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Whose Prior Art Filing Triggered Eolas Reexam?
theodp writes "The Eolas patent case history shows another prior art filing was quietly made ten days before the widely-publicized W3C filing and two weeks before Tim Berner-Lee's reexam request. Now Ray Ozzie speculates the earlier filing was one being floated at the time that was jointly signed by a number of other parties who supported W3C member Dave Raggett's prior art, which Microsoft unsuccessfully tried to use in the $521 million Eolas lawsuit. Ozzie also notes that those involved argued for all to stand solidly behind the Raggett prior art and not cite anything else. So who are these other parties, and was it their filing and lobbying that triggered the Eolas reexam?"
Me. It was me.
WWJD.... for a Klondike bar?
I think that those were a few of Microsoft's competitors or "partners" that don't want to appear on the screen for whatever reasons so it does not look like they were helping Microsoft. I suspect it would mean bad pr for those if Microsoft decided to spin that in some direction.
;^)
On the other hand, maybe that was the ever so famous shadow government. Can't have a thread without conspiracy, can we?
Unfortunatly, I already have prior art on posting to slashdot claiming I had prior art as you will notice my post is above yours.
Pay up.
WWJD.... for a Klondike bar?
We all know how poorly the U.S. Patent Office has handled tech patent requests. What can you or I do to help the bad situation? Spread the word. In the Net universe, even the most famous tech god is only an email away.
This A.C. has got a good point. Many readers will have no idea what this story is about at all. Editors, when someone submits a cryptic story such as this, please give a little explaination at the end of what on earth it is about. EOALIS somethingorrather, I've got no idea.
This is the Eolas text. Who thinks such a thing novel?
The poster could have indicated what all these patents were about - instead of referencing them by somewhat obscure names.
These patents deal with browser plugins - and relate to a lawsuit that Microsoft lost.
Where law ends, tyranny begins -- William Pitt
How hard is it to file file art papers with the patent office? Does the patent office charge for these filings? Can anyone do it? Maybe it's time to generate some boilerplate filings and start attacking some of these bogus patents out there.
Very early versions of the tkwww browser supported full-scale applets: tk widgets and tcl scripts embedded in HTML. The feature was removed later due to the obvious security concerns, but nobody else had a real security model at the time, either (sigh, it's always the obvious and easy part that somebody patents). Unfortunately I was unable to contact the original author or locate a sufficiently old tarball of tkwww; but perhaps someone else succeeded in doing so. This was definitely available early enough, '93 or early '94.
Check out the Apostrophe open-source CMS: http://www.apostrophenow.com/
oh wait...were not talking about LoTR... *smacks self* software not fantasy...
I'm not sure I understand the theory that other prior art would,
apparently, be too confusing for the patent office to handle. It
doesn't sound like the typical lawyer thing to do (which is to use
a shotgun approach). This is weird to me, and I would like to understand.
I submitted the following:
A thing or process which may or may not do anything useful or anything in particular.
The patent is pending...
How Late Could They Get?
losers....
This is /. What was I thinking?!?!
From the greatest site ever: $2000 without a lawyer.
From the link:
It's getting to the point where I'm starting to think it would be better to just outlaw patents. The abuses are getting ridiculous, and the Patent Office is not doing its job.
Posted by: Jim on February 9, 2004 12:43 PM
I think it's getting to the point where a U.S. patent is losing its value. When I hear about some IP being patented, it no longer means what it once meant. So, for example, when someone says "We have several patents on this" I yawn--even when the patents are non-software related.
BTM
That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
just because somebody wanted to name their operating system after the type of interface they use, doesn't give them a right to patent it... that would be like me calling my operating system "menus" and having a completely menu-driven interface, then claiming that the name is my idea and I should have sole rights to it...
now watch microsoft come out with Microsoft Menus Server 2096... hey, rolls off the toung better than Microsoft Windows...
Dan Gillmor link to the Patent Application Information Retrieval for this patent. All actions with regard to this patent are being logged there in the The File Contents History.
:(
A interesting entree from 02-23-2001 says: Case Reported Lost! Unfortunately it was found again.
this was supposed to go in the lindows vs. microsoft thread... don't know how I got here...
