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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."
Pay up, Microsoft.
Thank goodness closed source software is free of IP issues, eh?
Much as I cannot stand IE, this is just insane. Plug-ins were a nessecary step forward, and should not have been granted a patent. AND, they havent tried to enforce this for the years that IE has had plugins before. Isnt there a loss of patent if unused or unenforced?
When life gives you crap, Make Crapade.
Sluggy Freelance.
I know that the vast majority of /. readers believe that the Net would be a better place with Internet Explorer. Hell, I'm one of them, having had to deal with the cleanup after having my users hit with its exploits.
But please realize that this patent bullshit has gone a little too far. Microsoft has already promised to patch IE to remove the offending patent work--isn't that enough? What we are all witnessing is the tyranny of the patent system as we know it. Just because it negatively affects Microsoft for once doesn't mean that it's good in any way.
Let's do what we can to get this mess straightened out once and for all for the good of the economy and innovation. Let's not rejoice in this unfair punishment.
Karma: Excellent Birds (mostly as a result of listening to Laurie Anderson)
the money is going to come out of the user/customer's pocket...
Consensus is good, but informed dictatorship is better
Booo! We hate software patents!
Master wouldn't betray us, would he? What are we to think?
Since IE is so integrated into Windows, would that mean stopping shipment/sales of Windows as well?
That they have to stop selling Windows to people/corps? After all IE is part of their OS, so anyone selling PCs with Windows on it is distributing software that was illegally infringing Eolas' patent. The crooks.
Anti-social? My code is just platform-specific.
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
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.
Web developers face the possibility of having to significantly rewrite their pages or strip them of commonly used technologies like Macromedia's Flash.
Gentlemen, the tech employment slump is now over!
Please raise your hourly rates by $10.
$20 if you do Java Server pages, a bad idea whose time has come (disclaimer: I do JSPs).
Time to dig out those hookers' business cards!
(And the office foosball table suppliers' cards too!)
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
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
Actually this has to do with how plugins are used in the browser and could very well have Mozilla fall within the scope of their patent.
Let's not start singing Eolas' praises until we see whether they are friend or foe, they could just as easily attempt to extort $$$ from Mozilla or Netscape(AOL). This is probably the first lawsuit I had wished Microsoft came out on top.
Can I get an eye poke?
Dog House Forum
I still can't believe it when I read the court case for Amazon's 1-click patent. Apparently the *expert* witness could not figure out how Amazon would be able to sell something to people with just one click... apparently he had never heard of cookies... and this was one of the biggest reasons Amazon won, because it seemed possible that this was actually a revolutionary idea.
But back to my main point, where do people draw the line for giving a software patent? I read that microsoft patented the IM feature to see when somebody is typing something back. That is dumb. But is the only thing that we are ok with somebody patenting is something that is like a compression algorithm that is so hard to understand that we say the guy must have been smarter than me that made it?
I think the patent system is ok as it is, provided we have high quality patent lawyers out there that know how to code and maybe are able to put RAM into their computer... from my perspective, the patent system seems to be more angled toward granting a patent than not granting a patent. So its quite possible that you get a patent even though the quality of the invention is pretty lame.
I think my view on software patents is this. If any software at all can be found that had the feature before being patented by some other company, then its in public domain and not patentable. The thing is, is that alot of great ideas show up in software people make for all sorts of reasons, but few people besides companies have the money to get a patent that usually costs about 10-20 grand.
no people will not switch browsers. if a browser does not come with MS and is not located in the prefered position MOST users, that is the majority of the comsumers, will not use it. Thus IE will remain a standard and websites will comply or die. Sure a few may write special versions for multiple browsers but whose going to be writing the plugins? Unless theres a market to sell plugins the flash producers of the world are going to shrink in number.
Perhaps you think I overestimate consumer laziness. Well BMG just copyprotected all of their CDs. Anyone cany defeat the copy protection by, get this, holding down the shift key when inserting the disk. BMG acknowledges this wont stop some people but believes it will thwart the majority. They have reason to believe in consumer laziness.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
You know how every politician complains about "corruption of the system" while claiming to be above it all? Well, companies are similarly two-faced about abuses of patents. Jeff Bezos helped form a committee some time ago to combat the abuses of patents. The hypocricy was quite apparent. Here you had the man behind the most absurd of recent patents--one click shopping--claiming to be behind patent reform.
Even if Microsoft loses billions of dollars on this case, they will not want patents to go away. They may want "reform" of the system, where reform is custom tailors to uphold Microsoft's patents, but invalidate everyone elses. Never will Microsoft say, "You know, maybe we shouldn't have a patent on typing notification over IM." To truly want reform, they will have to call for an end to all patent abuses, especially their own.
Microsoft will forever be too proud to let this happen. This is the same company that still denies being a monopoly, let alone abusing their monopoly position, even after both have been settled in the court of law!
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
I've read a lot of posts attacking Eolas in support of Microsoft and IE. However when you consider the following, MS deserves to get screwed on this one.
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. Fast-forward several months and Microsoft's adds plugins in IE. Microsoft gets sued, litigation ensures while the browser wars and Y2K come and go. Whether or not you agree with software patents, there is no doubt Microsoft screwed this guy. I highly doubt the jury would have given Eolas the case if MS had not done this.
