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X10 Pays $4.3 million In Damages For Pop-Unders
Black Perl writes "The Seattle Times is running an article entitled "California brothers win $4.3 million award against X10." Apparently, pop-unders are "proprietary" technology and a "business model" that X10 stole. I have mixed feelings about this. I love to see X10 get its due for the pop-unders, but proprietary technology it is not." Haha. Patents are funny.
They'll just appeal.
So if I as a feature to a browser that lets you automatically play a sound file, then someone can patent using that feature to emit an advert? Sounds like the patent should belong to the browsers who added the feature that lets you do a pop up.
is that when I went to read the article, I got a classmates.com pop-under. Are they being sued, too?
When the going gets tough, use Johnson's Going Tenderizer
Someone should sue X10 for using an X in their name because Xs are really getting lame.
I RTFA, closed the window and found what? A Pop-Under ad!
666-607: 6th floor apartment of the beast
PS, just for those of you who aren't familiar; X10.com is not really related in any way to the x10 protocol or x10 devices, don't let x10.com sour you to this awesome technology. x10.com seems to sell webcams mostly to people who hope to catch hot chicks on camera.
Luck favors the prepared, darling.
This story has nothing to do with patents,(as far as I can tell anyway). The word patent isn't even mentioned in the story, and proprietary != patented.
It would appear that this is about X10 hiring these people to do pop unders, and then not paying them. Unfortunately it's impossible to say what the real
story is from this very short article.
From what I've read in other articles about this suit, they were sued because they refused to pay the commission for all those pop-under ads. Imagine if you started a company and designed a banner ad for a company. Your contract said you get a certain amount for each time it is used. Then after the company owes you half a million dollars, they decide not to pay. That is what this is about, not patents. Read here for more information
*sigh* ... Typical...
Swimsuit models? You know, the ones sitting around my pool that I have to monitor 24/7?
Damn it to hell...back to 'The Clapper' I guess...
We apologise for the fault in this post. Those responsible have been sacked. -- Signed RICHARD M. NIXON
And to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Watch out now!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
do we like patent barratry today, or dislike it?
ed
I have all but forgotten about Pop Under/Over/In the Middle/Whatever ads since using Mozilla Firebird. The builtin pop-up blocker is truly lovely.
"Nature doesn't care how smart you are. You can still be wrong." - Richard Feynman
See you at the reunion!
...if there are any movements underway to end this bullshit? There are always loads of stories on slashdot about patents gone awry, but I never hear of any groups working to destroy the current setup.
Suggestions?
I really can't understand this. Anyone who toyed with javascript and the DOMs years ago noticed that you could effectively do pop-unders with two lines of code:
w .focus();
window.open('ad.htm','myAdWindowTitle');
windo
Or something like that. Is "pop-under technology" really more complicated than that?
# Erik
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/10/20/tech/mai n578996.shtml
*snip* One of their first big clients was X10, whose security-camera ads soon began appearing all over the Internet.
"When we found out they weren't paying that bill, we were beyond distraught," recalled Chris Vanderhook. *snip*
Sehr geehrter Toilettenbenutzer!
Actually, according to the CNN article, it wasn't a patent issue... The brothers in question were running an advertising company from their home, with whom X-10 contracted to do their advertising, and then X-10 refused to pay their bill. So, no patent issue involved, only a customer's failure to pay their bill for a service.
If you own and operate a website that has banner advertisements, and the ad system uses pop unders. Who is liable? The Website provider, or the advertisement provider?
TruePunk | Games
is that they take the focus off your current browser window. You'll be trying to type something into a form and halfway through what you're typing you lose focus and get cut off.
Thank god for netscape/mozilla and now the Google Toolbar. I haven't seen a popup or popunder in months.
I just upgraded to X11 and all thos pop-unders are finally gone!
I made pop-unders all the time when application programming. We called it a bug. Is that prior art?
2 Lines of JavaScript isn't a business model. Although I hate X10 I hope they get this idiocy appealed. If the brothers do win, I'm patenting displaying message boxes to notify users of stuff, and then suing everyone for 3 billion each. Except MS, whom I'd sue for 1 trillion dollars, since their software displays error message boxes every few seconds.
