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Company Files Motion to Stop IE Distribution
RobHornick writes "According to CNET News, Eolas Technologies, a company that's already won a patent infringement judgement against Microsoft regarding Internet Explorer, has filed a motion to stop Microsoft from distributing its IE software until they remove Eolas' patented technology for running plug-ins, or pay up for a license."
The Redmond, Wash., software giant asked for the new trial, citing several factors, including the unusual proportions of the jury's judgment and the court's refusal to allow discussion of some prior art or similar technology that Microsoft believes predated the Eolas patent and should therefore invalidate it.
Microsoft mentioned one piece of prior art in particular, the Viola browser, invented by Perry Pei-Yuan Wei, an artist, software engineer and then a student at the University of California at Berkeley. That browser dates back to 1991 and its plug-in capabilities to 1992, nearly two years before Eolas filed for its patent.
Once again, prior art popping up. So, this whole thing will probably get turned on its head after about 3 more years of litigation.
Sigh.
evil adrian
No, that's a trademark that goes away if it goes unused. Patents, like diamonds, are forever... and often valuable.
-Erwos
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
Forever as in about 20 years, anyways.
-Erwos
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
I haven't read much about this case, but i have seen two key facts. One is that MS was given the opportunity to license the technology ten years ago and they did not. The second is that the case of prior art presented by MS was a process that was developed contemporaneously with the process under question. It is not clear that one predates the other, and the other process was not patented. There are many examples of simultaneous developments throughout history, and the person who get the credit is often random. Therefore the judge reasonable ruled that no prior art could be specified.
The other two adjoining issues is that MS firmly believes in IP and in particular patents. It would be hypocritical to allow them to hold onto those beliefs only when it is convenient for them. That is what we call inappropriate consequences and is like a bully complaining that a kid who he has been beating up every day for the past year is now aiming a gun at his head. The second is that the browser/plug in model is part of the OS, a situation unique to MS.
I certainly hope that this mess will make the PHB realize that patenting these things is bad. I think at this point they see it as a game. Who can rack up the most frivolous patents, similar to who can screw the most secretaries, or have the youngest spouse. But it has serious consequences. Under the current rules, Eolas Technologies may have the power to stop the distribution of Windows, and god knows what else. That is scary.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Don't worry, Microsoft will punish Eolas for uttering those words, just as they punished NVidia for those same words.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
Mozilla's answer to this patent is that it only mentions interprocess communication. Mozilla loads the plugin into the same memory space as the browser, as I understand it, so they believe they are outside the scope of the patent. Anyways, to answer your question, this issue has already been brought before the Mozilla developers and they've already addressed it for the time being.
Step forward a couple of years, and it's remotely possible I'd say Yes. (1985 was the year the Amiga was released.)
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
Microsoft used patents to kill ASF support in VirtualDub. See here.
Most people would loose access to embedded Flash (more than anything else---it's the most widely deployed plugin) and the web would go on.
This patent does not threaten Windows per se in that way.
However, significant numbers of corporates would also loose access to their in-house ActiveX components, and they would not be happy.
I suspect that's why MS has proposed the workaround it has---existing sites would work with an extra dialog box and click. They probably don't expect everybody to recode with the funky JavaScript to provide a seamless experience. However, they will suggest to the corporates that they CAN recode their intranets---and that even if they don't, at least the apps will still work (at the cost of an extra dialog box and click).
The main victim of this patent is Browser+ActiveX, which happens to be affect Windows a lot, and everything else not very much.
Protoplasm. Quiet Protoplasm. I like quiet protoplasm.
This patent madness needs to stop. This software patent, along with many others including many filed by Microsoft, is invalid because of prior art.
The system is supposed to be setup to protect us from such frivolous patent games, however, it seems that the USPTO has no intention of performing the necessary exhaustive research to determine the validity of every software patent application, or perhaps ANY patent.
Given that the system is not properly used by those who are entrusted, I propose a non-profit organization that uses the existing rules to force this government organization to practice proper policy.
From:
Title 37 - Code of Federal Regulations Patents, Trademarks, and Copyrights
Section 1.501
" (a) At any time during the period of enforceability of a patent, any person may cite, to the Office in writing, prior art consisting of patents or printed publications which that person states to be pertinent and applicable to the patent and believes to have a bearing on the patentability of any claim of the patent. "
Section 1.510
" (a) Any person may, at any time during the period of enforceability of a patent, file a request for an ex parte reexamination by the Office of any claim of the patent on the basis of prior art patents or printed publications cited under 1.501. The request must be accompanied by the fee for requesting reexamination set in 1.20(c)(1). "
So based on these rules anyone can fight these lame patents, however, here is the kicker, if you want to file a patent the cost will start at between $385 and $770 (Section 1.16), however, if you want to force a reexamination the costs start at between $2,520 and $8,800 (Section 1.20).
This alone is going to dissuade regular people from using the system to fight these ridiculous patents. So this is why I suggest a non-profit organization that will need some type of support from the community.
Now get this:
Section 1.520
" The Director, at any time during the period of enforceability of a patent, may determine whether or not a substantial new question of patentability is raised by patents or printed publications which have been discovered by the Director or which have been brought to the Director's attention, even though no request for reexamination has been filed in accordance with 1.510 or 1.913. The Director may initiate ex parte reexamination without a request for reexamination pursuant to 1.510 or 1.913. Normally requests from outside the Office that the Director undertake reexamination on his own initiative will not be considered. Any determination to initiate exparte reexamination under this section will become a part of the official file of the patent and will be mailed to the patent owner at the address as provided for in 1.33(c). "
Now I'm thinking that the director may not have any incentive on his own to ensure proper examination is performed in the first place so the director is not likley to do a reexamination either.
So with proper lobbying higher up in the chain of command it may be possible to get someone to light a fire under the director so we could get some action on these lame patents without having to pay the reexamination fees. But we do need someone who's job it is to rattle some cages.
Assuming we cannot find anybody who is interested in taking up the cause to see these gross errors corrected this non-profit organization could begin filing reexamination requests.
Not only will this force the patent office to reconsider some of these patents, but a side affect would be to force the owners of the patents to spend some of their own time and capital to respond to the reexamination requests a defend their lame patents.
If we can get the purveyors of these bogus patents tied up in paying to backup their stupid claims then we could slow down the flow or pull back the tide.
burnin
Think about the technology from 1983, would you use that over the current technology?
Well, RSA and LZW were both patented in 1983, and they are widely in use today.
wow...yup, that's Insightful alright.
Who's been giving pot to the mods again?
Karma: Chevy Kavalierma.
Apparently nobody pays attention or does any research.
First off Eolas has filed the same patent three times (been rejected) and has been narrowing it down.
Basically the patent states:
Any inlining function that renders on the client that gets information from another server. However javascript is not affected, but activex and other plugins are, but the question is the img tag linking to another webpage affected? I know a few places will not allow their sites to have img tags to point to a different server.
This is a stupid patent and should be thrown out. And in fact if we wanted to get into the nitty/gritty details Microsoft could sit there and attack StarOffice/OpenOffice with some of their patents and copyright information and get them out of business.
Yeah, an AOL client with no browser sounds like a real winner. If IE shipments are stopped, then the AOL client would have to stop shipping until they could remove the "offending" version of IE. If you install the newest AOL client, it will install the version of each IE .dll that it needs. That means they ship IE with their client. How they embed that browser function and expose it to the user dosen't mean much unless that too infringes the Eolas patent.
The AOL client will play flash content even if a seperate flash plug-in hasn't been installed. Seems like it has to have the same infringing problems as the standalone IE.
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. - Mark Twain
It's a private company, so they can't buy them out if the owners don't want to sell. Eolas wants MS to pay the fine and then sign a license agreement. Typical Microsoft response: license revenue is what other companies give to us, so find a way to weasel out.
It is interesting that the founder wrote a book on tcl/tk and another owner used to be a FBI agent.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
Is this unfair, well I suppose it could be seen that way, but MS have been trying to drive browser standards in their own direction.