... but it sounds as if he is patenting html. you click on a link and it executes code on the server which sends information back to the client to interact with. (ie you click on a link and the server sends you another web page to interact with(to click on more links))... looks like the US Patent office web page is patented... :)
From what I have seen of this case, it's not entirely clear that Microsoft wanted to win in the first place. Their lawyers seemed to have bungled the original case pretty badly, and by being involved in the re-exam, they can once more attempt to control the outcome (notwithstanding the huge monetary award for Eolas, which of course MicroSoft can write-off easily enough, but which more than likely will get reduced on appeal anyway, like usual.)
Think about it though: what sort of place would Microsoft be in with regards to the anti-trust/browser issue if they could no longer support "open standards" media formats in the browser (not that they couldn't, but they can use this as an excuse not to)? They would end up locking-in websites to support the Microsoft-only formats, and make IE the "browser of record" (If nothing else, the FUD factor would come to bear.)
Everyone seems to hate MicroSoft enough to overlook their apparent incompetence in the courtroom and in the cubicle. Could they really be gaming the system instead? Already they have led to the most obvious prior art going overlooked by the patent office (with the support of even the w3c!). Just why didn't MicroSoft fire their law firm over this?
Or, do you think that it would not be in MicroSoft's character to risk barrels of cash and get involved as an anonymous agent to cause havoc in the open standards battle? (Hmmmmm... maybe he has a point....)
Anyone remember the Ally McBeal episode where Fish and Ling have sex for the first time? She makes him sign documents prior to the act since some of her techniques were patented.
probably Al Gore, since he Invented the Internet
Well, he certainly took the initiative in creating the Internet, but if he said he invented it he'd be somewhat less than honest, IMHO. Did he say that?
mefus
In Open Society, GPL Software frees YOU!
6,618,754 -- System for transmission of embedded applications over a network Filed October 23, 1995 Issued September 9, 2003 Info from the USPTO, so you don't need to open a new browser window to get the numbers and dates. You can cross-check anything you may have coded with that first date; if you wrote something in 1994 you win..... A NEW CAR! While you're there, check out this: Patent No. 1,087,186. Socrates Scholfield's "Illustrative Educational Device." What does it do? Hell if I know, but it's /supposed/ to demonstrate the existance of God. As I said, hell if I know, man.
*****
Dear Mary,
I yearn for you tragically,
A.T. Tappman, Chaplain, U.S. Army.
A Variety of Stuff.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Hi!
Or, we're abusing the patent process to jerk around a competitor. Or we're abusing the process to defeat the nefarious schemes of companies we despise. Or maybe we're senior citizens that have adopted filing patent claims as a hobby....
Once upon a time patents cost very little--and the actual costs of the USPTO (like lots of parts of the U.S. government) were borne by the average taxpayer. In the 1970s and following the government moved toward "user fees"--charging the recipients of a federal program for its costs. Thus visitors to most national parks pay a fee, cruise ship operators pay a fee for Coast Guard inspections, and children pay an annual fee to participate in 4-H. This is the same thing: the people who do business with the USPTO help fund its operation. And the cost structure deters people (hopefully) from clogging it unnecessarily.
Dunno if this is out on the web, but I googled for it and any site with relevant information was slashdotted before I even posted about this!
The inventor of the Weed Whacker was some lone man somewhere in the US. He patented his device and made a sizeable sum of money from it. Demand was huge, and he just started out.
Well, legend has it Sears made their own weed whacker without obtaining rights to it and sold that to many eager customers who couldn't obtain the original weed whacker. The original inventor sued. Sears tied the case up in the courts until the inventory eventually had to give up because he ran out of money. His income dried up because sears essentially stole his sales.
I welcome corrections to this story, but it's when companies with huge amounts of money can kill lawsuits by making someone else spend what little money they have, that you realize that it's the legal process that is killing patents.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
It probably someone from /. who knew if they did something to help Microsoft, they would lose all their karma points and everyone would mod the person down.
Fight Spammers!