The more bad patent laws negatively affect business, the more likely patent law reform is to happen. Microsoft is already out $500 million because they wanted to use plugins, and now these guys are paying $4.3 million for this "innovation". Eventually, so many businesses are going to be screwed out of so many dollars, they will start to seek reform, and we'll all be better off.
OK. I'm being just a tad optimistic, aren't I?
Gee - I completely forgot about those pop-unders since I visited http://toolbar.google.com
---- "Logoff! That cookie shit makes me nervous!" - A. Soprano
It's amazing: 2 lines of javascript and you have a proceedure for a patent. Let's really get stupid and get it down to 1.
...and actually got a good deal. Lot's of stuff, neat, for a fair price.
It is my secret shame - responding to a pop under (it was a popup at the time I seem to remember).
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
See what you've been missing!
sorry, couldn't resisit.
you don't expect the editors to read the article do you?
I'll second that *sigh*
Sehr geehrter Toilettenbenutzer!
I hope this lawsuit doesn't make the prices higher.
Patents bad...popunders bad...patent stops pop..unders...ehhhhhhhhH!
[Head-explodes]
Please help metamoderate.
I don't see how the ruling in the brothers favor is idiocy. The only idiocy is in X10's IT staff who couldn't hack up their own.
Sehr geehrter Toilettenbenutzer!
All this will do is send a message that worthless patents are both acceptable and profitable.
I'm a Opera user myself, and I also forgot about those "pop-wherever ads" a long time ago. With options such as Firebird (0.7 is quite nice) and Opera (v7 rocks), I still wonder why people stick with MSIE (especially seeing how NON-compliant it is with standards).
And to think some websites are stupid enough to have a blank page that tries to pop-up a custom-sized window so they can display their website inside of it... How dumb is that?
Exactly why isn't it reasonable for them to sue for the money that their contract says they should receive? And where in the article does it mention patents at all?
If there are patents involved here somewhere, then fine, but if there aren't, I wonder whether the Slashdot editors actually took the time to do some research on this matter before making some off the cuff remark about patents simply because it makes more people want to reply angrily.
It doesn't help much if we start calling EVERYTHING a patent issue.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
I use Mozilla... what's a pop-under?
Seriously, just because a poorly realized precedent is used against an unpopular target in no way changes the fact that the precedent is still a Bad Idea(tm). Yes, I too am glad to see X10 get smacked down, for a variety of reasons, but I see no long-term good out of this. I wish the article itself was more detailed, however.
I was having a very bad day, until I read this headline. Now I'm floating on air! I hate X10 with a passion, and it's all due to the popups. But if they're going to be pushed from pop-ups, where else are they going to advertise? "Bulk Internet Marketing Email"? It's a lot easier to shut off popups.
There are many people here who are pointing out that this was a nonpayment/contractual violation issue, rather than a patent issue. Read more of the articles, and you'll find that it was both.
a) x10 reneged on their contract, and owed $564,000. That's pretty clear, and should be remedied.
b) x10 also "stole their technology and business model," and started using it on their own. This was also part of the lawsuit, and deserves to be laughed out of court.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
I'm waiting for someone to patent the display of browser images and information through a video device. So, since the visual medium will be shot, let's use the ol' nostrils instead and convert our browsers to sniffers. Packet sniffers would be oh, so much fun! Something akin to sewage I suspect....
Holy #$%! Let's get to it!
This is not what patents are for. Patents, much like copyrights were created to provide a cost justification for innovating. If I'm going to spend a million dollars to research a new drug therapy, and somebody else can duplicate my work for free, why would I spend the million dollars?
Now the theory I'm espousing here is not a matter of written law, but I think it was presumed in the original concept of patents that it took a certain amount of effort and resource to invent something that could be patented. If it takes near zero effort, then you lose nothing when everybody else duplicates your work.
Patents were created as a way to encourage innovation and that is precisely the opposite of what it is accomplishing in situations like this. Do you think, for one moment, that the pop under ad would never have been invented if it wasn't for patent protection?
Personally I'd be content to never see another pop-up or pop-under ad ever again, but this is just an abuse of the system.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
this was not a patent issue. This was a contract dispute. Period.
X10 paid them to do some work. They did the work - regardless of how easy the work was, they had a contract to do it...