If you do some reasearch in to Eolas, you'd find out that the patent in question was loaned to them by the University of California, the same people who own the copyright to BSD. If you go to their Q&A about the lawsuit, you can see all the details for yourself.
"In
A long time ago, when people were using Mosaic, the proprietor of Eolas invented the plugin technology. He showed this technology to Microsoft who poo-pooed it.
Not quite. The technology was actually "invented" by the University of California -- Michael Doyle didn't invent a single thing. His company simply secured the rights to exclusively license this absurd patent. I'll also point out that no product has made it to market as a direct descendent of this technology -- their simply sitting on a patent, reaping their money.
Eolas also claims exclusive domain over the stylized e in their logo, which IBM licensed for their big e-everything push. How many hundreds of millions of dollars has this asshat made by not doing a goddamn thing?
Furthermore, just because it's microsoft getting fucked this time doesn't make it right, even if it is a dose of their own medicine. This sucks for everyone -- myself, a web developer, included -- even those of us who steer WAY clear of anything from Redmond (I'm a Mac guy).
My other computer is your Windows box
Imagine if Eolas was "pulling a SCO", they would have been sending out $699 invoices to all IE users; would have been fun to see that play out. Actually, they are hinting to that, the article saying:
Eolas would still permit Microsoft to distribute IE as is, as long as it's being used in conjunction with an application provider or a corporate intranet that has an Eolas plug-in license.
Maybe they can send cease and desist letters to MS' corporate clients now.
On a more serious note, MS was not able to present their prior art case in front of the judge to invalidate the patent. They have appealed and hopefully will get that opportunity. They are also on the right track with Viola browser as prior art. If you read Viola's author's recount:
In April 1992, I made a released of the viola browser. By December 1992, I had embedded objects working in the Viola browser. We at O'Reilly and Associates gave demos to various people here and there. The best documented demo was in May of 1993 -- We gave a demo and code to SUN Microsystems, of the viola browser showing an interactive three dimensional plotting object (mathmatical equation or 3D models) embedded inside a web page. I started releasing this code around fall of 1993 and early 1994. Eolas filed the patent in November 1994.
Now, as you probably know, Michael Doyle (Eolas's CEO and sole formal employee as I understand it), wrote to the net about his technology and eventually intent to patent this. So of course people (including me) wrote back informing him of prior arts. I'm not a lawyer but as I understand it one is supposed to disclose to the PTO any relevant prior art for the PTO examiner to assess. Doyle and I exchange letters, and I told him about this embedded capability in Viola, gave him a paper on viola, which contains pointers leading to more information including even the viola browser source code. Doyle ends up mentioning the browsers Cello and Mosaic, but interestingly not Viola! Now, Viola came before both Cello and Mosaic, and non of those two other browsers had any kind of embedded interactive capability at the core of the discussions.
And he also talks about how he was not allowed to demonstrate his technology (created before Eolas patent was filed) to the jury:
I was not allowed to demonstrate Viola to the jury. It was explained to me that the judge had decided that my demonstration, of the Viola browser from May 1993 showing interactive objects embedded in a web page, would have been too "prejudicial" against Eolas. I was also not allowed to tell the jury that Doyle knew about Viola. This I suppose is understandable but still puzzles me a little and leads to unfortunate effects, as I imagine the Jury ought to know these things.
As you can see, once MS gets a chance to demonstrate these facts, like they should be able to, Eolas can go back to sucking on their thumbs again.
On the MSDN pages, MS has a 'prerelease' version of IE6 SP1b, which contains the changes required by the Eolas lawsuit.
You can download a stand-alone version of IE (not a full replacement) so you can see differences between existing code and what it will be like.
Basically, its welcome to popup hell by default, but you can (this is good) block them all - pages with 'active content' will appear in a little symbol in the status bar (like the padlock). Click it to get the content.
This doesn't apply to content that doens't load data from elsewhere (boo hiss, adverts generally), or controls created dynamically from script loaded from a remote location.
The link is here
Eolas now has a PROVEN, QUARANTEED profit generator, they will HAVE to run it against all comers - or face shareholder lawsuits.
Eolas is privately owned. No shareholders.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.