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W3C Requests Eolas Patent Re-Examination
x0n writes "Verbatim from W3: Acting on the advice of the W3C HTML Patent Advisory Group, W3C has presented the United States Patent and Trademark Office with prior art establishing that US Patent No. 5,838,906 (the '906 patent) is invalid. W3C Director Tim Berners-Lee has written an unprecedented request to U.S. Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property James E. Rogan to take action to remove the patent to allow operation of the Web. Read the briefing." techsoldaten adds a link to this New York Times story on the move, and
bgalbs points out the W3C's detailed filing describing prior art provided to the USPTO Director's office, "along with a letter from Tim Berners-Lee asking that the so-called Eolas patent be revoked," writing "Here's hoping it does some good; between this and the Lotus Notes prior art, perhaps there's hope this will all go away."
In case you're saying "Eolas? Wasn't he in Lord of the Rings or something?"
Here's a little background reading.
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The very idea that you can patent the idea of putting something that used to appear in a new window embedded in the original window instead is just absurd beyond belief.
You're right -- that notion is absurd -- but if you'd actually bother to read the patent, you'd notice that your gross oversimplification isn't anywhere close to what Eolas actually claims.
Valid roof of prior art is the only way to defeat this patent.
Because it's already protected by copyright. If you're not patenting the algorithm, then what the hell are you patenting?
"Prejudice is wrong; you should hate everyone the same."
>not as in "beer" but as in "money"
As I see it, "as in beer" and "as in money" are the same thing. After all, money can be exchanged for beer, so "as in beer, but not as in money" doesn't make sense to me.
The two types of "free" are generally refered to as 1) free as in beer (gratis - free of charge, freebie) and 2) free as in speech (libre - liberty, freedom). As far as software goes, free-as-in-beer refers to the purchase price and free-as-in-speech refers to what you can (legally) do with it after you own it - for example, read its source, copy it, change it, give it away, sell it, and so on.
~==>RocketSHE
Here's a couple of examples.
I suggest you read/watch James Burke's excellent series "The Day the Universe Changed," his other industrial history series whose name escapes me at the moment, or old columns in Scientific American.
History shows us exactly what happens when patent law (and presumably trademark and copyright law) serves the "owner" alone, not society as a whole. You clearly don't know that Britain had 100-year patents for a while... and she made no significant contribution to chemistry or industrial processes during that time. Like copyright today a person could not extend on a process developed on the day of their birth - they and their children (and even many of their grandchildren) would be dead long before the patent expired.
Meanwhile other countries, notably Germany, refused to respect the terms of British patents and had short patent durations themselves. If something was developed on the day you became an apprentice, you could probably use it as a journeyman and could certainly extend it as a master.
Germany industry flourished, and a backwards agrarian society became an industrial powerhouse that far exceeded the capabilities of the British industry they 'stole' from within a working lifetime. The US followed a similar path, although it's not quite as striking here since we didn't break a centuries-old pattern.
History is unambiguous on this question. Terms short enough to fit several consecutive patents into a working lifetime promote progress and innovation. Terms longer than a working lifetime stop innovation in its tracks and serve no useful purpose to society. They do, however, allow lazy CEOs to freeze the marketplace with them on top, and since the marketplace is frozen you see prices jacked up with none of the money "wasted" on research or innovation.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Lowell, Massachusetts is famous (well, was famous) as being a very important and large milling city in America. But before it could become a large milling city, the industrial era mills needed to be invented. They were orginally invented in England, where they were patented. From the Lowell National Historical Park Handbook, specifically, Early American Manufactoring:
The United States as an industrial power was basically established through patent infringement. The patent system was designed based on the idea of convincing people to share their ideas. Protecting them is a means to an end. However, when you have patents protecting frivolous inventions (once you have dynamically linked libraries, plugins are a fairly obvious next step), the system becomes abused. It no longer promotes the sharing of ideas and the development of new ones, it instead restricts innovation.
Who knows if patents as they currently exist really do spur on invention? But patents as they existed during the Industrial Revolution almost kept America out of the game until someone "stole" the designs for mills, at which point the flood gates opened and America became industrialized.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.