The problem was, X-10 signed a contract before they researched what they were buying. When they found out "doh, this is easy" they reniged on the contract and started doing it themselves.
This is no different than signing a contract for some MSCE loser to admin your windows servers for a year to find out that if you install a Mac OS X box, you can do it all yourself with great ease. That does not remove your contractual responsibilities - and you owe that pimple faced moron his $$$.
Now, on that note, i think that any future revenues from pop-under ads shouldn't go their way - because that WOULD be some kind of lame-ass software patent issue.
I feel for the kids because their mom died and all.. and becuase i get the feeling that they think they should get paid for any pop-under ad.
BUT
they DO need to learn that they must continue to "innovate" in order to keep making money - their pop-under ad thing was a one time deal and is done and over.
They are smart, they will learn that, and move on.
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
The process of opening a window in javascript gives you two distinct ways to make that window behind everything else, a (large) negative z-index, or by sending it to the back directly.
These event handlers and interpretations of parameters were programmed in specifically, they are not an artifact of some grander scheme or natural phenomena. Clearly, the designers had the idea of a window opening up behind it in mind at the time the language specification was designed.
I have a hard time believing you can patent the idea of putting an ad onto an existing media and calling that a business process.
Could I patent selling and printing ads in the background pattern of dixie cups and disposable paper plates?
That's what I see in this situation. Maybe you CAN do that, in which case (throws hands up).
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
when do I get repayed for my damages? I'm the one that had to endure those things for the longest time, and still do when I use the computer labs' XP machines.
Horray for the lizard!
A father that likes to be on the bottom?
An Australian soft drink consortium?
Oh. I love Mozilla..... of course keeping coding ahead of the junk adds on the internet, requires all of us. What we need to do is dump MS VB and C# inet script coding and widgets once and for all. Afterall they are responsible for atleast 90% of the security and junk mail problems.
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
This is a troll.
THAT is a troll
You guys owe me a LOT of cash.
is it not great to be able to zoom-in?
From the brief article, it sounds like this lawsuit was about business practices and unfair competition, not patents. Does anybody have more information?
Funny how the rotation of the spin on a story reverses depending on where it's posted...
I read about this about a week ago on Yahoo.com's WML news site on my cell phone. It was an AP story, I believe, and they presented it basically as these 3 brothers battling out the big evil X10 corp that didn't pay its bills and tried to take advantage of these poor, young kids. Yay for the brothers!
You hit Slashdot and just because it involves "patents" (a 4 letter word as far as many here are concerned, no matter what the context) the spin is that it's this big evil patent abuse and oooohhh run and hide and put your tail between your legs and oh-no-tinfoil-hat-syndrome all over. Oh no! The brothers are evil! Boo!
Give it a rest, already... technology that's only "obvious" after you've already seen it once isn't really "obvious". I hate stupid patents too, but if you look at the facts of the case instead of just saying "oh no - patents - automatic sheep mode on!" you'll realize it was a fair and square fight and a good decision by the court. Get a grip, already.
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
Everytime patents come up here, I wonder why the EFF or similar doesn't start patenting things. It would be nice if a public service organization could patent something like "selling stuff" and then license the technology to anyone who agrees to let others use derivative works stemming from that tech. You know, like GPL but for patent licenses.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Pop-unders, I can deal with when I get around to them. I don't have to close each one before I can read the content on the page.
The pop-up ads that get right in my way and open 10,000,000 windows on top of mine, I get peeved with, because then I have to stop reading what I'm reading to get them to leave.
On the other hand, when my reaction time is really fast and the pop-unders are being slow to pop under, and I catch them while they're just headed below the window I'm interested in, occasionally they disappear right while I'm about to whack the close button in the corner, and I wind up closing the wrong thing. You can imagine how annoyed I get.
Overall, I prefer the Google toolbar, which blocks the stupid things so I never have to see them.
b) x10 also "stole their technology and business model," and started using it on their own. This was also part of the lawsuit, and deserves to be laughed out of court.
And how is this a patent issue?
Tell you what: why don't you go ahead reference the patent in question at the USPTO site...oh, you can't you say? Is it perhaps because there is no patent in question?
