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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."
Well, since there has been prior art demonstrated, the EFF and others would surely pay to defend Mozilla, using prior art found by the open source community. However, eolas will most likely not even come after Mozilla. Hopefully, they just mess up IE (and thus Windows - "We can't seperate it") distribution for awhile. It could be an even bigger headache if they only go after MS, thus the patent not getting ruled invalid, unless MS decides to appeal. Hopefully, they'll just give the patent away to W3C or something after they extort plenty from MS, and do their "shake-up" of the browser market. But, this is a Good Thing(TM) - people are being educated of what software patents can do - make you click OK 100 times in a session.
And since Microsoft has said that it's not possible to separate the browser from the OS, that would mean...
to stop Microsoft from distributing its IE software until they remove Eolas' patented technology for running plug-ins, or pay up for a license.
or reach a multi-million $$$ out of court settlement like that reached with Be inc over alleged misuse of monolopy - the type of settlement in which the details are hidden from public scrutiny.
Wonder what the world would be like if Microsoft were forced to not distribute IE? Not that it'll ever happen.
Okay, it's crazy enough that Microsoft was ordered to pay $521 Million for a period of two years, especially when you consider that this is free software. (I realize it's highly important to Microsoft in that it killed Netscape, but they don't actually charge money for it.)
But to then pay licensing fees on top of that? It's a little absurd, and just makes Eolas look like opportunists.
And I especially love this line: Eolas has also calculated that Microsoft owes it about $111 million in interest on that award.
21.3% interest on $521 Million. What are they, a credit card company?
So far it appeared that websites had until about January to gear up for changes - now if this ruling comes to pass, websites that earn income from Flash ads could find themselves caught in a bad spot...
..." dialogue boxes are going to cause big time problems - beyond making many sites more combersome to use, such frequent clicking is going to only increase the chance of people accidently clicking open some nasty stuff.
..." dialogue box nonsense.
* Do nothing and watch the complaints roll in as folks bitch about lots of pop-up warning prompts; some will even think the warning dialogue boxes are pop-up ads themselves - geez!
* Continue to accept Flash ads, but add javascript and other nonsense to make them display with little or no warning messages - fine for many sites, but some sites don't use javascript anywhere for various reaons. So what to do?
* Discontinue Flash ads (sure that makes many happy), but the loss of ad revenues will cause some sites to either use all sorts of bizarre scripting or reduce services due to lost revenues.
Not sure the solution here. For as much as I personally don't care for Flash (nothing wrong with Flash per se, but is often over used and forced upon visitors) the addition of "Press OK
One possible solution, for as much as I don't care for Micro$oft at times, is for them to either fight this guy's IP claim to the max -or- settle and not change the browser -or- a long shot, find another way to get around the guy's IP claim without the zillion "Press OK
Lastly, if anyone is aware of a work-around to smoothly displaying Flash without using Javascript, please post and/or email to me. Thanks!
Ron
I'm on the side of the Evil Software Patents.
After all, while a software patent victory might hurt Micro$oft and IE, a victory for Micro$osft would do little or no damage to software patents.
Therefore, the most can be accomplished in this case by software patents "winning".
A windows system can work without IE, I tore ie out of win98 on vmware and the system survived, used mozilla ad the default browser.. it's kinda decent now.
not by much.
Wait wasn't it Microsoft who claimed that IE and Windows are one integrated product? I think the injuction should be against the *integrated* product which is Windows (all versions) not just the explorer component which according to Microsoft can't be removed from Windows without disabling Windows.
Isn't the company a one man company owned by a uni? I know I've read that somewhere...
The company is going to be very hard, if not impossible to buy out. The guy directing the company has said he wants to use the lawsuit to change the landscape of the current browser situation.
AC comments get piped to
Yes, I know it won't come to that.
No electrons were harmed creating this post, though some may have been subjected to electrical and/or magnetic fields.
Actually, no. Distribution alone cannot practically be enforced (see mplayer, asfrecorder, decss, etc.) All the legal system can do is enforce limits on the profitability of a piece of code - in no way can the legal system practically enforce limits on the actual distribution of a piece of code. If MS really wanted to fuck with the system they could just open up IE - leak the source "into the wild" and pull the executable from their website.
Of course, it ain't likely to happen... but it could and "eolas" or whatever the fuck they are would lose a helluva lot more than MS would. In fact, you could argue MS would (greatly) benefit, since it would take about a minute before a dozen "forks" appeared at sourceforge and IE code wormed its way into linux and bsd and every goddamn thing else, thus further establishing the MS way as "the way of the world." By the time the suits at "eolas" got through figuring out who to sue next, the lawyers would have long since abandoned the sinking ship.
What do you get when you sue the butt off a pimply faced 14 year old kid and win? Bugger all, since they have no assets. Even if you grab their parent's assets, you still don't get enough to cover the cost of the case. (eg. DeCSS case)
It hardly seems like sensible economics to go broke running court cases does it? Okay, you might score a satisfying victory in destroying a 14 year old's life, but at the end of the day going to court is about extracting money from people. 'Moral' victories have limited value and make a poor basis for legal action.
> Eolus is happy with the several hundred million IIRC Eolus got on the order of $50M settlement. What they were hoping for was: 1) Microsoft would buy the patent or comany for hundreds of millions. - or - 2) Microsoft paying licensing fees for years to come, then Eolus going after all other brower makers. What they did not want was 'Fuck you' from MS, changing the infringing code, with all other browser manufacturers following.
Eolas have no problems with open source and W3C compliant commercial browsers.
For now... What happens when a few years down the road, the guy running Eolas decides he wants a new jet or yacht? Maybe he just wants to see how much he can get his net worth up to. Who knows what he's planning or thinking.
He's already shown his stance on IP patents, I have no doubts that suing other browser companies is not that far off, regardless of what he says.
Remember that Media Player upgrade a while back whose license agreement gave Microsoft the right to install software on your machine without your permission? I imagine that clause was included in the WinXP license from the beginning.
That means they have every right to install and run an application that removes IE, or, at least, the browser functionality.
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By freezing NVidia out of the DirectX-9 design talks, and working actively with ATI to optimize DX9 and the Radeon products toward each other. They also deliberately cobbled up DX9 standards to be incompatible with what NVidia was known to have on the drawing board. The most obvious example is DX9's use of 24-bit floats. There was no reason to define a wonky 3-byte quantity, except to be incompatible with NVidia's 16- and 32-bit floats. There are several other examples; just ask anyone in the games industry.
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