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."

Comments

Personally this is a patent I want to go through

[Crashmarik]

I relish the idea microsoft getting handed a half billion dollar IP judgement. With what they have been trying to pull with SCO I can only hope their legal budget is forced to exceed their software development budget and marketing budgets combined.

The other aspects of this that I love are 1. Microsoft may wind up footing the bill for starting the process of getting our patent and copyright system cleaned up. Seeing as they have in the past been a giant beneficiary of it being screwed up, I welcome the irony.

I also look forward to watching microsoft eat its words about I.E. . They will either have to change the default browser shipped with every microsoft os, or they will have to pay a licensing fee with every copy. Either one is to the good.