Granted, there is a valid debate on the merits of this so-called "proprietary" technology, but this has nothing to do with patents.
actually, this whole X10 stuff has been around for a while. I've seen it in all sorts of home automation gadgets. I don't know if it's a specific standard, or just a collection of shared information, but I know I've seen them in radioshack long before those damn pop-up and pop-under ads drove me insane with frustration.
I should patent 'microsoft's bug' innovation, then i will sue microsoft every time bug is spotted. Hey, Microsoft, be prepared to pay up!
...and it's auto-popup blocking is destroying the brothers' business model. Destroying it! I haven't seen a pop-under ad in almost a year!
I feel for their case, and dislike X10's business ethics, but let's face it: we all hate internet advertising and anyone who profits from it. The pot's calling the kettle black as far as I'm concerned.
Now the only problem is that I can't get certain programs to realize that's my default browser!
--
"Now you see that evil will always triumph, because good is dumb."
So, now, employing an element of window.create(minimize,settoback) or somesuch is a patent?
How did they patent the use of a MS api?
on 2 lines of java script code? Where do I sign up? I can think of a million annoying things to do with a few lines of java script. And here i've been writing thousands of lines of code for $120 per day. Can I claim ownership of the idea of flashing banners?
TallGreen CMS hosting
the headline says "X10 pays..."
the story says "brothers were awarded damages of.."
a subtle yet important semantic difference... nobody's cashing any checks just yet.
Ok, All of this talk about patents is wearing heavily. We are pretty screwed up in that respect.
I think it's time for someone to put this mess in perspective for the rest of the world.
Someone already patented one-click purchasing, so why don't we patent 2-99 click purchasing? Thereby forcing all Internet purchases to use 100+ clicks or pay the patent holder money. Once this case came up in dispute maybe the regular public would understand how STUPID our patent office/laws really are.
This is the kind of stupid thing that people would understand and it could case laws to get changed.
It's sad that we have to keep such a close eye on our government just to make sure they don't screw US.
No kidding, over a thousand lines of code per day?
Incredible.
The point is that Mozilla and Firebird come with that functionality BUILT-IN... You don't have to add some untrusted third-party plug-in just to block pop-ups, like you have to with IE...
All X10.com had to do was say is once their camera software was installed it would stop X10 pop-unders!
...to replace X10 because of its slow speed and bloated archi... oh wait...
never mind.
... that having the ad not steal focus from the top level window instead of the other way around is not obvious? That's like saying serving coffee chilled when it's hot outside instead of hot isn't obvious. Don't even get me started on calling such an "innovative technique" a business model. Perhaps you are right about some of the patents slashdot has focused on, but not admitting that there is a problem when some guy can say "can you see the difference? I only clicked ONE time! Now gimme patent." and actually get it tells me perhaps you don't fully understand what is happening in the patent office lately.
If I were you and wanted to waste my time griping to a biased news site I'd gripe about how frivilous patents are old news, and that it has always been the role of the courts to overturn them. Something along those lines at least...
(Disclaimer: For christs sake it's slashdot, I don't give a shit about my spelling or grammer.)
Oh, to have billions so I might buy up odious tech patents and then sue the bejeezus out of anyone who employs the abusive ideas they protect!
tone
When I read the article - there was a popunder!!!
Patent cases do not get appealed along normal federal appeals route.
All patent cases (some exceptions where original controversy not related to patent law) get appealed directly to the Federal Court of Appeals in D.C.
shouldn't the coders/organization behind JavaScript (Netscape) get the credit [for popup/under scripting abiity]
If by 'credit' you mean 'good swift kick in the ass,' then yes. I didn't like it when Netscape added this misfeature, and after all this time, I'm still trying to think of a legitimate reason to pop up a window except as an immediate direct response to user input. And I'm still coming up blank.
Shit shit shit shit shit!
My brain was non-functional this morning. You're exactly right.
It was a non-payment issue and also a claim of thievery, but you're right--no patent, no patent violation, nada. Since this is a technology that's in the public eye (albeit behind other windows), it's also not something that could be held as a trade secret.
Time to go back to sleep.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
for coming up with such an annoying method of advertising.
X10? Come on, everyone's using X11 nowadays.
