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Are MS, W3C Barking Up Wrong Prior Art Tree?
theodp writes "CNET reports on how Microsoft and the W3C are spotlighting old technology - Pei Wei's Viola browser and W3C staff member Dave Raggett's HTML+ specification - in an effort to defeat Eolas' Web patent. In his ruling, the Eolas judge agreed that a Wei presentation that included an interactive image of a chessboard came close to prior art, but explained that the late 1994 date of invention excluded it from the ambit of prior art. Perhaps the judge might have ruled differently had he been shown January 1994 correspondence between Tim Berners-Lee, Pei Wei, Dave Raggett, and others in response to a challenge to match the prior art of the interactive, networked games that were operational on the PLATO system in the 70s at the University of Illinois to make it possible to develop browser-based chess games." (Read on for more.)
theodp continues: "If they were up on PLATO history, Microsoft's lawyers could have shown the judge that operational prior art existed two decades earlier than Eolas', Wei's, and Raggett's efforts. Not only that, there are striking similarities between PLATO and Eolas patents. BTW, Eolas patent holder Michael Doyle obtained his degrees from the University of Illinois, where PLATO was developed and widely used."
That's why this concept of "prior art" is rediculous. Since any idea can in theory be discovered independently of any other discovery of that idea, all ideas must exist outside of time.
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
Ah, Plato. No one ever talks about it so I always thought it was a local system. I used it when I was at the University of Lethbridge to send email to my brother at the University of Alberta (Edmonton) and to play this awesome (for the time) flight emulation program that was truly the first multiplayer game (of which I have any knowledge). This was back in 1982. Anyone know how many/which other universities had Plato terminals? I do remember the flight emulator getting slower and slower until it was no longer playable - possibly due to more people tying up the main frame. But the vector display rocked! I thought that that was the way to go for graphics.
Later, ('84), I used a logic program on Plato that would allow you to create circuits using NAND gates and JK Flipflops. That was fun but I remember not being able to save my work - at least not locally. Ahhhh, 8-bit nostalgia!
If so can you get a patent without even having a functional version of something? And then use that patent to quash someone else who produces a working version at the same time but files for a patent a day or two later?
Can you thus patent something without a working version? That is, just patent the general ideas, never bother to actually go though the process of making it work, and use those general ideas to claim fees from someone who does actually make it work.
And you can do this even if the process would be obvious to someone versed in the field?
Yah, this is sane. Reasonable. Logical.
I think the brains behind this are demonstrating a serious need for massive quantities of anti-psychotic drugs.
Oh thats right. Its "Legal".
Except in this case the "implementation" is computer code, a mathmatical algorithm.
In other words, nothing but an idea.
This is the sort of sticky wicket that was opened up by allowing the patenting of algorithms and business plans (again, nothing but an idea. There is no "thing" attached to a business plan).
The idea that you had to show a working implementation died many, many years ago. See the Seldon Patents and the modern allowance of perpetual motion machines. This is the sort of nonsense that ensues when you don't demand a working implementation before granting a patent.
As an exercise for the student I challenge you to demonstrate prior art on the ever popular "Cat Exercise Device," because it is nothing but an idea and one well implemented almost at the instant of the invention of manipulable laser devices.
Emails along the lines of "Hey, my cat goes crazy chasing the laser) will not count. You must demonstrate that the implementation existed at the time.
Prior art on ideas such as this, an idea which is simple, was nearly ubiquitous at the time of filing and relies strictly on the use of an existing item (Hey, I can use a hammer to hit screws too. PATENT that puppy!")is nearly impossible to prove because they are nothing but simple ideas.
And granted patents.
Jefferson got the patent system nearly perfect right out of the box. Since his time the system has slowly become dafter and dafter. In the 1960s it began its slide from merely pretty daft to criminally insane.
KFG
KFG
The real prior art for every Internet patent that I've ever seen can be found in PLATO and/or NAPLPS based systems like Telidon. In the Eolas case it is the ability of PLATO to display vidoe disc images on the screen under control of the content sent to the PLATO terminal from the PLATO central server. That is clearly an external application being triggered by the PLATO equivalent of a web page. Yes, the PLATO terminal and videodisc player were hardware but I don't think you can justify a patent by simply implementing a hardware function in software.
And if you compare the WWW with Canada's NAPLPS-based Telidon system circa 1981 then the similarities are eery. Someone really needs to document this stuff properly before we have completely lost all of the NAPLPS systems and software and content. A lot of this was developed in the Ottawa area and members of the tech community there could probably provide leads. But NAPLPS was also the basis of the pre-Internet Prodigy system and Knight-Ridder news had a NAPLPS-based news service. I believe IBM had a lot to do with those two developments.
I love an opportunity to talk about Plato. For many people the first computer that they loved was their first home computer. Not me, I loved the Plato! These were way ahead of their time, with gui's, touch screens, and multi player games.
I was fortunate to be an 11 year old in berkeley, ca where you could rent time by the hour at the Lawrence Hall of Science on one of 8 or so Plato terminals. The dungeon games were completely amazing for being the first. Years later when the internet came around, I couldnt understand why there were no good dungeon games with first person perspectives. This was 15 years later, and it had already been done, and muds seemed pretty boring in comparison.
Shout out to PLATO users!!!!
music lover since 1969