MS gets hundreds of patents per year and the only reason they don't make a big stink about it is because they can (currently) make plenty of money with out creating a huge PR stink (and possibly more monopoly litigation).
Eolas's plugin technology was first demoed in 1993 and patented in 1994. The concept of Flash / SVG and plugins in general might seem obvious after years of ubigious browser support, however it was a significant invention in the early 90's.
Microsoft takes full advantage of the patent system with aggressive patents like the typing indicator in IM, databased online polls and Microsoft's numerous other pre-emptive patents to curtail competition.
I don't believe that Microsoft/Macromedia/et al's lame fix of document.write'ing the / tag instead of having them directly on the page gets around the patent. It simply stinks of a PR move to make Eolas look bad (lookie, he's wreaking the web) while not addressing the patent.
In general I don't support software patents, but Microsoft deserves to eat dirt on this one.
It is complete hypocrisy for the OSS crowd to support this sort of extortion and at the same time condemn the SCO lawsuit.
No, there is a difference. Eolas has an actual patent, and is enforcing it according to the rules ; they got a verdict in court that says MS is infringing, and are stating their terms to bring MS into compliance.
SCO, as far as anyone can tell, is making crap up based on no sound legal theory anyone has heard of (one day it's contract dispute, next day it's copyright infringement, and apparently they think "know-how"is a form of intellectual property) and expecting people to fork over money for a license (or, alternately, buy their stock).
Jay (=
Why do I have this feeling that Microsoft will pay Eolas US$400 million to buy the technology lock, stock and barrel? Given Microsoft's huge liquid cash reserves such a payment would be pocket change to the company.
Mind you, if MS does buy out Eolas they could cause no end of trouble for Netscape, Konqueror and Opera, since the non-MS browsers loads plugins in a very similar fashion.
Mozilla's answer to this patent is that it only mentions interprocess communication. Mozilla loads the plugin into the same memory space as the browser, as I understand it, so they believe they are outside the scope of the patent. Anyways, to answer your question, this issue has already been brought before the Mozilla developers and they've already addressed it for the time being.
Yes, I know it won't come to that.
I hope to god it doesn't.
Seriously.
I know we all bash M$, and we all use the dollarsign instead of an 'S', and all that stuff. But, in all seriousness: If microsoft is prevented from shipping windows, that means that dell, HP, ibm, micron, et. al. are prevented from selling comptuers with windows.
If no one can sell comptuers with windows, the tech sector in specific, and the american economy in general, is fucked. Plain and simple. Dell operates on making about half a billion a day, m ost of it from computers with windows, and most of it would not be sold if it came sans os (get off of your linux high horse for a sec and remember john q public). IBM is close to the same. When I worked at Best Buy, the comptuer department would regularly sell $30,000 worth of computer towers PER DAY, in one store. Multiply by 450 stores and you're talking 13.5 million in lost revs by one retail chain, PER DAY. And it was significantly higher starting black friday (we sold over 350k in the computer department 2 black fridays ago).
I know it's cool to make fun of and bash microsoft, and all of that, and I understand your need to do that.
But, please recognize. If no one can sell microsoft windows, then no one can sell computers with windows, and since most of the consumer sector doesn't want a computer with no OS, almost no computers will be sold, and the american economy will come to a screeching halt. We'll immediately be plunged back into the recession we're slowly starting to climb out of.
~Will
sig?
IIRC, Microsoft has repeatedly tried to screw over this company through extra-legal means. It's one thing to ask for mercy after a fair fight, it's another thing to ask for mercy after trying to make the case "go away" by driving the plaintiff into bankruptcy (and snatching up the patents at the fire sale), etc.
As I recall, there was speculation that the plantiff was so pissed off that they might refuse to grant MS a license *at any cost.* Think about the anger required to turn your back on a billion dollars or so, to hurt the other guy as badly as he tried to hurt you.
In that context, of course the plantiff will demand that MS live with the consequences of the ruling *today*. Not in their "next release" (which may be years off), not even "tomorrow." Today. If that means that MS has to contact Dell and Compaq and HP and the rest and tell them that they have to cease all sales of Windows boxes because "MSIE is now fully integrated into the operating system," so be it. Microsoft made this bed by its own bad acts.
N.B., I'm not saying that I agree with this retaliatory attitude. But at the same time the problem with brutally suppressing your critics is that you force the one who finally beats you to be even meaner and nastier than you. Gates and Ballmer and the rest had to know this.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
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.
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.
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
Basically, Microsoft is letting this happen, because it means that the world's most popular and well-deployed browser, with 90+% of the market share, is suddenly not just not supporting plug-ins, but specifically not supporting plug-ins for Flash and Java.
/. to report on.
This means that Flash and Java are no longer ubiquitous ways to distribute web applications and advertisements. It also kills any momentum that SVG might be building up, and reduces the use of PDF files as a means of distribution. Microsoft couldn't be happier about such an announcement.
It buys Microsoft time, by being the "good guys" legally and gaining good press, to actually write their own dynamic-web-animation system, all built in their own proprietary VB or JScript API, eliminating the need for Flash and SVG and all that entirely. And of course opening up a tremendous amount of new security holes for
They want this to happen. They want the web world to not be dependent on Java and Flash and all that stuff. And now this patent suit is giving them what they want and still making them smell like a rose when they do it...
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe