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X10 Pays $4.3 million In Damages For Pop-Unders

Posted by Hemos on from the oh-the-wonders-of-patent dept.

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.

2 of 288 comments (clear)

  1. Patents? by kevin42 · · Score: 5, Informative
    What does this have to do with patents? I don't think patents were involved here at all. X10 was a customer of the company who sued them.

    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...

  2. Re:Ummm by letxa2000 · · Score: 5, Informative
    Pop-Under, you mean.

    I tend to agree with you. But the browser doesn't specifically have a "pop under" feature. It's just a matter of running some JavaScript to send it to the back. Patenting that is rediculous, but no more rediculous than patenting anything else any given software does.

    Which does lead us to the conclusion, of course, that patenting software is silly.