from a simpler time.
you can accuse MS of many things, but losing, or rolling over to someone else's proprietary 'standard' that threatens their dominance (*cough*java*cough*) has -never- been one of them.
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
Make a new kind of thing that does what a web browser does, but isn't a web browser. MS could certainly push a new kind of content delivery engine, and create a "new web". Since the patent is for plugins into web browsers, they would no longer infringe.
Or, they could stuff all of C# into a web browser in such a way as the browser becomes a downloadable program selector.
I'm surprised MS lost this case.
This is my sig.
It is the fault of a "greedy IP company that is also not making a product" and the government for allowing it to go ahead. Also is there an open source problem here, for instance let us say that MSFT agrees to pay royalites to allow their web browser to continue to work correctly, then the company claims that browsers such as Mozillia must also pay royalities?
Onward to the Aether Sphere!
The <EMBED> tag and plug-ins in general were a pretty innovative development. Looking back, we see the <IMG> tag (which the browser handles with different code depending on the type of the image) and <APPLET>, and it's very clear to us now where things were going. It wasn't that obvious at the time. Then, browsers were monolithic.
This patent isn't as trivial as, say, one-click buy. In that case, both the desire and the implementation were trivial. In this case, the need to go to a more pluggable architecture wasn't immediately obvious at the time, and neither was the solution (plug-ins and switching applications based on content type).
In fact this is exactly what happens in chip design.
Twenty years ago, a single company would design netlists, put them together in a chip design, and build the chip.
Ten years ago, one company would design the netlists and put them together as a chip, and another company would build the chip (in many cases, the chip building company was IBM, which is why they have their fingers in a lot of processors).
Now, different companies design the netlists, design chips, and build the chips. For example, say you want a high-speed wireless modem. You would buy some netlists from a company that specializes in communication algorithms, put them together on a chip, and ship it off to a manufacturer to build the chip.
This is a good thing, since it allows companies to specialize, and it speeds the introduction of good technologies to the market -- and it wouldn't happen without strong IP protection.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
Probably because open source people see this as patent abuse. Ten years ago, nobody would think it wise to spend time and money filing for numerous obviously stupid patents. Why would we? Only now is it becomming obvious why you need a large stable of obviously stupid patents. To fight off the same but now grown up bullies that used to stuff you into a locker in high school.
The price of freedom is eternal litigation.
The Pulpit, Auguest 2001
Hey, and it's August again, a little over two years later!
Well, more importantly that Microsoft was going to try to kill Java and embed a media player in the browser.
OK, just a very harsh and random thought, but...
Why should the rest of the world care? The patent is only in the US. I could happily use the manners described in Europe of Asia since the patent doesn't apply there...
Furthermore, I wonder why W3C is concerned, since it only affects, what, 10% of the world (no idea) or so? Sure, they have an office in the USA, but also one in Europe and one in Japan. Close the office in the US. And dang, too bad for Eolas.
Jeroen Ruigrok/Asmodai
So the patent covers
"mechanisms for embedding objects within distributed hypermedia documents, where at least some of the object's data is located external to the document, and there is a control path to the object's implementation to support user interaction with the object"
Can the work not be done by the web server instead, and an addition made to the html tag system to allow for binary data to be streamed as "part" of the document? Have the web server grab all the information prior to sending everything, and then stream all the info in one big document to the browser. Sure some things will have to be done differently, but it would also have the added benefit of breaking a number of tracking methods used by advertisers.
If I can come up with this workaround in ten minutes, certainly other people could come up with more complete solutions.