I think the reason is more concrete than "bad PR". Whoever was helping with this case obviously has technology that is similar to the Eolas patent, or they wouldn't be able to comment on prior art. But if things go badly, and Eolas knows who they are, Microsoft won't be the only one getting sued.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
You can see from the File Contents History what mess this whole patent path is from the start that it is requested... It had been denied a few times, there was a appeal, but stranger though the whole stuff was lost and was refound... Strange case, even if you don't look who the players are...
http://www.webhistory.org/www.lists/www-talk.1993q 1/0145.html
e v/ CVS/WWW/TkWWW/
c l/ tkWWW-0.11/
t en sions/
Author: Joseph C. Wang (joe@athena.mit.edu)
tkWWW is a Tk interface to (WWW), which lets you send embedded buttons,
scrollbars, etc in hypertext written for WWW.
The Tk browser has the following advantages.
1. Since the entire user interface is written in an interpreted
language, it should be very easy to make modifications and extensions
to the system.
2. tkWWW can be configured with the "htext" widget which makes it is
possible to imbed Tk code into hypertext or with the "text" widget
which makes it possible to display multi-fonts. In the next few
months, there will be a new revision of tK which will allow imbeded
tK code with the "text" widget and support for the tkWWW "htext" widget
will be discontinued.
A quick Google returns some more info:
http://www.mit.edu/afs/athena/course/other/cdsd
http://public.planetmirror.com/pub/hpfreeware/T
http://www.funet.fi/pub/languages/tcl/harbor/ex
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
Can you say Macromedia? I think they would be hit hardest by EOLAS since that IS their core business model IMHO.
No proof. Just a hunch.
No not really, by copyrighting software, your protecting the implimentation of a "method" for 90 years, but others are free to impliment the "method" using original source code, this is reverse-engineering. However with a patent on the "method" is protected for 17 years, so even if the method is reverse-engineered, it's still got protection. Personaly I don't understand why the PTO doesn't require that the un-copyrighted source code needed to implement a method isn't required to be filed; a software prototype or model of the "device or method". That would allow others to patent improvements to the original patent; would that build a fire under developers asses to improve their products!
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Who needs a reason to re-examine Areolas?
Will
The Patent Act provides several means by which a patent may be voided after issue. One, litigation to determine validity, is very expensive and very difficult, because of the standards of review that are applied. Another, reexamination, is substantially less expensive and the standard of review applied is substantally less onerous, although there are many reasons that an accused defendant would not use the process.
Litigation is difficult because the Patent Act provides that an issued patent is presumed to be valid. This means that the Court views all evidence through the "clear and convincing" standard of evidence (the civil law equivalent of "beyond a reasonable doubt"), and under very strict evidentiary rules (where testimonial evidence of prior uses is irrelevant unless corroborated by evidence that existed before the critical date of the patent. Moreover, exceptional (probably undue) deference is given to validity decisions made by the USPTO regarding art actually considered.
Reexamination can be done two different ways, inter partes (2 party) or ex partes (1 party). Ex partes reexam means that a petition is filed with the USPTO, citing the art and explaining why it raises a "substantial new question of patentability." (SNQP). If the PTO finds SNQP, they issue a reexam order, and the patent is examined in view of the new art forthwith and at expedited speed. No claims are presumed valid, and all art found by the examiner is fair game -- in short, it is treated by the USPTO as it was before the patent had issued. It's a "do-over," if you will, this time armed with SNQP art.
Upside of ex parte is that you are finished after you submitted the art. The downside is that you are finished after you submit the art -- you can't quibble again as the patentee argues for patentability, introduces new claims and such. You are out of the game from there on in -- it is just like initial prosecution all over again.
That's what inter partes is for. You get to "play along" with the applicant, sniping at him and arguing why both his arguments and new claims are invalid. You get to make a case, settled by the examiner, for invalidity. If you win, you can kill the patent.
The downside is that if you don't kill it, a patent that rises from reexamination, phoenix-like, may be weakened with possibly narrower claims, but is much, Much, MUCH stronger, because none of the art evaluated is going to be usable against subsequent claims. If the new claims are not so narrowed as to avoid infringement, you are pretty much left defenseless on validity grounds after the, now very angry, patentee sues your ass for infringement.
Now there is much more than I have indicated, the foregoing is super-simplified and, for that reason, not correct. if you are interested in submitting a petition for reexamination, by all means speak to an attorney before doing so.
On the other hand, this is an excellent low-cost way to kill patents in appropriate circumstances.