Now we know who owns this ahem... technology, lets track down these mo.. I mean brothers and show them our appreciation.
This is out of hand. Can someone say..."free enterprise"?
And even if you do use IE, the google toolbar will defeat the popups for you. There really is no reason to be seeing popups if you don't want to anymore.
I predict that the future will entail companies simply registering or applying for a endless amount of patents and then farm it off. This will be similar to the dot-com rush where companies registered an endless amount of '.com' web domains simply to sell it off...Let's see if I'm right...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
Is a pop-Under? is that like getting a stiffy?
huh..... i just got a pop-under.
I see so many people have posted about their popup-blocking experiences with two superb pieces of software: Mozilla Firebird and the Google Toolbar. Wonderful. It's great to see people using quality, useful software. Admittedly, the Google toolbar is in much wider general circulation than Mozilla Firebird, but this is a welcome trend nonetheless.
My question to you is this. Is ending popups a solution to anything? Everywhere we look, we see ads. I can't go to the john at a club without seeing ads posted over the urinals. In Tucson and many other cities, our public buses have giant printed ads covering their entire exterior. The internet is clearly no exception to the growing trend of in-your-face advertisement. Popups and site-ads are simply much cheaper to implement than print ads. Like it or not, internet advertising isn't going anywhere anytime soon.
And even if we don't click on the ad, in the real world we can't click on buses or the ads over urinals. The real goal of advertising is to change our attitudes about a product. Simply put, internet ads do that just fine. In fact, compared to print advertisement, internet advertisement may see increased success in the future. Targeted advertisements are much more interesting to me than general ads. Check the top inch of slashdot.org. See the ad? It's probably something that COULD be of interest to us as geeky, nerdy, techy, slashdot readers. And of course, that's the goal of advertisement. You've had your awareness about the company or product raised and you might even have imperceptibly changed your attitude about the company or product.
I know that pop-under ads were annoying, and thank goodness we've figured out how to deal with them, but ads have value in our society and I think in a discussion such as this, we need to acknowledge that fact. If I have a choice between static print ads and targeted internet ads, I choose the latter. As long as privacy is maintained, targeted ads simply have more value to me. They also have more value to the advertiser. Innovations will come and go, but advertisement is here to stay.
Now if someone could just figure out how to block those annoying Shockwave Flash ads that make noise and flash or scroll across the screen...
You want any cash from us, you're gonna have to give a lot more than that.
"California brothers win $4.3 million award against X10."
I swear, at first I read this as "California brothels..."
I guess if you work in a brothel, pop-unders mean something entirely different.
Uggggghh! I dislike both sides of the lawsuit. It's always bad when a company adopts an idea and refuses to pay a royalty. But I really hate the fact that those kids received an award for that lame idea.
Look for X10 in this article http://groups.yahoo.com/group/jenett-news/message/ 222?source=1
It seems at one time, this AdvertisingBanners company was actually distributing their Ads, and if you read in that url, it also mentions that pop-unders where initially done by the online porn industry... The SeattleTimes doesn't mention anything about Patents, X10 probably just didn't pay these guys?
<sarcasm> Clearly, the designers of each computer architecture had the idea of a window opening up behind another when they designed each CPU to be Turing-complete.* </sarcasm>
Not likely. It was probably more like:
"Hey, with regard to newly created windows, what z-index should we give them?"
"I don't know. Let the programmer decide."
"Good idea. Who knows what creative and possible patentable ideas they may come up with."
cb
* - except, of course, for having finite storage.
That's like saying that computers are 'mostly' sold to men who want to beat the meat... uhhh, never mind.
'cuz I'm glad X10 got sued for pop-unders but not glad that the plaintiff is supposedly the "creator" of pop-unders.
The solution? Bring pitchforks and flaming torches to both. 'nuf said.
The company that only last year billed itself as the world's largest online advertiser has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
http://news.com.com/2100-1014_3-5095260.html
HAHAHAHA!!!
When you are using Moz and on a major site look down at the right corner of the screen you should see a yellow explosion looking thing. This indicates a popup could have happened on this page.
Now you know which sites have popups.
