USPTO To Reexamine Eolas, SBC Patents

theodp writes "The USPTO Director has ordered reexaminations of the infamous Eolas Distributed Hypermedia Method (discussed earlier(1) on Slashdot) and SBC Structured Document Browser (discussed earlier(2) on Slashdot) patents. Maybe this will inspire Tim O'Reilly to get that killer piece of 1-Click prior art off his bookshelf!"

Comments

Re:Hmmmm, other motivations....

[kansas1051]

You dont have to be a billionare to force the USPTO to reexamine a patent. Its called inter partes re-examination, ANYONE can file for it, and all you need to do is submit prior art (or even just an argument) that says the patent was granted in error. Its not cheap though, it can cost a few thousand dollars depending on the scope of the reexamination, but it is an affordable option for a company faced with litigation by an over-broad patent.

Re:How many times...

[Zeinfeld]

... has this happened in the US ?

Director ordered re-exams are rare, a few hundred a year. They tend to only take place when the USPTO is absolutely forced to.

In this case the director is responding to a public request made by Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web on behalf of the 600 odd companies in his consortium. This is the type of request that the director of the USPTO can hardly afford to ignore.

There are other ways to obtain a re-examination. Anyone can file at any time by paying a fee. The problem is that the re-exam process tends to be as prefunctory as the exam process and if you lose at re-exam the courts are likely to reject challenges based on the material presented in the re-exam.

I suspect that we will see the Eolas patent quickly evaporate. Director ordered re-exams in the middle of littigation are highly unusual. The trigger for obtaining a director ordered re-exam is considerably higher than the threshold for invalidating a patent.