I used to have a cool sig, back when I cared
I normally just lurk here, but..as a software developer who has seen many of the tools and idea's I've been using daily in my own code become "patented", I take exception to your take on software patents. Go to nature.com or newscientist.com or sciencedaily.com and look at some of the new economic studies that have come out in the last few years in regards to patents.
The findings are that, yes patents are beneficial to SOME industries and are HARMFUL to others (software developement included). So, while I agree with part of your post, you need to realize that software patents, like the one microsoft has done, actually hurt the industry.
According to this CNET article, X10 has filed for chapter 11 as a result of this ruling.
I kid you not.
Little off-topic, but while where on it, if you used Win/IE, Google's toolbar/popup blocker. I like it. I've only had it a week and its blocked 86 pops. Free, of course.
Error: Id10t detected
X10 filed bankruptsy.. http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104_2-5095260.html?tag= zdfd.newsfeed
If someone turns off JavaScript, can they get sued for circumventing a technological blah-di-blah under the DMCA?
I'm gonna need a spec.
x10.com is the latest incarnation of the company that created the X10 protocol.
Back in the 70's, a company called BSR (they were British, if I recall) were brainstorming electronics projects. Each project was codenamed X, followed by a letter. The 10th project, was X10 (duh). They stuck with that as the marketing angle.
BSR turned into X10 LTD., which was strictly OEM during the 80's. The OEM'ed for Radioshack, Magnavox, and a few others. Radioshack, of course, still does the X10 stuff under their own brand.
In the early 90's, they decided to retail their own stuff. A few years later, x10.com was born as a subsidiary, and later became it's own deal.
Since they did the manufacturing, they started playing around with a CMOS chip and USB cable originally from Nogatech (http://www.nogatech.com). They make their own stuff now. That was the first few x-cams. The sold like HOT CAKES like you wouldn't believe. They made lots of money, and well, if you're making more money selling cameras and not so much your cool technology (X10 protocol), you sell cameras.
Funny, but I remember during the dot-com heyday when everybody was going IPO -- the X10 LTD company changed the name to x10.com to sound hip and internet-ish -- then when dot-com's started blowing up, and they STILL wanted to IPO, they changed the name again to X10 Wireless Technology, Inc. (investor site: http://www.x10wti.com). They never IPO'd, because the economy got all sneaky like it did. Around this time, I quit.
Dave Rye, one of the original protocol developers and a hell of a nice guy, still works at X10.com. When I was there in the tech department (worked there for 2 1/2 years) I could occasionally corner him to ask about a particularly wierd tech support case we'd have, or just shoot the shit about all the devices.
Anyway, the people are the same. X10 WTI are the folks behind the X10 protocol.
Charles Babbage just called to say that, quote: 'I own J00 all. See you in court'
Burma?
There's nothing in the article to say that the technique was patented. Maybe it was tried under California trade secret laws?
Also, this is just the compensatory damages. They could be looking at another $10-30 Million in punitive damages.
As far as the "should it be patentable" discussion, I consider this at least as patentable as a minor modification to a patented drug, or finding a new use for an existing product and patenting that use. Those types of patents existed before software and business process patents.
We are the 198 proof..
what's funny is that you won't be seeing those wireless camera pop-up*under ads any more, as x10 has filed for bankruptcy.
Funny how i feel like i'm gonna miss them already.
Isn't that a feature of Internet Explorer? I haven't been able to enable it in Mozilla under Linux, can you tell me how? No!, please, don't do it, I'm just kidding
I know this isn't going to be popular, but googlebar functionality is much better than Firebird (which I use). By this I don't mean overall (obviously not the case, else I wouldn't use it), but in every area the GB tries, it owns FB. Better popup blocking, one click button, and that great autofill feature. I wish we could get a native GB for FB.
The safest way to approach lava is to have another person with you and he goes first.
But is their Amazing Spy Camera any good?
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
What about the pop-unders from viewing all them XXX sites? There could be a killing to be made their. Especially in divorce court. Wife walks into room, husband closes browser, xxx pop-under appears on the screen, arrgghhh!!
Now, we know who responsible for those annoying pop-unders. I'd say we should sue the three brothers for creating all of the those pop-unders.
Why not they deserve a Patent or IP if someone can sue ebay for using his/her 'Buy it now' option or Amazon's 'Click to buy' feature.